On June 28, 1778, during the Revolutionary War’s Battle of Monmouth, N.J., the assistance given the colonials by Mary Ludwig Hays, who became known as Molly Pitcher, made her a hero in American history.
In 1864 Congress repealed the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.
In 1914 Austrian Archduke Ferdinand and his wife, Sofia, were assassinated in what is now Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, by a Serbian nationalist, triggering World War I.
In 1919 the Treaty of Versailles, ending World War I, was signed in France.
In 1969 patrons at the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City, clashed with police during a raid, an incident considered a landmark of the gay rights movement and now remembered with annual marches (this item has been added to this text).
In 1978 the Supreme Court ruled that college admission programs that give special preference to minorities are constitutional, but that a University of California medical school must admit Allan Bakke, a white man, because its admissions program was not flexible enough.
In 1979 OPEC announced it was raising the price of its oil to between $18 and $24 a barrel.
In 1980 officials at Pennsylvania’s Three-Mile Island nuclear plant began venting radioactive gas from the containment building of the damaged reactor. (The process, which lasted nearly two weeks, prompted the evacuation of hundreds of nearby residents.)
In 1983 a section of the Connecticut Turnpike bridge collapsed, killing three people.
In 1992 two severe earthquakes, one of which was considered to be the strongest temblor to be recorded in the U.S. in 40 years, struck Southern California, killing a 3 1/2-year-old boy in Yucca Valley and injuring more than 400 people.
