Saturday, June 25

This Day In History

• 1788   Virginia ratified the U.S. Constitution.
• 1844   John Tyler took Julia Gardiner as his bride, thus becoming the first U.S. President to marry while in office.
• 1868   Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina were readmitted to the Union.
• 1876   Indian Chief Crazy Horse won the two-hour Battle of the Little Bighorn, Montana, wiping out the army of Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer. Custer, who led the battle against the Sioux Indian encampment, was among the 200+ casualties. Ironically, the only survivor of Custer’s forces was a horse, "Comanche".
• 1910   The U.S. Congress authorized the use of postal savings stamps.
• 1950   War broke out on the Korean peninsula as forces from the communist North invaded the South.
• 1951   The first commercial color telecast took place as CBS transmitted a one-hour special from New York to four other cities.
• 1962   The Supreme Court ruled that the use of an unofficial, nondenominational prayer in New York public schools was unconstitutional.
• 1967   The Beatles performed a new song, ''All You Need Is Love,'' during a live international telecast.
• 1973   Former White House Counsel John Dean began testifying before the Senate Watergate Committee.
• 1981   The Supreme Court decided that male-only draft registration was constitutional.
• 1987   Pope John Paul II received Austrian President Kurt Waldheim at the Vatican, a meeting fraught with controversy because of allegations that Waldheim had hidden a Nazi past.
• 1991   The Yugoslav republics of Croatia and Slovenia declared their independence.
• 1993   Kim Campbell became Canada’s 19th prime minister -- and its first woman prime minister. Campbell governed until October 25, 1993 when the Progressive-Conservative party was royally defeated. (Her term actually expired November 4, 1993.)
• 1995   Warren E. Burger, the 15th chief justice of the United States, died in Washington, D.C., at age 87.
• 1996   A truck bomb killed 19 Americans and injured hundreds at a U.S. military housing complex in Saudi Arabia.
• 1997   Oceanographer Jacques-Yves Cousteau died in Paris at age 87.
• 1997   An unmanned cargo ship crashed into Russia's Mir space station, knocking out half of the station's power and rupturing a pressurized laboratory.
• 1998   Windows 98 was released.
• 1998   The Supreme Court rejected a line-item veto law as unconstitutional.
• 2002   A federal judge in Alexandria, Va., entered an innocent plea on behalf of Zacarias Moussaoui, who was accused of conspiracy in the Sept. 11 attacks.

Happy Birthday To

• 1903   George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair) (author: Animal Farm, 1984; died Jan 21, 1950)
• 1925   June Lockhart (actress: Lassie, Lost in Space, Petticoat Junction)
• 1945   Carly Simon (Grammy Award-winning [Best New Artist, 1971] singer)
• 1949   Phyllis George (Brown) (Miss America [1971]; TV host)
• 1949   Jimmie Walker (actor, comedian)