Today is Monday, June 24, the 176th day of 2024.
There are 190 days left in the year.
Today's Highlight in History:
On June 24, 1983, the space shuttle Challenger — carrying America's first woman in space, Sally K. Ride — coasted to a safe landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California.
Also on this date:
In 1497, the first recorded sighting of North America by a European took place as explorer John Cabot spotted land, probably in present-day Canada.
In 1509, Henry VIII was crowned king of England; his wife, Catherine of Aragon, was crowned queen consort.
In 1807, a grand jury in Richmond, Virginia, indicted former Vice President Aaron Burr on charges of treason and high misdemeanor (he was later acquitted).
In 1939, the Southeast Asian country Siam changed its name to Thailand. (It went back to being Siam in 1945, then became Thailand once again in 1949.)
In 1940, France signed an armistice with Italy during World War II.
In 1946, Fred M. Vinson was sworn in as the 13th chief justice of the United States, succeeding the late Harlan F. Stone.
In 1948, Communist forces cut off all land and water routes between West Germany and West Berlin, prompting the western allies to organize the Berlin Airlift.
In 1957, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Roth v. United States, ruled 6-3 that obscene materials were not protected by the First Amendment.
In 1973, President Richard Nixon concluded his summit with the visiting leader of the Soviet Union, Leonid Brezhnev, who hailed the talks in an address on American television.
In 1992, the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, strengthened its 30-year ban on officially sponsored worship in public schools, prohibiting prayer as a part of graduation ceremonies.
In 2015, a federal judge in Boston formally sentenced Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (joh-HAHR' sahr-NEYE'-ehv) to death for the 2013 terror attacks. (A federal appeals court later threw out the sentence; the Supreme Court reinstated it.)
In 2018, women in Saudi Arabia were able to drive for the first time, as the world's last remaining ban on female drivers was lifted.
In 2020, three white men were indicted on murder charges in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man who was shot while running in a neighborhood near Georgia's coast. (All three were convicted.)
In 2021, a 12-story condominium building in Surfside, Florida, collapsed, killing 98 people.
In 2022, the Supreme Court ended constitutional protections for abortion that had been in place nearly 50 years with the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
