On June 26th...

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1796 Astronomer David Rittenhouse died.

1797 Charles Newbold patented a cast-iron plow.

1810 Joseph-Michel Montgolfier, co-inventor of the first aircraft to carry humans into the sky, died.

1819 Civil War General Abner Doubleday was born.

1824 Physicist William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, was born.

1830 King George IV of England died.

1843 Hong Kong was proclaimed a British Crown Colony.

1848 The first pure food law was enacted in the United States.

1857 The first 62 recipients were awarded the Victoria Cross for valor in the Crimean war by Queen Victoria.

1870 Christmas was declared a federal holiday in the United States.

1892 Novelist Pearl S. Buck was born.

1894 Karl Benz received a U. S. patent for a gasoline-powered automobile.

1897 Charles Parsons demonstrated the Turbinia, the world's first steam turbine-powered ship.

1898 Airplane designer Willy Messerschmitt was born.

1904 Actor Peter Lorre was born.

1909 Tom Parker, Elvis Presley's manager, was born.

1914 Athlete Mildred Didrikson was born.

1919 The New York Daily News began publication.

1924 U. S. occupation of the Dominican Republic ended.
1924 The Ziegfeld Follies opened on Broadway.

1934 President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Federal Credit Union Act, establishing Credit Unions.
1934 Germany and Poland signed a non-aggression treaty.

1945 The United Nations Charter was signed by delegates from 50 nations at San Francisco.

1950 Actor Michael Paul Chan was born.

1959 Louisiana Governor Earl Long fired the director of the state hospitals.
1959 A TWA airliner en route from Athens, Greece, to Chicago, Illinois, disintegrated in a thunderstorm shortly after take-off from Milan, Italy, killing 68 persons.
1959 The St. Lawrence Seaway was formerly dedicated by Queen Elizabeth of the United Kingdom and U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower.
1959 Ingemar Johansson knocked out Floyd Patterson to gain the world heavyweight boxing championship.

1960 The Malagasy Republic became independent of France.
1970 Somaliland became independent of the United Kingdom.

1963 U. S. President John F. Kennedy visited West Berlin and declared "Ich bin ein Berliner" ("I am a Berliner").

1964 The government of Italian Premier Aldo Moro resigned.

1970 Actor Chris O'Donnell was born.

1974 The Universal Product Code was scanned for the first time to sell a package of Wrigley's chewing gum at the Marsh Supermarket in Troy, Ohio.
1974 Baseball player Derek Jeter was born.

1975 Two FBI agents and a member of the American Indian Movement were killed in a shootout on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

1977 Elvis Presley gave his last performance, in Indianapolis, Indiana.

1980 Football player Michael Vick was born.

1989 The U. S. Supreme Court ruled that 16-year-olds can receive the death penalty.

1991 A Kentucky medical examiner announced that President Zachary Taylor died of natural causes.

1993 "Late Night with David Letterman" aired for the last time on NBC-TV.
1993 Baseball player Roy Campanella died.

1997 The U. S. Supreme Court upheld its ban on doctor-assisted suicide.
1997 The U. S. Supreme Court ruled that the Communications Decency Act violates the First Amendment.

2003 The U. S. Supreme Court ruled that gender-based sodomy laws are unconstitutional.
2003 U. S. Senator Strom Thurmond died.

2007 Fashion designer Liz Claiborne died.

2008 The U. S. Supreme Court ruled that the ban on handguns in the District of Columbia was unconstitutional.

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This page was last updated on June 25, 2018.