Today in history
On June 27, 1844, Mormon leader Joseph Smith and his brother, Hyrum, were killed by a mob in Carthage, Ill. (Brigham Young then became head of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.)
In1847 New York and Boston were linked by telegraph wires.
In 1893 prices collapsed on the New York Stock Exchange, setting off a depression.
In 1942 the FBI disclosed the capture of eight Nazi saboteurs who had been put ashore from a submarine on New York’s Long Island.
In 1950 President Harry Truman ordered the Air Force and Navy into the Korean War.
In 1957 more than 500 people were killed when Hurricane Audrey ravaged coastal Louisiana and Texas.
In 1969 patrons at the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City, clashed with police in an incident considered to have birthed the gay rights movement.
In 1973 former White House counsel John Dean told the Senate Watergate Committee about an “enemies list” kept by the Nixon White House.
In 1980 President Jimmy Carter signed legislation reviving the draft registration.
In 1986 the International Court of Justice at The Hague ruled that the United States had broken international law and violated the sovereignty of Nicaragua by aiding the Contras.
In 1991 Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first black to sit on the nation’s highest court, announced his retirement.
In 1994 Coast Guard cutters intercepted 1,330 Haitian boat people on the high seas in one of the busiest single days since refugees began leaving Haiti following a 1991 military coup.
In 2001 actor Jack Lemmon died in Los Angeles; he was 76.
In 2005 the Supreme Court ruled, in a pair of 5-4 decisions, that displaying the Ten Commandments on government property is constitutionally permissible in some cases but not in others.
In 2011 a jury found Rod Blagojevich guilty on 17 of 20 counts against the former Illinois governor in his retrial on federal corruption charges.
In 2013 a federal grand jury in Boston indicted Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a 19-year-old Chechen immigrant, in the April 15 Boston Marathon bombings.