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Today is Monday, June 28th.

The 180th day of 2004.

There are 186 days left in the year.



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Today's Highlight in History:



On June 28, 1914, Austrian Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his wife, Sofia, were assassinated in Sarajevo by a Serb nationalist -- the event which triggered World War I.



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On this date:



In 1778, Molly Pitcher (Mary Ludwig Hays) carried water to American soldiers at the Revolutionary War Battle of Monmouth, N.J.



In 1820, The tomato is proved to be non-poisonous.



In 1836, The fourth president of the United States, James Madison, died in Montpelier VA at age 85. He was born in Port Conway VA on March 16, 1751.



In 1838, Britain's Queen Victoria was crowned in Westminster Abbey.



In 1894, President Grover Cleveland signed an act of Congress, making Labor Day a federal holiday in the U.S.; the first Monday of September was set aside to salute the working men and women across the country.



In 1902, Playwright/Composer Richard Rodgers was born in New York NY. He died December 30, 1979 at age 77.



In 1904, Blind-deaf student Helen Keller graduated with honors from Radcliffe College.



In 1911, Samuel J. Battle became the first African-American policeman in New York City.



In 1918, The first inter-island flight between the Hawaiian Islands occurred.



In 1919, Future President Harry S Truman marries Elizabeth Virginia Wallace in Independence MO.



In 1919, The Treaty of Versailles was signed in France, ending World War I.



In 1935, President Franklyn D. Roosevelt ordered a federal gold vault to be built at Fort Knox, Kentucky.



In 1944, The Republican national convention in Chicago nominated New York Gov. Thomas E. Dewey for president and Ohio Gov. John W. Bricker for vice president.



In 1946, Actress/Comedienne Gilda Radner was born in Detroit MI. She died May 20, 1989 at age 42.



In 1950, North Korean forces captured Seoul, South Korea.



In 1951, A T.V. version of the radio program "Amos 'N' Andy" premiered on CBS. (While criticized for racial stereotyping, it was the first network T.V. series to feature an all-black cast.)



In 1956, The first atomic reactor built for private research began operations in Chicago, Ill.



In 1965, The first US ground combat forces in Vietnam are authorized by President Lyndon B. Johnson



In 1967, Israel formally declared Jerusalem reunified under its sovereignty following its capture of the Arab sector in the June 1967 "6-Day War".



In 1968, Daniel Ellsberg is indicted for leaking the Pentagon Papers



In 1971, The Supreme Court overturns the draft evasion conviction of Muhammad Ali



In 1971, The Supreme Court declared that state underwriting of nonreligious instruction in parochial schools was unconstitutional.



In 1976, The U.S. Air Force Academy and the Coast Guard Academy went coed at the same time.



In 1977, The Supreme Court allows Federal control of Nixon tapes/papers



In 1978, The Supreme Court ordered the University of California at Davis Medical School to admit Allan Bakke, a white man who'd argued he was a victim of reverse racial discrimination.



In 1983, A 100-foot section of bridge along Interstate 95 in Greenwich CT, collapsed, killing three people.



In 1991, Two people were killed when an earthquake of magnitude 6 shook Southern California.



In 1992, Southern California was rocked by a pair of earthquakes, that killed one person and injured 402. At 4:57A.M. (PDT), a quake hit, which was centered in Landers CA. Magnitude 7.4. One killed. That same day at 8:05P.M.(PDT), another quake on another faultline occurred, and was centered in Big Bear CA. Magnitude: 6.2. No one killed in that one.



In 1996, The Citadel voted to admit women, ending a 153-year-old men-only policy at the South Carolina military school.



In 1998, Poland, suffering from a shortage of funds, is allowed to lease U.S. aircraft to bring its military force up to NATO standards.



In 2000, Six-year-old Elián González returned to Cuba from the U.S. with his father. The child had been the center of an international custody dispute.



In 2001, A unanimous federal appeals court reversed the court-ordered breakup of Microsoft, but ruled that the software giant had violated antitrust laws, and appointed another judge to determine a new punishment.



