Today is Monday, June 17, the 168th day of 2019. There are 197 days left in the year.
Today's Highlight in History:
On June 17, 1994, after leading police on a slow-speed chase on Southern California freeways, O.J. Simpson was arrested and charged with murder in the slayings of his ex-wife, Nicole, and her friend, Ronald Goldman. (Simpson was later acquitted in a criminal trial, but held liable in a civil trial.)
On this date:
In 1579, Sir Francis Drake arrived in present-day northern California, naming it New Albion and claiming English sovereignty.
In 1775, the Revolutionary War Battle of Bunker Hill resulted in a costly victory for the British, who suffered heavy losses.
In 1928, Amelia Earhart embarked on a trans-Atlantic flight from Newfoundland to Wales with pilots Wilmer Stultz and Louis Gordon, becoming the first woman to make the trip as a passenger.
In 1930, President Herbert Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which boosted U.S. tariffs to historically high levels, prompting foreign retaliation.
In 1953, U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas stayed the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, originally set for the next day, the couple's 14th wedding anniversary. (They were put to death June 19.)
In 1963, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Abington (Pa.) School District v. Schempp, struck down, 8-1, rules requiring the recitation of the Lord's Prayer or reading of Biblical verses in public schools.
In 1967, China successfully tested its first thermonuclear (hydrogen) bomb.
In 1972, President Richard Nixon's eventual downfall began with the arrest of five burglars inside the Democratic headquarters in Washington, D.C.'s Watergate complex.
In 2002, A judge in San Francisco tossed out the second-degree murder conviction of Marjorie Knoller for the dog-mauling death of neighbor Diane Whipple, but let stand Knoller's conviction for involuntary manslaughter. (However, Knoller's murder conviction was reinstated in 2008.)
In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that states can't demand proof of citizenship from people registering to vote in federal elections unless they get federal or court approval to do so.
In 2015, nine people were shot to death in a historic African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina; suspect Dylann Roof was arrested the following morning. (Roof has since been convicted of federal hate crimes and sentenced to death; he later pleaded guilty to state murder charges and was sentenced to life in prison without parole.)
In 2017, the jury in Bill Cosby's sexual assault case was declared hopelessly deadlocked, resulting in a mistrial for the 79-year-old TV star charged with drugging and groping a woman more than a decade earlier; prosecutors immediately announced they would pursue a second trial, which resulted in Cosby's conviction. The Navy destroyer USS Fitzgerald was damaged in a collision with a Philippine-flagged container ship off Japan that killed seven sailors.
