On June 16, 1858, in a speech in Springfield, Senate candidate Abraham Lincoln said the slavery issue had to be resolved, declaring, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
In 1897 the U.S. government signed a treaty of annexation with Hawaii.
In 1903 Ford Motor Co. was incorporated.
In 1932 President Herbert Hoover and Vice President Charles Curtis were renominated at the Republican national convention in Chicago.
In 1943 comedian Charlie Chaplin married his fourth wife, 18-year-old Oona O’Neill, daughter of playwright Eugene O’Neill, in Carpenteria, Calif.
In 1961 Soviet ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev defected to the West while in Paris.
In 1963 Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space.
In 1978 President Jimmy Carter and Panamanian leader Omar Torrijos exchanged the instruments of ratification for the Panama Canal treaties.
In 1981 William Wrigley announces the sale of the Cubs to Tribune Co. for $20.5 million.
In 1987 a New York jury acquitted Bernhard Goetz of attempted murder in the subway shooting of four blacks who he said were going to rob him.
In 1992 former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger was indicted on felony charges in the Iran-contra affair.
In 1995 Bosnian government forces aided by Bosnian Croats unleashed a major offensive in hopes of breaking the Serb stranglehold on Sarajevo.
In 1996 Russian voters went to the polls in their first independent presidential election.
In 1999 Kathleen Ann Soliah, a fugitive member of the Symbionese Liberation Army, was captured in St. Paul, where she had made a new life under the name Sara Jane Olson.
In 2000 federal regulators approved the merger of Bell Atlantic and GTE Corp., creating the nation’s largest local phone company.
In 2004, rebuffing Bush administration claims, the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks said no evidence existed that Al Qaeda had strong ties to Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