In 2001, Slobodan Milosevic was taken into custody and was handed over to the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands. The indictment charged Milosevic and four other senior officials, with crimes against humanity and violations of the laws and customs of war in Kosovo.



In 2002, WorldCom Inc. began laying off 17,000 employees worldwide after disclosing accounting irregularities that later forced it into bankruptcy protection.



In 2002, Xerox Corporation announced it had improperly reported $1.9 billion in revenue over the previous five years and would restate those financial results.



Ten years ago (1994):



North and South Korea set July 25-27 as the dates for a historic summit between the leaders of both countries (the summit was derailed by the death of North Korean President Kim Il Sung the following month.)



President Clinton became the first chief executive in U.S. history to set up a personal legal defense fund and ask Americans to contribute to it.



Five years ago (1999):



Announcing even bigger projected budget surpluses, President Clinton said the government could drastically reduce the national debt while still buttressing Social Security and Medicare.



One year ago (2003):



After days of intense searching by ground and air, U.S. forces found the bodies of two soldiers missing north of Baghdad, as the toll of American dead since the start of war topped the grim milestone of 200.



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Today's Birthdays:



Comedian-movie director Mel Brooks is 78.



Actor Noriyuki "Pat" Morita is 72.



Senator Carl Levin, D-Mich., is 70.



Former White House chief of staff Leon Panetta is 66.



Rock musician Dave Knights (Procul Harum) is 59.



Actor Bruce Davison is 58.



Actress Kathy Bates is 56.



Actress Sonia Braga is 54.



Actress Alice Krige is 50.



Football Hall of Fame electee John Elway is 44.



Record company chief executive Tony Mercedes is 42.



Actress Jessica Hecht is 39.



Rock musician Saul Davies (James) is 39.



Actress Mary Stuart Masterson is 38.



Actor John Cusack is 38.



Actor Gil Bellows is 37.



Actress-singer Danielle Brisebois is 35.



Jazz musician Jimmy Sommers is 35.



Actor Alessandro Nivola is 32.



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Thought for Today:

"The secret of a man who is universally interesting is that he is universally interested." -

- William Dean Howells, American author (1837-1920).

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Today is Sunday, June 27th.

The 179th day of 2004.

There are 187 days left in the year.



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Today's Highlight in History:



On June 27, 1950, President Truman ordered the Air Force and Navy into the Korean conflict following a call from the U.N. Security Council for member nations to help South Korea repel an invasion from the North.



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On this date:



In 1652, New Amsterdam (now N.Y.C.) imposes the first speed limit in the U.S., specifying that it is illegal for traffic within the city limits to proceed at a gallop.



In 1776, Thomas Hickey, one of George Washington's guards, went into the history books for all the wrong reasons. He was convicted of plotting to deliver George Washington to the British and became the first person to be executed by the army of the U.S.



In 1787, In Lausanne, Switzerland, Edward Gibbon completes the sixth and final volume of his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, one of the great works of history in the English language.



In 1844, Mormon leader Joseph Smith and his brother, Hyrum, were killed by a mob in Carthage, Ill.



In 1847, New York and Boston were linked by telegraph wires.



In 1880, Author/Educator Helen Adams Keller was born in Tuscumbia AL. Blind and deaf from the age of 19 months, her early life is best remembered from the movie "The Miracle Worker". She died in Westport CT on June 1, 1968 at age 87.



In 1893, The New York stock market crashed. By the end of the year 600 banks and 74 railroads had gone out of business.



In 1927, Actor/Author Robert "Bob" Keeshan was born in Lynbrook NY. The original "Clarabell the Clown" on the "Howdy Doody Show" on NBC-TV (1947-1952), he was most famous at "Captain Kangaroo" on the CBS-TV show of the same name from 1955 to 1985. He died January 23, 2004 at age 76.



In 1942, The FBI announced the capture of eight Nazi saboteurs who had been put ashore from a submarine on New York's Long Island.



In 1950, The US sends 35 military advisers to South Vietnam



In 1951, "Amos ’n’ Andy" moved to CBS-TV from CBS radio.



