Today’s Highlight in History:
On June 7, 2016, Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump claimed their parties’ presidential nominations following contests in New Jersey, California, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota and South Dakota.
On this date:
In 1712, Pennsylvania’s colonial assembly voted to ban the further importation of slaves.
In 1776, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia offered a resolution to the Continental Congress stating “That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States.”
In 1848, French painter and sculptor Paul Gauguin was born in Paris.
In 1892, Homer Plessy, a “Creole of color,” was arrested for refusing to leave a whites-only car of the East Louisiana Railroad. (Ruling on his case, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld “separate but equal” racial segregation, a concept it renounced in 1954.)
In 1929, the sovereign state of Vatican City came into existence as copies of the Lateran Treaty were exchanged in Rome.
In 1942, the Battle of Midway ended in a decisive victory for American naval forces over Imperial Japan, marking a turning point in the Pacific War.
In 1965, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Griswold v. Connecticut, struck down, 7-2, a Connecticut law used to prosecute a Planned Parenthood clinic in New Haven for providing contraceptives to married couples.In 1967, author-critic Dorothy Parker, famed for her caustic wit, died in New York at age 73.