Today in history
On June 7, 1753, England’s King George II gave his assent to an Act of Parliament establishing the British Museum.
In 1769 frontiersman Daniel Boone began his exploration of present-day Kentucky.
In 1864 President Abraham Lincoln was nominated for re-election at the Republican Party’s convention in Baltimore.
In 1892 a man of mixed race was arrested when he refused to move from a seat reserved for whites on a train in New Orleans. The case led to the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark “separate but equal” decision in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896.
In 1909 actress Jessica Tandy was born in London.
In 1929 the sovereign state of Vatican City came into existence as copies of the Lateran Treaty were exchanged in Rome.
In 1943 poet Nikki Giovanni was born in Knoxville, Tenn.
In 1958 Prince Rogers Nelson — who would go on to become the rock singer, songwriter and musician known as Prince — was born in Minneapolis.
In 1972 the musical “Grease” opened on Broadway.
In 1981 Israeli planes destroyed an Iraqi nuclear power reactor that Israel said could have been used to make nuclear weapons.
In 1995 President Bill Clinton vetoed his first bill, striking down a Republican plan to cut $16.4 billion in spending.
In 1996 the Clinton White House acknowledged that it had obtained the FBI files of prominent Republicans, calling it “an innocent bureaucratic mistake.”
In 2000 U. S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson ordered the breakup of Microsoft Corp. (An appeals court later threw out the breakup order; the Justice Department, under the Bush administration, said it would no longer seek a breakup of Microsoft.)
In 2003 in a national first, New Hampshire Episcopalians elected Rev. V. Gene Robinson, an openly gay man, as their next bishop.
In 2004 the Tampa Bay Lightning held off the Calgary Flames 2-1 in Game 7 to win their first Stanley Cup.
In 2005 General Motors chairman Rick Wagoner announced plans to close plants and eliminate 25,000 manufacturing jobs in the U.S. by 2008.
In 2013 Actress Shannon Guess Richardson, of Boston, Texas, was arrested for allegedly sending ricin-laced letters to President Barack Obama and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Also in 2013, serial killer Richard Ramirez, known as the “Night Stalker,” died at a hospital near San Quentin State Prison in California.