Today is Thursday, June 27, the 179th day of 2024. There are 187 days left in the year. Today’s Highlight in History: On June 27, 1844, Mormon leader Joseph Smith and his brother, Hyrum, were killed by a mob in Carthage, Illinois.
Also on this date: In 1880, author-lecturer Helen Keller, who lived most of her life without sight or hearing, was born in Tuscumbia, Alabama. In 1942, the FBI announced the arrests of eight Nazi saboteurs put ashore in Florida and Long Island, New York. (All were tried and sentenced to death; six were executed while two were spared for turning themselves in and cooperating with U.
S. authorities.) In 1944, during World War II, American forces liberated the French port of Cherbourg from the Germans.
In 1950, the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution calling on member nations to help South Korea repel an invasion from the North.
In 1957, Hurricane Audrey slammed into coastal Louisiana and Texas as a Category 4 storm; the initial official death toll from the storm was placed at 390, although a variety of state, federal and local sources have estimated the number of fatalities at between 400 and 600. In 1974, President Richard Nixon opened an official visit to the Soviet Union. In 1991, Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first Black jurist to sit on the nation’s highest court, announced his retirement.
In 2005, BTK serial killer Dennis Rader pleaded guilty to 10 murders that had spread fear across Wichita, Kansas, beginning in the 1970.
