Sunday, June 12, 2011

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY JUNE 12

1900 - The Reichstag approved a second law that would allow the expansion of the German navy.
1901 - Cuba agreed to become an American protectorate by accepting the Platt Amendment.
1912 - Lillian Russel retired from the stage and was married for the fourth time.
1918 - The first airplane bombing raid by an American unit occurred on World War I's Western Front in France.
1921 - U.S. President Warren Harding urged every young man to attend military training camp.
1923 - Harry Houdini, while suspended upside down 40 feet above the ground, escaped from a strait jacket.
1926 - Brazil quit the League of Nations in protest over plans to admit Germany.
1929 - Anne Frank was born in Germany. She wrote in her diary about growing up in occupied Amsterdam during World War II. She died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in March 1945.
1931 - Al Capone and 68 of his henchmen were indicted for violating U.S. Prohibition laws.
1935 - U.S. Senator Huey Long of Louisiana made the longest speech on Senate record. The speech took 15 1/2 hours and was filled by 150,000 words.
1935 - The Chaco War was ended with a truce. Bolivia and Paraguay had been fighting since 1932.
1937 - The Soviet Union executed eight army leaders under Joseph Stalin.
1939 - The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum was dedicated in Cooperstown, New York. This was exactly one hundred years to the day on which the game was invented by Abner Doubleday.
1941 - In London, the Inter-Allied Declaration was signed. It was the first step towards the establishment of the United Nations.
1944 - Chinese Communist leader Mao Tse-tung announced that he would support Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek in the war against Japan.
1948 - Ben Hogan won his first U.S. Open golf classic.
1963 - "Cleopatra" starring Elizabeth Taylor, Rex Harrison, and Richard Burton premiered at the Rivoli Theatre in New York City.
1963 - Civil rights leader Medgar Evers was fatally shot in front of his home in Jackson, MS.
1967 - State laws which prohibited interracial marriages were ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court.
1971 - Tricia Nixon and Edward F. Cox were married in the White House Rose Garden.
1975 - Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was found guilty of corrupt election practices in 1971.
1978 - David Berkowitz, the "Son of Sam" killer in New York, was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison for each of six killings.
1979 - Bryan Allen flew the Gossamer Albatross, man powered, across the English Channel.
1981 - Major league baseball players began a 49 day strike. The issue was free-agent compensation.
1982 - 75,000 people rallied against nuclear weapons in New York City's Central Park. Jackson Browne, James Taylor, Bruce Springsteen, and Linda Ronstadt were in attendance.
1985 - Wayne "The Great One" Gretsky was named winner of the NHL's Hart Trophy. The award is given to the the league Most Valuable Player.
1985 - The U.S. House of Representatives approved $27 million in aid to the Nicaraguan contras.
1986 - South Africa declared a national state of emergency. Virtually unlimited power was given to security forces and restrictions were put on news coverage of the unrest.
1987 - Central African Republic's former emperor Jean-Bedel Bokassa was sentenced to death for crimes he had committed during his 13-year rule.
1987 - U.S. President Reagan publicly challenged Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall.
1990 - The parliament of the Russian Federation formally declared its sovereignty.
1991 - Russians went to the election polls and elected Boris N. Yeltsin as the president of their republic.
1991 - The Chicago Bulls won their first NBA championship. The Bulls beat the Los Angeles Lakers four games to one.
1992 - In a letter to the U.S. Senate, Russian Boris Yeltsin stated that in the early 1950's the Soviet Union had shot down nine U.S. planes and held 12 American survivors.
1994 - Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were murdered outside her home in Los Angeles. O.J. Simpson was later acquitted of the killings, but he was held liable in a civil suit.
1996 - In Philadelphia a panel of federal judges blocked a law against indecency on the internet. The panel said that the 1996 Communications Decency Act would infringe upon the free speech rights of adults.
1997 - Interleague play began in baseball, ending a 126-year tradition of separating the major leagues until the World Series.
1997 - The U.S. Treasury Department unveiled a new $50 bill meant to be more counterfeit-resistant.
1998 - Compaq Computer paid $9 billion for Digital Equipment Corp. in largest high-tech acquisition.
1998 - A jury in Hattiesburg, MS, convicted 17-year-old Luke Woodham of killing two students and wounding seven others at Pearl High School.
1999 - NATO peacekeeping forces entered the province of Kosovo in Yugoslavia.
2003 - In Arkansas, Terry Wallis spoke for the first time in nearly 19 years. Wallis had been in a coma since July 13, 1984, after being injured in a car accident.
2009 - The switch from analog TV trasmission to digital was completed in the United States.

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