In 1954, The world's first atomic power station begins producing electricity in Obninsk, U.S.S.R, near Moscow.



In 1955, The nation's first automobile seat belt legislation is enacted in Illinois.



In 1957, More than 500 people were killed when Hurricane Audrey slammed through coastal Louisiana and Texas.



In 1959, The play, "West Side Story," with music by Leonard Bernstein, closed after 734 performances on Broadway.



In 1964, Jan & Dean's "Little Old Lady From Pasadena" was released.



In 1969, Patrons at the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York's Greenwich Village, clashed with police in an incident considered the birth of the gay rights movement.



In 1973, Former White House counsel John W. Dean told the Senate Watergate Committee about an "enemies list" kept by the Nixon White House.



In 1976, Palestinian extremists hijacked an Air France plane in Greece with 246 passengers and 12 crew. They eventually took it to Entebbe, Uganda, where Israeli commandos rescued over 100 hostages from a terminal building on July 4.



In 1977, The Supreme Court struck down state laws and bar association rules that had prohibited lawyers from advertising their fees for routine services.



In 1980, President Carter signed legislation reviving draft registration.



In 1984, The Supreme Court ended the National Collegiate Athletic Association's monopoly on controlling college football telecasts, ruling such control violated antitrust law.



In 1985, The legendary Route 66, which originally stretched from Chicago to Santa Monica, Calif., passed into history as officials decertified the road.



In 1986, The World Court ruled that the U.S. had broken international law by aiding Nicaraguan rebels.



In 1987, The Rev. Jerry Falwell denied that he had "hoodwinked" Jim Bakker into giving up control of the PTL ministry.



In 1995, Actor Hugh Grant was arrested in Los Angeles for engaging in "lewd behavior" with a prostitute in a rented BMW.



In 1997, The Supreme Court threw out a key part of the Brady gun-control law, saying the federal government could not make local police decide whether people are fit to buy handguns. However, the court left intact the five-day waiting period for gun purchases.



In 1998, An English woman was impregnated with her dead husband's sperm after two-year legal battle over her right to the sperm.



In 1998, In a live joint news conference in China U.S. President Clinton and President Jiang Zemin offered an uncensored airing of differences on human rights, freedom, trade and Tibet.



In 2002, In the U.S., the Securities and Exchange Commission required companies with annual sales of more than $1.2 billion to submit sworn statements backing up the accuracy of their financial reports.



Ten years ago (1994):



U.S. 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.



President Clinton replaced White House chief of staff Mack McLarty with budget director Leon Panetta.



The dollar dropped below 100 yen in Tokyo for the first time since the modern exchange rate system was established a half-century ago.



Five years ago (1999):



George Papadopoulos, the head of Greece's 1967-74 military dictatorship, died of cancer in Athens at age 80.



Juli Inkster shot a 6-under 65 to win the LPGA Championship, becoming the second woman to win the modern career Grand Slam (the first was Pat Bradley).



The Seattle Mariners beat the Texas Rangers 5-2 in the final game at the Kingdome.



One year ago (2003):



More than 735,000 phone numbers were registered on the first day of a national do-not-call list aimed at blocking unwelcome solicitations from telemarketers.



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Today's Birthdays:



Business executive (Ray) H. (Henry) "Ross" Perot is 74.



The former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, retired Army Gen. John Shalikashvili, is 68.



Former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt is 66.



Singer-musician Bruce Johnston (The Beach Boys) is 62.



Actress Julia Duffy is 53.



Actress Isabelle Adjani is 49.



Country singer Lorrie Morgan is 45.



Actor Brian Drillinger is 44.



Actor Yancey Arias is 33.



Actor Tobey Maguire is 29.



Gospel singer Leigh Nash is 28.



Actress Madylin Sweeten is 13.



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Thought for Today:

"If a man cannot be a Christian in the place where he is, he cannot be a Christian anywhere." -

- Henry Ward Beecher, American clergyman (1813-1887).

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