TODAY IN HISTORY

On June 28, 1838, Britain’s Queen Victoria was crowned in Westminster Abbey.

In 1863, during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln appointed Maj. Gen. George G. Meade the new commander of the Army of the Potomac, following the resignation of Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker.

In 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife, Sophie, were assassinated shot to death in Sarajevo (sah-ruh-YAY’-voh) by Serb nationalist Gavrilo Princip (gavh-REE’-loh PREEN’-seep) —, an act which sparked World War I.

In 1919, the Treaty of Versailles (vehr-SY’) was signed in France, ending the First World War.

In 1939, Pan American Airways began regular trans-Atlantic air service with a flight that departed New York for Marseilles (mar-SAY’), France.

In 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Alien Registration Act, also known as the Smith Act, which required adult foreigners residing in the U.S. to be registered and fingerprinted.

In 1964, civil rights activist Malcolm X declared, “We want equality by any means necessary” during the Founding Rally of the Organization of Afro-American Unity in New York.

In 1968, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Uniform Monday Holiday Bill, which moved commemorations for Washington’s Birthday, Memorial Day and Veterans Day to Monday, creating threeday holiday weekends beginning in 1971.

In 1975, screenwriter, producer and actor Rod Serling, 50, creator of “The Twilight Zone,” died in Rochester, New York at the age of 50.

In 1978, the Supreme Court ordered the University of California, -Davis Medical School to admit Allan Bakke (BAH’-kee), a white man who argued he’d been a victim of reverse racial discrimination.

In 1994, President Bill Clinton became the first chief executive in U.S. history to set up a personal legal defense fund and ask Americans to contribute to it.

In 2000, seven months after he was cast adrift in the Florida Straits, Elian Gonzalez was returned to his native Cuba.

In 2013, tens of thousands of supporters and opponents of President Mohammed Morsi rallied in Cairo, and both sides fought each other in Egypt’s second-largest city of Alexandria, where two people — including an American — were killed and scores injured. Also: The four plaintiffs in the U.S. Supreme Court case that overturned California’s same-sex marriage ban tied the knot, just hours after a federal appeals court freed gay couples to obtain marriage licenses in the state for the first time in 4 1⁄2 years.