On June 12, 1630, John Winthrop, who would become the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, sailed into Salem Harbor.
In 1776 Virginia adopted a Bill of Rights, the first colonial legislature to do so.
In 1898 Philippine nationalists declared independence from Spain.
In 1924 George H.W. Bush, the nation’s 41st president, was born in Milton, Mass.
In 1963 civil rights leader Medgar Evers was shot to death in front of his home in Jackson, Miss.; he was 37. (In 1994, Byron De La Beckwith was convicted of murdering Evers and was sentenced to life in prison; he died in 2001.)
In 1967 the U.S. Supreme Court struck down state laws banning interracial marriages.
In 1978 David Berkowitz was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison for each of the six “son of Sam” shooting deaths that had terrified New Yorkers.
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 1987 President Ronald Reagan visited the Berlin Wall and, in a speech, challenged Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to ”tear down this wall.”
In 1994 Nicole Brown Simpson and a friend, Ronald Goldman, were stabbed to death outside her Los Angeles home. (Her ex-husband, O.J. Simpson, was later acquitted of the killings in a criminal trial but held liable in a civil action.)
In 2003 Academy Award-winning actor Gregory Peck died in Los Angeles; he was 87.
