0362 – Emperor Julian issued an edict banning Christians from teaching in Syria.

1579 – Sir Francis Drake claimed San Francisco Bay for England. (California)

1775 – The British took Bunker Hill outside of Boston.

1789 – The Third Estate in France declared itself a national assembly, and began to frame a constitution.

1799 – Napoleon Bonaparte incorporated Italy into his empire.

1837 – Charles Goodyear received his first patent. The patent was for a process that made rubber easier to work with.

1848 – Austrian General Alfred Windischgratz crushed a Czech uprising in Prague.

1854 – The Red Turban revolt broke out in Guangdong, China.

1856 – The Republican Party opened its first national convention in Philadelphia.

1861 – U.S. President Abraham Lincoln witnessed Dr. Thaddeus Lowe demonstrate the use of a hydrogen balloon.

1872 – George M. Hoover began selling whiskey in Dodge City, Kansas. The town had been dry up until this point.

1876 – General George Crook’s command was attacked and defeated on the Rosebud River by 1,500 Sioux and Cheyenne under the leadership of Crazy Horse.

1879 – Thomas Edison received an honorary degree of Doctor of Philosophy from the trustees of Rutgers College in New Brunswick, NJ.

1885 – The Statue of Liberty arrived in New York City aboard the French ship Isere.

1912 – The German Zeppelin SZ 111 burned in its hanger in Friedrichshafen.

1913 – U.S. Marines set sail from San Diego to protect American interests in Mexico.

1917 – The Russian Duma met in a secret session in Petrograd and voted for an immediate Russian offensive against the German Army. (World War I)

1924 – The Fascist militia marched into Rome.

1926 – Spain threatened to quit the League of Nations if Germany was allowed to join.

1928 – Amelia Earhart began the flight that made her the first woman to successfully fly across the Atlantic Ocean.

1930 – The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Bill became law. It placed the highest tariff on imports to the U.S.

1931 – British authorities in China arrested Indochinese Communist leader Ho Chi Minh.

1932 – The U.S. Senate defeated the bonus bill as 10,000 veterans massed around the Capitol.

1940 – The Soviet Union occupied Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.

1940 – France asked Germany for terms of surrender in World War II.

1941 – WNBT-TV in New York City, NY, was granted the first construction permit to operate a commercial TV station in the U.S.

1942 – Yank, a weekly magazine for the U.S. armed services, began publication. The term “G.I. Joe” was first used in a comic strip by Dave Breger.

1944 – French troops landed on the island of Elba in the Mediterranean.

1944 – The republic of Iceland was established.

1950 – Dr. Richard H. Lawler performed the first kidney transplant in a 45-minute operation in Chicago, IL.

1953 – Soviet tanks fought thousands of Berlin workers that were rioting against the East German government.

1963 – The U.S. Supreme Court banned the required reading of the Lord’s prayer and Bible in public schools.

1965 – Twenty-seven B-52’s hit Viet Cong outposts but lost two planes in South Vietnam.

1970 – North Vietnamese troops cut the last operating rail line in Cambodia.

1991 – The Parliament of South Africa repealed the Population Registration Act. The act had required that all South Africans for classified by race at birth.

On June 17, 1885

On June 15, 1917, some two months after America’s formal entrance into World War I against Germany, the United States Congress passes the Espionage Act.

Enforced largely by A. Mitchell Palmer, the United States attorney general under President Woodrow Wilson, the Espionage Act essentially made it a crime for any person to convey information intended to interfere with the U.S. armed forces prosecution of the war effort or to promote the success of the country’s enemies. Anyone found guilty of such acts would be subject to a fine of $10,000 and a prison sentence of 20 years.

The Espionage Act was reinforced by the Sedition Act of the following year, which imposed similarly harsh penalties on anyone found guilty of making false statements that interfered with the prosecution of the war; insulting or abusing the U.S. government, the flag, the Constitution or the military; agitating against the production of necessary war materials; or advocating, teaching or defending any of these acts. Both pieces of legislation were aimed at socialists, pacifists and other anti-war activists during World War I and were used to punishing effect in the years immediately following the war, during a period characterized by the fear of communist influence and communist infiltration into American society that became known as the first Red Scare (a second would occur later, during the 1940s and 1950s, associated largely with Senator Joseph McCarthy). Palmer–a former pacifist whose views on civil rights radically changed once he assumed the attorney general’s office during the Red Scare–and his right-hand man, J. Edgar Hoover, liberally employed the Espionage and Sedition Acts to persecute left-wing political figures.

for the complete article… history.com

Evers HAD BEEN ACTIVE IN SEEKING INTEGRATION OF SCHOOLS AND VOTER REGISTRATION FOR AFRICAN AMERICANS IN THE SOUTH. WIDESPREAD PUBLIC OUTRAGE FOLLOWING HIS DEATH LED PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY TO PROPOSE A COMPREHENSIVE CIVIL RIGHTS LAW. EVERS WAS BURIED IN ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY.