Today in history

On June 30, 1777, British forces in the Revolutionary War evacuated New Jersey and retreated to Staten Island, N.Y.

In 1859 French acrobat Emile Blondin (born Jean Francois Gravelet) crossed Niagara Falls on a tightrope as 5,000 peoplewatched.

In 1906 the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act became law.

In 1921 President Warren Harding appointed former President William Howard Taft as the nation’s chief justice.

In 1934 Adolf Hitler began a purge of hundreds of political and military leaders in Germany.

In 1936 the novel “Gone with the Wind” by Margaret Mitchell was published in New York.

In 1952 “The Guiding Light,” a popular radio program, debuted as a TV soap opera.

In 1963 Pope Paul VI was crowned in St. Peter’s Square in Rome, making him the 262nd head of the Roman Catholic Church.

In 1971 three Soviet cosmonauts, in space for more than threeweeks, were found dead when their Soyuz11 spacecraft landed.

In 1971 the 26th Amendment, lowering the minimum voting age to18, was ratified. In 1985 all 39 remaining American hostages seized in the hijacking of a TWA jet were freed after 17 days of captivity in Beirut.

In 1986 the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that states could ban homosexual acts between consenting adults.

In 1994 the U.S. Figure Skating Association stripped Tonya Harding of the1994 national championship and banned her fromthe organization for life for an attack on rival Nancy Kerrigan.

In 1994 the Supreme Court ruled that judges can bar even peaceful demonstrators from getting too close to abortion clinics.

In 1997, in Hong Kong, the Union Jack was lowered for the last time over Government House as Britain prepared to hand the colony back to China after ruling it for 156 years.

In 1998 officials confirmed that the remains of a Vietnam War service man buried in the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery had been identified as those of Air Force pilot Michael Blassie.

In 1998 Linda Tripp, whose tape-and-tell friendship with Monica Lewinsky spurred a White House crisis, spent six hours testifying before a grand jury in Washington.

In 1999 the Federal Reserve Board raised interest rates for the first time in two years, boosting the target for the funds rate a quarter point to 5 percent.

In 1999 on the day the independent counsel law expired, Kenneth Starr wrapped up the Whitewater phase of his investigation as presidential friend Webster Hubbell pleaded guilty to a felony and amisdemeanor.

In 2000 an Arkansas Supreme Court committee sued President Bill Clinton to strip him of his law license. (Clinton later agreed to pay a fine and give up his law license for five years.)

In 2004 Israel’s Supreme Court ordered a 25-mile stretch of the government’s West Bank separation barrier near Jerusalem to be rerouted.

In 2005 Spain becamethe third country to legalize gay marriage.