Today is Friday, June 3, the 154th day of 2011. There are 211 days left in the year.
Today’s highlight:
On June 3, 1861, Illinois Sen. Stephen Douglas, the Democratic presidential nominee in the 1860 election, died in Chicago of typhoid fever; he was 48.
On this date:
In 1621, the Dutch West India Co. received its charter for a trade monopoly in parts of the Americas and Africa.
In 1808, Confederate President Jefferson Davis was born in Christian County, Ky.
In 1888, the poem “Casey at the Bat,” by Ernest Lawrence Thayer, was first published in the San Francisco Daily Examiner.
In 1937, the Duke of Windsor, who had abdicated the British throne, married Wallis Warfield Simpson in Monts, France.
In 1948, the 200-inch reflecting Hale Telescope at the Palomar Mountain Observatory in California was dedicated.
In 1961, President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev opened two days of summit talks in Vienna.
In 1963, Pope John XXIII died at age 81; he was succeeded by Pope Paul VI.
In 1965, astronaut Edward White became the first American to “walk” in space, during the flight of Gemini 4.
In 1981, Pope John Paul II left a Rome hospital and returned to the Vatican three weeks after the attempt on his life.
In 1989, Iran’s spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, died.
Associated Press
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