Today in History: June 27, Thurgood Marshall retires

Today in History Today is Monday, June 27, the 178th day of 2022. There are 187 days left in the year. Today’s Highlight in History: On June 27, 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its strongest defense of abortion rights in a quarter-century, striking down Texas’ widely replicated rules that sharply reduced abortion clinics. On this date: In 1844, Mormon leader Joseph Smith and his brother, Hyrum, were killed by a mob in Carthage, Illinois. In 1880, author-lecturer Helen Keller, who lived most of her life without sight or hearing, was born in Tuscumbia, Alabama. In 1942, the FBI announced the arrests of eight Nazi saboteurs put ashore in Florida and Long Island, New York. (All were tried and sentenced to death; six were executed while two were spared for turning themselves in and cooperating with U.S. authorities.) In 1944, during World War II, American forces liberated the French port of Cherbourg (SHEHR’-boorg) from the Germans. In 1950, the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution calling on member nations to help South Korea repel an invasion from the North. In 1957, Hurricane Audrey slammed into coastal Louisiana and Texas as a Category 4 storm; the official death toll from the storm was placed at 390, although a variety of state, federal and local sources have estimated the number of fatalities at between 400 and 600. In 1974, President Richard Nixon opened an official visit to the Soviet Union. In 1991, Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first Black jurist to sit on the nation’s highest court, announced his retirement. (His departure led to the contentious nomination of Clarence Thomas to succeed him.) In 2005, the Supreme Court ruled, in a pair of 5-4 decisions, that displaying the Ten Commandments on government property was constitutionally permissible in some cases but not in others. BTK serial killer Dennis Rader pleaded guilty to 10 murders that had spread fear across Wichita, Kansas, beginning in the 1970s. (Rader later received multiple life sentences.) In 2006, a constitutional amendment to ban desecration of the American flag died in a Senate cliffhanger, falling one vote short of the 67 needed to send it to states for ratification. In 2011, former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (blah-GOY’-uh-vich) was convicted by a federal jury in Chicago on a wide range of corruption charges, including the allegation that he’d tried to sell or trade President Barack Obama’s U.S. Senate seat. (Blagojevich was later sentenced to 14 years in prison; his sentence was commuted by President Donald Trump in February 2020.) In 2018, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, whose vote often decided cases on abortion, gay rights and other contentious issues, announced his retirement. Ten years ago: Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II and former Irish Republican Army commander Martin McGuinness offered each other the hand of peace during a private meeting inside Belfast’s riverside Lyric Theatre. A 22-year-old former Texas Tech University student from Saudi Arabia, Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari (KAH’-lihd ah-lee-EHM’ al-duh-SAHR’-ee), was convicted in Amarillo of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction; prosecutors said he had researched possible bombing targets, including the Dallas home of former President George W. Bush. (Aldawsari was later sentenced to life in prison.) Five years ago: A new and highly virulent outbreak of malicious data-scrambling software began causing mass disruption across the world, hitting Europe – and Ukraine – especially hard.