This day in history
Today is Friday, June 23, the 174th day of 2023. There are 191 days left in the year.
Birthdays: Singer Diana Trask is 83. Actor Ted Shackelford is 77. Actor Bryan Brown is 76. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is 75. Actor Jim Metzler is 72. Actor Frances McDormand is 66. Actor Selma Blair is 51. Rock singer KT Tunstall is 48. Actor Emmanuelle Vaugier is 47. Singer-songwriter Jason Mraz is 46. Football Hall of Famer LaDainian Tomlinson is 44. Rock singer Duffy is 39.
▸ In 1831, the Legislature granted the Massachusetts Horticultural Society permission to purchase land on the border of Watertown and Cambridge for use as an experimental garden and a rural cemetery, which would become Mount Auburn
Cemetery. As the first rural cemetery in America, Mount Auburn pioneered the idea of burying the dead not in urban churchyards but in a beautifully designed, naturalistic landscape on the outskirts of the city, according to Mass Humanities.
▸ In 1888, abolitionist Frederick Douglass received one vote from the Kentucky delegation at the Republican convention in Chicago, making him the first Black candidate to have his name placed in nomination for US president. (The nomination went to Benjamin Harrison.)
▸ In 1972, President Richard Nixon signed Title IX barring discrimination on the basis of sex for “any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.”
▸ In 1985, all 329 people aboard an Air India Boeing 747 were killed when the plane crashed into the Atlantic Ocean near Ireland because of a bomb authorities believe was planted by Sikh separatists.
▸ In 1990, anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela and his wife, Winnie, visited Boston a few months after his release from prison. The day began with a tour of Madison Park High School and culminated in a speech before a quarter million people on the Esplanade.
▸ In 1995, Dr. Jonas Salk, the medical pioneer who developed the first vaccine to halt the crippling rampage of polio, died in La Jolla, Calif., at age 80.
▸ In 2011, FBI agents and Los Angeles police arrested the infamous Boston crime boss James “Whitey” Bulger and his longtime girlfriend, Catherine Greig, without incident at a Santa Monica, Calif., apartment building, ending a 16-year international manhunt.
▸ In 2016, Britain voted to leave the European Union after a bitterly divisive referendum campaign, toppling Prime Minister David Cameron, who led the campaign to keep Britain in the EU.
▸ In 2019, Encore Boston opened in Everett; the $2.6 billion casino was the first in Eastern Massachusetts after the state legalized such gambling.
▸ Last year, in a major expansion of gun rights, the Supreme Court says Americans have a right to carry firearms in public for self-defense. The European Union’s leaders agreed to make Ukraine a candidate for EU membership.