History Today
In 1838, Queen Victoria of England was crowned in Westminster Abbey.
In 1863, during the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln appointed Maj. Gen. George G. Meade as the new commander of the Army of the Potomac following the resignation of Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker.
In 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie were shot and killed in Sarajevo by Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip, sparking the First World War.
In 1919, the Treaty of Versailles was signed in France, ending World War I.
In 1939, Pan American World Airways began transatlantic air service with scheduled flights from New York to Marseille, France.
In 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Alien Registration Act, also known as the Smith Act, which required adult aliens residing in the United States to register and be fingerprinted.
In 1950, North Korean forces occupied Seoul, the capital of South Korea.
In 1978, the Supreme Court ordered the admission of Alan Bakke, a white man who claimed to have been the victim of reverse racism, to the University of California, Davis, School of Medicine.
In 1994, President Bill Clinton became the first chief executive in U.S. history to establish a private defense fund and ask the public for donations.
In 2000, seven months after being adrift in the Straits of Florida, Elian Gonzalez was deported to his native Cuba.
In 2010, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that Americans have the right to own guns for self-defense, no matter where they live.
In 2012, President Barack Obama’s signature bill, the Affordable Care Act, barely survived an election-year battle at the U.S. Supreme Court, by a 5-4 vote, with the surprising help of conservative Chief Justice John Roberts.
In 2017, a man armed with a shotgun stormed into a newspaper office in Annapolis, Maryland, killing four reporters and one staff member. Police then stormed in and arrested the man. Authorities said Jarrod Ramos had been harboring a long-standing grudge against the paper for publishing a harassment case against him. (Ramos was convicted and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole at least five times.)
James Alex Fields, the self-described white supremacist who intentionally drove his car into a crowd of counterprotesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2019, killing one young woman and injuring dozens, apologized to his victims before being sentenced to life in prison on federal hate crimes charges.
In 2022, Ghislaine Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in prison for helping wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein sexually abuse teenage girls.
birthday
Comedian and film director Mel Brooks is 98 years old.
Diplomat and politician Hans Blix is 96 years old.
Comedian and impersonator John Viner is 86 years old.
Former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta is 86 years old.
Actor Bruce Davison is 78 years old.
Actress Kathy Bates is 76 years old.
Actress Alice Krieg is 70 years old.
Football Hall of Famer John Elway is 64 years old.
Jazz singer Tierney Sutton is 61 years old.
Actress Jessica Hecht is 59 years old.
Rock musician Saul Davis (James) is 59 years old.
Actor Mary Stuart Masterson is 58 years old.
Actor John Cusack is 58 years old.
Actor Gil Bellows is 57 years old.
Actress Tichina Arnold is 55 years old.
Entrepreneur Elon Musk is 53 years old.
Actor Alessandro Nivola is 52 years old.
Rock musician Mark Stormer (The Killers) is 47 years old.
The screenwriter and director, Florian Zeller, is 45 years old.
Country singer Kellie Pickler is 38 years old.
Olympic track and field star Elaine Thompson-Heller is 32 years old.
