TODAY IN HISTORY

Today is Tuesday, June 14, the 166th day of 2016. There are 200 days left in the year. This is Flag Day.

In 1775, the Continental Army, forerunner of the United States Army, was created.

In 1777, the Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, adopted the original design of the Stars and Stripes, specifying a flag containing thirteen red and white stripes and thirteen stars. In 1801, former American Revolutionary War general and notorious turncoat Benedict Arnold died in London. In 1922, Warren G. Harding became the first president heard on radio, as Baltimore station WEAR broadcast his speech dedicating the Francis Scott Key memorial at Fort McHenry. In 1934, Max Baer defeated Primo Carnera with an 11th round TKO to win the world heavyweight boxing championship in Long Island City, New York. In 1940, German troops entered Paris during World War II; the same day, the

Nazis began transporting prisoners to the Auschwitz concentration camp in German-occupied Poland.

In 1943, the U.S. Supreme Court, in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, ruled 6-3 that children in public schools could not be forced to salute the flag of the United States. In 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a measure adding the phrase “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance. In 1967, the space probe Mariner 5 was launched from Cape Kennedy on a flight that took it past Venus. In 1972, the Environmental Protection Agency ordered a ban on domestic use of the pesticide DDT, to take effect at year’s end. In 1985, the 17-day hijack ordeal of TWA Flight 847 began as a pair of Lebanese Shiite Muslim extremists seized the jetliner shortly after takeoff from Athens, Greece.