TODAY IN HISTORY
In 1938, the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 was enacted.
In 1942, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower was designated Commanding General of the European Theater of Operations during World War II. Some 1,000 British Royal Air Force bombers raided Bremen, Germany.
In 1947, “The Diary of a Young Girl,” the personal journal of Anne Frank, a German-born Jewish girl hiding with her family from the Nazis in Amsterdam during World War II, was first published.
In 1950, war broke out in Korea as forces from the communist North invaded the South.
In 1962, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 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 1990, the U.S. Supreme Court, in its first “right-to-die” decision, ruled that family members could be barred from ending the lives of persistently comatose relatives who had not made their wishes known conclusively.
In 1993, Kim Campbell was sworn in as Canada’s 19th prime minister, the first woman to hold the post.
In 1996, a truck bomb killed 19 Americans and injured hundreds at a U.S. military housing complex in Saudi Arabia.
In 2009, death claimed Michael Jackson, the “King of Pop,” in Los Angeles at age 50 and actor Farrah Fawcett in Santa Monica, California, at age 62.
In 2013, 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.
In 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld nationwide tax subsidies under President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul in a 6-3 ruling that preserved health insurance for millions of Americans.
In 2016, Pope Francis visited Armenia, where he recognized the Ottoman-era slaughter of Armenians as a genocide, prompting a harsh rebuttal from Turkey.
In 2021, former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin was sentenced to 22 1/2 years in prison for the murder of George Floyd, whose dying gasps under Chauvin’s knee led to the biggest outcry against racial injustice in the U.S. in generations.
BIRTHDAYS
Actor June Lockhart is 99.
Civil rights activist James Meredith is 91.
R&B singer Eddie Floyd (“Knock on Wood”) is 87.
Actor Barbara Montgomery is 85.
Singer Carly Simon is 81.
Actor-comedian Jimmie Walker is 77.
Rock musician Tim Finn is 72.
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor is 70.
Actor-writer-director Ricky Gervais is 63.
Author Yann Martel (“Life of Pi”) is 61.
Actor Erica Gimpel is 60.
Basketball Hall of Famer Dikembe Mutombo is 58.
Actor Angela Kinsey (“The Office”) is 53.
Actor Linda Cardellini is 49.
Actor Busy Philipps is 45.
