Today’s Highlight in History:
On June 21, 1788, the United States Constitution went into effect as New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify it.
On this date:
In 1377: King Edward III died after ruling England for 50 years; he was succeeded by his grandson, Richard II.
In 1834: Cyrus Hall McCormick received a patent for his reaping machine.
In 1932: heavyweight Max Schmeling lost a title fight rematch in New York by decision to Jack Sharkey, prompting Schmeling’s manager, Joe Jacobs, to exclaim: “We was robbed!”
In 1942: German forces led by Generaloberst (Colonel General) Erwin Rommel captured the Libyan city of Tobruk during World War II. (Rommel was promoted to the rank of field marshal; Tobruk was retaken by the Allies in November 1942.) An Imperial Japanese submarine fired shells at Fort Stevens on the Oregon coast, causing little damage.
In 1943: Army nurse Lt. Edith Greenwood became the first woman to receive the Soldier’s Medal for showing heroism during a fire at a military hospital in Yuma, Arizona.
In 1948: the Republican national convention opened in Philadelphia. (The delegates ended up choosing Thomas E. Dewey to be their presidential nominee.)
In 1963: Cardinal Giovanni Battista Montini was chosen during a conclave of his fellow cardinals to succeed the late Pope John XXIII; the new pope took the name Paul VI.
In 1964: civil rights workers Michael H. Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James E. Chaney were slain in Philadelphia, Mississippi; their bodies were found buried in an earthen dam six weeks later. (Forty-one years later on this date in 2005, Edgar Ray Killen, an 80-year-old former Ku Klux Klansman, was found guilty of manslaughter; he was sentenced to 60 years in prison, where he died in January 2018.)
In 1977: Menachem Begin of the Likud bloc became Israel’s sixth prime minister.
In 1982: a jury in Washington, D.C., found John Hinckley Jr. not guilty by reason of insanity in the shootings of President Ronald Reagan and three other men.
In 1988: “Who Framed Roger Rabbit,” a comedy fantasy starring Bob Hoskins that combined live action and legendary animated cartoon characters, premiered in New York.
In 1989: a sharply divided Supreme Court ruled that burning the American flag as a form of political protest was protected by the First Amendment.
