TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON: JUNE 30
1520 Montezuma II is murdered as Spanish conquistadors flee the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan during the night.
1607 Annales Ecclesiastici (Scientific History of Catholicism) published
1834 Congress creates Indian Territory (now Oklahoma)
1857 Charles Dickens reads from A Christmas Carol at St. Martin’s Hall in London–his first public reading.
1860 Famous debate on Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution held at the Oxford University Museum and dominated by arguments between Thomas Henry Huxley and Bishop Samuel Wilberforce
1908 A mysterious explosion, possibly the result of a meteorite, levels thousands of trees in the Tunguska region of Siberia with a force approaching twenty megatons.
1921 President Warren G. Harding appointed former president William H. Taft chief justice of the United States.
1934 NFL’s Portsmouth Spartans become Detroit Lions
1934 Adolf Hitler orders the purge of his own party in the “Night of the Long Knives.”
1936 Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind was published.
1953 The first all-fiberglass-bodied American sports car, the Corvette was produced on this day and with it’s sleek lines is among the best car design ever produced by the American Car Industry.
1967 Maj Robert H Lawrence Jr named 1st black astronaut
1971 The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the government could not prevent the Washington Post or the New York Times from publishing the Pentagon Papers.
1971 The crew of Soviet spacecraft “Soyuz 11” dies after the loss of air supply
1972 1st leap second day; also 1981, 1982, 1983, 1985
1977 Marvel Comics publish the “Kiss book” tributing the rock group Kiss
1984 Longest pro football game, LA Express beats Mich Panthers 27-21 in USFL playoffs, games lats 93 minutes 33 seconds
1985 Thirty Nine American hostages being held captive by the Shia Muslim Amal militia in Lebanon are released, their freedom was secured after intervention by the Syrian President Hafiz al-Assad.
1986 The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that states could outlaw homosexual acts between consenting adults.
1994 The U.S. Figure Skating Association stripped Tonya Harding of the 1994 national championship and banned her from the organization for life for an attack on rival Nancy Kerrigan.
1998 The remains of a Vietnam War serviceman buried in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers were identified as those of Air Force pilot Michael J. Blassie.
2000 U.S. President Clinton signed the E-Signature bill to give the same legal validity to an electronic signature as a signature in pen and ink.
2007 A green Jeep Cherokee filled with gas cylinders and fuel is crashed through the check in entrance at Glasgow Airport in Scotland where it burst into flames .
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
