On this date...

King Phillip's War

In 1497, John Cabot became the first European to set foot in North America since the Vikings.

In 1675, In colonial New England, King Philip’s War begins when a band of Wampanoag warriors raid the border settlement of Swansea, Massachusetts, and massacre the English colonists there.

In 1776, Congress resolves to imprison Governor William Franklin of New Jersey in Connecticut. Franklin was the son of Benjamin Franklin.

In 1778, he Continental Congress resolves to return to the newly liberated Capital of Philadelphia from its temporary quarters at York, Pennsylvania.

In 1853, President Franklin Pierce signed the Gadsden Purchase, buying from Mexico what is now New Mexico and southern Arizona for $10 million. In today's dollars it is equal to $429,192,256.00

In 1947, American businessman Kenneth Arnold saw a number of objects “flying like saucers” while piloting a small plane over Mount Rainier in Washington; it was considered the first modern sighting of UFOs and gave rise to the term flying saucer.

In 1957, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Roth v. United States, ruled 6-3 that obscene materials were not protected by the First Amendment.

In 1961, the public learned of President John F. Kennedy‘s letter assigning Vice President Lyndon Johnson the high priority task of unifying the U.S. satellite programs.

In 1970, On an amendment offered by Senator Robert Dole (R-Kansas) to the Foreign Military Sales Act, the Senate votes 81 to 10 to repeal the Tonkin Gulf Resolution.

In 1973, President Richard Nixon concluded his summit with the visiting leader of the Soviet Union, Leonid Brezhnev, who hailed the talks in an address on American television

In 1982, Over 20,000 garment workers, almost all of them Asian American women, pack into Columbus Park in New York City’s Chinatown on June 24, 1982. The rally and subsequent march demonstrate the workers’ power to the city and the entire garment industry, delivering a decisive victory for the striking workers.

In 1983, the space shuttle Challenger — carrying America’s first woman in space, Sally Ride — coasted to a safe landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

In 1992, the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, strengthened its 30-year ban on officially sponsored worship in public schools, prohibiting prayer as a part of graduation ceremonies.

In 1997, the Air Force released a report on the so-called "Roswell Incident," suggesting the alien bodies witnesses reported seeing in 1947 were actually life-sized dummies.

In 1998, AT&T Corporation struck a deal to buy able television giant Tele-Communications Inc. for $31.7 billion.

In 2004, Federal investigators questioned President George W. Bush for more than an hour in connection with the news leak of a CIA operative's name.

In 2009, After going AWOL for seven days, SC Governor Mark Sanford admitted that he had secretly flown to Argentina to visit his mistress.

In 2015, a federal judge in Boston formally sentenced Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to death for the 2013 terror attacks. (A federal appeals court later threw out the sentence; the Supreme Court reinstated it.)

In 2022, In Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade (1973), ending the constitutional right to an abortion.