This Week in History
by Dianne Hermann
“In the summer of 1776 our Founding Fathers sought to secure our independence and our liberties
that remain thefoundation of our nation today.” Rep. Doc Hastings (R-WA)
June 22-28, 2026
June 22
1611 – Mutineers from his ship Discovery set Henry Hudson, his son, and seven supporters adrift in the Hudson Bay. They were never seen again. The mutineers sailed back to England and were arrested.
1870 – Congress created the Department of Justice (DOJ) during the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant. Grant used the DOJ to protect the rights of newly freed slaves and suppress the KKK.
1922 – Striking coal miners of the United Mine Workers massacred 19 non-union strikebreakers after they had peacefully left the mine in Herrin, Illinois. None of the striking coal miners were ever convicted of the murders.
1941 – President Franklin Roosevelt signed the “GI Bill of Rights.”
1946 – President Truman set up the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
1970 – President Nixon signed the 26th Amendment, lowering the voting age from 21 to 18.
1998 – In Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole v. Scott the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that evidence illegally obtained by authorities can be used at revocation hearings for a convicted criminal’s parole.
2015 – Former Republican South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley called for the removal of the Confederate flag from statehouse grounds in the wake of murders of 9 people in a Charleston church. The Confederate flag was removed from the statehouse grounds on July 10th and placed in a museum. Watch a PBS report.
June 23
1683 – William Penn signed a friendship treaty with the Lenni Lenape Indians, the Six Nations (Mengwes), the Shawanese Nation, the Gawanese, and the Conestogas (Mingoes) in Pennsylvania. It was said that an exchange of wampum belts took place, but in 1782 Chief Killbuck lost the historic wampum that contained the treaty that had been made with Penn one hundred years earlier.
1888 – Frederick Douglass was the first African-American nominated for president when he received one vote from the Kentucky Delegation at the Republican Convention in Chicago.
1931 – Wiley Post and Harold Gatty took off for a record-setting flight around the world. Their trip took 8 days.
1972 – President Nixon signed Title IX of the Education Amendments, barring sex discrimination in college sports.
1986 – Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill refused to let President Reagan address House before its critical vote on funding for the anti-communist “Contra” rebels in Nicaragua.
2013 – Aerialist Nik Wallenda completed a quarter mile tightrope walk over the Little Colorado River Gorge in Arizona. Watch and listen to Nik talk to his crew as he walks across the gorge.
June 24
1795 – The Senate ratified the Jay Treaty between the U.S. and Great Britain. It was the first treaty that used arbitration to resolve issues. Negotiated by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Jay, the treaty resolved trading and land issues. Jay was the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
1853 – President Franklin Pierce signed the Gadsden Purchase (29,670 square miles) from Mexico (now southern Arizona and New Mexico) for $10 million.
1940 – TV cameras were used for the first time in a political convention as the Republicans convene in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Watch and listen to the sights and sounds of the convention with commentary.
1957 – In Roth v. United States the Supreme Court ruled that obscenity is not protected by the First Amendment. The ruling upheld the conviction of Samuel Roth for sending “obscene, lewd, lascivious or filthy” materials through the mail.
1972 – Bernice Gera became the first female umpire in a minor league baseball game. She resigned when none of the other umpires would work with her on the field. Gera died in 1992 at age 61. Only nine women have ever umpired minor league baseball games.
1982 – In Nixon v. Fitzgerald the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the president can’t be sued for his actions while in office.
1997 – The U.S. Air Force released a report titled “The Roswell Report, Case Closed” that dismissed the claims that an alien spacecraft crashed in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947.
2002 – In Roper v. Simmons the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that juries, not judges, must make the decision to give a convicted killer the death penalty.
June 25
1798 – The U.S. passed the Alien and Sedition Act, allowing the president to deport aliens considered “dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States.”
1876 – George Armstrong Custer and his 7th Cavalry (262 men) were wiped out by the Sioux and Cheyenne Indians at Little Big Horn in Montana. In 1863, Custer (age 23) was appointed a Union Brigadier General. He graduated last in his class from West Point in 1957.
1948 – President Harry Truman signed the Displaced Persons Bill, allowing 205,000 European victims of Nazi persecution into the U.S.
1962 – In Engel v. Vitale the Supreme Court ruled 6-1 that the use of unofficial non-denominational prayer in public schools is unconstitutional.
1985 – ABC’s “Monday Night Football” began the season with a new line-up. The trio includes Frank Gifford, Joe Namath, and O.J. Simpson. Only Namath, now 83, is still living. Watch an interview with Joe Namath about OJ on The Howard Stern Show.
1990 – In Cruzan v. Missouri the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling, upheld the right of an individual, whose wishes are clearly made, to refuse life-sustaining medical treatment in “The right to die” decision.
2008 – Facebook (now Meta) agreed to transfer over 1.2 million common shares and pay $20 million in cash to settle a lawsuit. In 2004, Harvard students Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra sued Zuckerberg for misleading them and using their ideas to develop Facebook.
