PAGES FROM THE PAST TODAY IN HISTORY
A look at Morning Call front pages from this week 100, 50 and 25 years ago; see bigger images of the pages at themorningcall.com/pages
In 1599 painter Diego Velazquez was baptized in Seville, Spain.
In 1755 American Revolutionary patriot Nathan Hale was born in Coventry, Connecticut.
In 1799 American orator Patrick Henry died in Charlotte County, Virginia.
In 1844 the Young Men’s Christian Association was founded in London.
In 1901 Sukarno, leader of the Indonesian independence movement and Indonesia’s first president, was born in Surabaja, Java, in what was then known as the Dutch East Indies.
In 1918 the World War I Battle of Belleau Wood, which resulted in a U.S. victory over the Germans, began in France.
In 1925 Walter Percy Chrysler founded the Chrysler Corp.
In 1933 the first drive-in movie theater opened in Camden, N.J.
In 1934 the Securities and Exchange
Commission was established.
In 1942 Japanese forces retreated in the World War II Battle of Midway.
In 1944 Allied forces launched their invasion of Europe, landing on the beaches of Normandy, France, on what became known as D-Day.
In 1966 black activist James Meredith was shot and wounded as he walked along a Mississippi highway to encourage black voter registration.
In 1968 Sen. Robert Kennedy died at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles, a day after he was shot by Sirhan Sirhan.
In 1976 J. Paul Getty, thought at the time to be the world’s richest man, died outside London; he was 83.
In 1978 California voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition 13, a primary ballot initiative calling for major cuts in property taxes.
In 1982 Israeli forces invaded Lebanon to drive Palestine Liberation Organization fighters out of the country.
In 1984 the Indian army attacked Sikh extremists at the Golden Temple, the holiest Sikh shrine, in Amritsar in Punjab state. Hundreds were reported killed.
In 1985 authorities in Brazil exhumed a body later identified as the remains of Dr. Josef Mengele, the notorious “Angel of Death” of the Nazi Holocaust.
In 1990 a federal judge in Fort Lauderdale ruled that the 2 Live Crew album “As Nasty as They Wanna Be” was obscene. The decision was overturned on appeal.
In 1991 jazz saxophonist Stan Getz died in Malibu, California, at 64.
In 1995 U.S. astronaut Norman Thagard broke NASA’s space endurance record of 84 days, 1 hour and 16 minutes, aboard the Russian space station Mir.
In 1996 the Senate narrowly rejected a balanced budget amendment to the
Constitution as departing Majority Leader Bob Dole and the Democrats clashed over deficit reduction.
In 2000 Unilever agreed to buy Bestfoods for $20.3 billion in a deal creating the world’s biggest food company.
In 2001 Democrats assumed control of the U.S. Senate when Sen. James Jeffords of Vermont left the Republican Party to become an independent.
In 2004 “Avenue Q” won best musical at the Tony Awards, while “I Am My Own Wife” was named best play; Phylicia Rashad, who starred in a revival of “A Raisin in the Sun,” became the first black actress to win a Tony for a leading dramatic role.
In 2005 the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that people who smoke marijuana because their doctors recommend it to ease pain can be prosecuted for violating federal drug laws. Also in 2005 Anne Bancroft died in New York; she was 73.
In 2013 The Washington Post and The
Guardian disclosed that the National Security Agency and the FBI tapped the servers of leading Internet companies in a telephone and Web surveillance database program code-named PRISM. Also in 2013 Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that his 30-year marriage to his wife, Lyudmila, was over.
In 2015 American Pharoah finished first in the Belmont Stakes to become the 12th horse in thoroughbred racing to become a Triple Crown winner, 37 years after Affirmed accomplished the feat in 1978. Also in 2015 prison officials discovered that two convicted killers had escaped from the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, N.Y., using power tools in what was described as a “Shawshank Redemption” type breakout.
In 2016 a burst of late support from superdelegates gave Hillary Clinton commitments from the number of delegates needed to become the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee for president, the first woman to do so.