On this date...

In 1788, Virginia ratified the US Constitution. It was the 10th state to complete the ratification process.

In 1864, four years into the Civil War, Pennsylvania troops for the Union, begin digging a tunnel toward the Rebels at Petersburg, Virginia, in order to blow a hole in the Confederate lines and break the stalemate.

In 1868, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, North and South Carolina were readmitted to the Union.

In 1876, the Battle of the Little Bighorn began with Lt. Col. George Custer and troops from the Seventh U.S. Cavalry fighting the numerically superior forces assembled by the Lakota, Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes. More than 268 of Custer's 700 men, including Custer himself, were killed during the two-day battle.

In 1910, Congress passes the Mann Act, which was ostensibly aimed at keeping young women from being lured into prostitution, but really offered a way to make a crime out of many kinds of consensual sexual activity.

In 1938, the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which set a minimum wage, guaranteed overtime pay and banned “oppressive child labor,” was signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

In 1941, with World War II heating up in Europe, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs Executive Order 8802 prohibiting ethnic and racial discrimination in the country’s growing defense industry.

In 1942, Following his arrival in London, Major General Dwight D. Eisenhower takes command of U.S. forces in Europe.

In 1943, The Smith-Connally Anti-Strike Act was enacted by the U.S. Congress, giving the president power to seize and operate privately owned war plants when a strike or threat of a strike interfered with war production.

In 1947, Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl was first published, appearing in the Netherlands under the title Het Achterhuis (“The Secret Annex”); it became a classic of war literature.

In 1950, North Korea unleashed an attack southward across the 38th parallel, after which the UN Security Council (minus the Soviet delegate) passed a resolution calling on UN members to assist South Korea.

In 1956, The last Packard—the classic American luxury car with the famously enigmatic slogan “Ask the Man Who Owns One”—rolls off the production line at Packard’s plant in Detroit, Michigan on June 25, 1956.

In 1973, former White House Counsel John 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 Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Department of Health, its first “right-to-die” decision, ruled 5-4 that family members could be barred from ending the lives of persistently comatose relatives who had not made their wishes known conclusively.

In 2015, in the case of King v. Burwell, 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.