2015 – A 6-3 Supreme Court ruling preserved the Obamacare subsidies in the Affordable Care Act. Chief Justice Roberts wrote the majority decision and the late Justice Scalia wrote the dissenting opinion.
June 26
1870 – The Christian holiday of Christmas was declared a federal holiday in the U.S.
1900 – U.S. Army physician Dr. Walter Reed began research that, in 1901, leads to the discovery of how to treat Yellow Fever. His experiments with other doctors in Cuba proved that mosquitoes transmit Yellow Fever.
1945 – The UN Charter was signed by 50 nations in San Francisco, California.
1948 – The Berlin Airlift began as the United States, Britain, and France start ferrying supplies to the isolated western sector of Berlin, Germany. The airlift lasted 323 days.
1974 – The Universal Product Code (UPC) was scanned for the first time to sell a package of Wrigley’s chewing gum at the Marsh Supermarket in Troy, Ohio.
1977 – Elvis Presley sang at an Indianapolis, Indiana, concert. It was the last performance of his career. Presley died on August 16th at age 42. Watch Presley perform the last song he ever sang live.
1996 – The Supreme Court, in a 7-1 decision, ordered that the Virginia Military Institute must admit women or forgo state support.
2000 – The Human Genome Project and Celera Genomics Corp. jointly announced that they created a working draft of the human genome.
2008 – In District of Columbia v. Heller the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the ban on handguns in the District of Columbia is unconstitutional. Justice Scalia wrote the majority opinion.
2015 – In Obergefell v. Hodges the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that same-sex marriage is a legal across all U.S. states. Justice Kennedy wrote the majority opinion and Justice Scalia wrote one of the dissenting opinions.
June 27
1778 – The Liberty Bell was returned to Philadelphia from Northampton Town (now Allentown) where it was hidden until after the British depart following the Revolutionary War.
1833 – Prudence Crandall, a white woman, was arrested for conducting an academy for black females at Canterbury, Connecticut.
1893 – The New York stock market crashed. By the end of the year, 600 banks and 74 railroads had gone out of business. This is why the period of time following the stock market crash of 1929 is called the “Great” Depression.
1922 – The first Newbery Medal for the year’s best children’s book was presented to Hendrik Van Loon for “The Story of Mankind.” The award was named for the eighteenth-century English bookseller John Newbery.
1940 – Robert Pershing Wadlow’s height was measured at 8′ 11.1″, making him the tallest person in history according to Guinness World Records. The Illinois native has a shoe size of 37AA. He was only 22 at the time of his death on July 15, 1940. Watch a slide show of his life.
1942 – The FBI captured eight Nazi saboteurs from a sub off New York’s Long Island before they were able to carry out destructive acts against the U.S. The Nazis recruited eight Germans who lived in the U.S. for Operation Pastorius. All eight men were found guilty in a military tribunal. One was sentenced to life in prison, another to 30 years, while six were sentenced to death. They were executed within a few weeks.
1950 – North Korean troops reached Seoul and the UN asks its members to aid South Korea. Harry Truman ordered the U.S. Air Force and Navy into the Korean conflict. An armistice was signed in 1953, but the war was never formally ended.
1976 – The first 157 women were admitted to the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado. In October 1975, President Gerald R. Ford signed legislation permitting women to enter the United States service academies.
2001 – The International Court of Justice found against the United States in its judgment in the LaGrand Case. The German-born LaGrand brothers were sentenced to death for killing a man in an armed bank robbery in Arizona. The brothers Karl-Heinz and Walter contacted the German consulate for assistance under the Vienna Convention. Despite intervention by the German Ambassador and a member of the German Parliament the brothers were executed in 1999.
2003 – The U.S. National Do Not Call Registry, formed to combat unwanted telemarketing calls and administered by the Federal Trade Commission, enrolled almost three-quarters of a million phone numbers on its first day.
2008 – Bill Gates stepped down as Chairman of Microsoft Corporation to work full time for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
June 28
1778 – Mary Ludwig Hayes, aka “Molly Pitcher,” aided American patriots during the Revolutionary War Battle of Monmouth by carrying water to wounded soldiers. Hayes took over operation of her husband’s cannon after he collapsed during the battle. Hayes died in 1832 at age 87. Watch a short bio of Molly.
1938 – Congress created the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) to insure construction loans.
1960 – Fidel Castro confiscated American-owned oil refineries in Cuba without compensation.
1978 – The Supreme Court ordered University of California Davis Medical School to admit Allan Bakke, a white man and former marine, who claimed reverse discrimination after his application was twice rejected. Bakke graduated from U.C. Davis medical school in 1982 and worked as an anesthesiologist at the Mayo Clinic. When the university refused to pay his legal fees, Bakke went back to court and was awarded $181,089.
1996 – The Citadel voted to admit women, ending a 153-year-old men-only policy at the South Carolina military school. The unanimous vote by the school governing board came after the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional the all-male admissions policy at the Virginia Military Institute.
2010 – In McDonald v. City of Chicago the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that Americans have the right to own a gun for self-defense anywhere they live.
Image from: npr.gov
