Today is Wednesday, June 25, the 176th day of 2014. There are 189 days left in the year.
Today’s highlight:
On June 25, 2009, death claimed Michael Jackson, the “King of Pop,” in Los Angeles at age 50 and actress Farrah Fawcett in Santa Monica, California, at age 62.
On this date:
In 1788, Virginia ratified the U.S. Constitution.
In 1876, Lt. Col. Colonel George A. Custer and his 7th Cavalry were wiped out by Sioux and Cheyenne Indians in the Battle of the Little Bighorn in Montana.
In 1888, the Republican National Convention, meeting in Chicago, nominated Benjamin Harrison for the presidency. (Harrison went on to win the election, defeating President Grover Cleveland.)
In 1910, President William Howard Taft signed the White-Slave Traffic Act, more popularly known as the Mann Act, which made it illegal to transport women across state lines for “immoral” purposes.
In 1938, the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 was enacted.
In 1943, Congress passed, over President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s veto, the Smith-Connally Anti-Strike Act, which allowed the federal government to seize and operate privately owned war plants facing labor strikes.
In 1950, war broke out in Korea as forces from the communist North invaded the South.
In 1962, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Engel v. Vitale, ruled 6-1 that recitation of a state-sponsored prayer in New York State public schools was unconstitutional.
In 1973, former White House Counsel John W. Dean began testifying before the Senate Watergate Committee, implicating top administration officials, including President Richard Nixon as well as himself, in the Watergate scandal and cover-up.
In 1984, the Prince and the Revolution soundtrack album “Purple Rain” was released by Warner Bros. Records.
In 1993, Kim Campbell was sworn in as Canada’s 19th prime minister, the first woman to hold the post.
In 1998, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a line-item veto law as unconstitutional, and ruled that HIV-infected people are protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Ten years ago: Republican Jack Ryan withdrew from the U.S. Senate race in Illinois after revelations of sex-club visits with his then-wife, actress Jeri Ryan. President George W. Bush and his wife, Laura, opened a European trip as they arrived in Ireland. Taliban fighters killed up to 17 people after learning they had registered for Afghanistan’s U.S.-backed national elections.
Five years ago: North Korea vowed to enlarge its atomic arsenal and warned of a “fire shower of nuclear retaliation” in the event of a U.S. attack, as the regime marked the 1950 outbreak of the Korean War.
One year ago: President Barack Obama declared the debate over climate change and its causes obsolete as he announced at Georgetown University a wide-ranging plan to tackle pollution and prepare communities for global warming. Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed the whereabouts of National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden at a Moscow airport, but promptly rejected a U.S. plea to turn him over. Democratic Texas State Senator Wendy Davis began a one-woman filibuster to block a GOP-led effort to impose stringent new abortion restrictions across the nation’s second-most populous state. (Republicans voted to end the filibuster minutes before midnight, sparking a chaotic scene with demonstrators who succeeded in forcing lawmakers to miss the deadline for passing the bill.)
Associated Press
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