TIME TRAVELING, JUNE 13 1777 The Marquis de Lafayette arrives in the American colonies from France with the intent to serve as General George Washington’s second in command in the rebellion against the British. 1866 The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is passed by the U.S. Congress, designed to grant citizenship to and protect the civil liberties of recently freed slaves. It does this by prohibiting states from denying or abridging the privileges or immunities of citizens of the U.S., depriving any person of his life, liberty, or property without due process of law, or denying to any person within their jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. It is ratified on July 9, 1868. 1888 The U.S. Congress creates the Department of Labor. 1898 The Canadian Yukon Territory is organized. 1943 German spies land on Long Island, New York. They are soon captured. 1944 Germany launches 10 of its new V1 rockets against Britain from a position near the Channel coast. Of the 10 rockets, five crash near the launch site, one is lost, only four land in Britain, and only one manages to kill (six people in London). 1951 U.N. troops seize Pyongyang, North Korea. 1966 The U.S. Supreme Court hands down its decision in the landmark Miranda vs. Arizona establishing the principle that all criminal suspects must be advised of their rights before being questioned by police. 1967 President Lyndon Johnson appoints U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Thurgood Marshall to fill the seat of retiring Supreme Court Associate Justice Tom C. Clarke. Marshall is confirmed by the Senate on August 30 and sworn in on September 2, making him the first African American in history to sit on America’s highest court. 1971 The New York Times begins publishing portions of the “Pentagon Papers,” the secret 47-volume Pentagon analysis of how the U.S. commitment in Southeast Asia grew over a period of three decades. Daniel Ellsberg, a former Defense Department analyst who had become an antiwar activist, had stolen the documents, and after unsuccessfully offering them to prominent opponents of the Vietnam War in the U.S. Senate, he gave them to the Times. 1979 Sioux Indians are awarded $105 million in compensation for the U.S. seizure in 1877 of the Black Hills in South Dakota. 1983 The unmanned U.S. space probe “Pioneer 10” becomes the first spacecraft to leave the solar system, eventually providing the first up-close images of the planet Jupiter. It was launched in March 1972. 1994 A jury in Anchorage, Alaska, finds Exxon Corp. and Captain Joseph Hazelwood to be reckless in the oil tanker “Exxon Valdez” incident, when 11 million gallons of oil are released into Prince William Sound, Alaska, after the tanker strikes Bligh’s Reef. The oil spill covers 11,000 square miles and affects 1,300 miles of shoreline. 1995 France announces that it will conduct eight more nuclear tests in the South Pacific.
Posted on: Fri, 13 Jun 2014 10:28:30 +0000
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