6/12 Today in History

Published 3:00 am Saturday, June 12, 2021

On June 12, 1987, President Ronald Reagan, during a visit to the divided German city of Berlin, exhorted Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev to “tear down this wall.”

In 1630, Englishman John Winthrop, leading a fleet carrying Puritan refugees, arrived at the Massachusetts Bay Colony, where he became its governor.

In 1939, the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum was dedicated in Cooperstown, New York.

In 1942, Anne Frank, a German-born Jewish girl living in Amsterdam, received a diary for her 13th birthday, less than a month before she and her family went into hiding from the Nazis.

In 1963, civil rights leader Medgar Evers, 37, was shot and killed outside his home in Jackson, Mississippi. (In 1994, Byron De La Beckwith was convicted of murdering Evers and sentenced to life in prison; he died in 2001.)

In 1964, South African Black nationalist Nelson Mandela was sentenced to life in prison along with seven other people, including Walter Sisulu, for committing sabotage against the apartheid regime (all were eventually released, Mandela in 1990).

In 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Loving v. Virginia, unanimously struck down state laws prohibiting interracial marriages.

In 1971, Tricia Nixon and Edward F. Cox were married in the White House Rose Garden.

In 1981, major league baseball players began a 49-day strike over the issue of free-agent compensation. (The season did not resume until Aug. 10.)

In 1991, Russians went to the polls to elect Boris N. Yeltsin president of their republic.

In 1994, Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were slashed to death outside her Los Angeles home. (O.J. Simpson was later acquitted of the killings in a criminal trial but was eventually held liable in a civil action.)

In 2004, former President Ronald Reagan’s body was sealed inside a tomb at his presidential library in Simi Valley, California, following a week of mourning and remembrance by world leaders and regular Americans.

In 2015, Joyce Mitchell, a worker at the maximum-security Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York, was arrested on charges of helping two convicted killers escape; Mitchell later pleaded guilty to promoting prison contraband and was sentenced to 2⅓ to seven years in prison.

Today’s Birthdays: Actor Sonia Manzano is 71. Rock musician Bun E. Carlos (Cheap Trick) is 70. Country singer-musician Junior Brown is 69. Singer-songwriter Rocky Burnette is 68. Actor Timothy Busfield is 64. Singer Meredith Brooks is 63. Actor Jenilee Harrison is 63. Rock musician John Linnell (They Might Be Giants) is 62. Actor John Enos is 59. Rapper Grandmaster Dee (Whodini) is 59. Actor Eamonn Walker is 59. Actor Paula Marshall is 57. Actor Frances O’Connor is 54. Actor Rick Hoffman is 51. Actor-comedian Finesse Mitchell is 49. Actor Mel Rodriguez is 48. Actor Jason Mewes is 47. Actor Michael Muhney is 46. Blues musician Kenny Wayne Shepherd is 44. Actor Timothy Simons is 43. Actor Wil Horneff is 42. Singer Robyn is 42. Rock singer-musician John Gourley (Portugal. The Man) is 40.

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