There was a mixture of the trivial and the momentous on this date. In 1550 the city of Helsinki, Finland was founded. In 1817 the earliest form of the bicycle was invented by Karl von Drais. In 1939 the Baseball Hall of Fame was opened in Cooperstown, New York. And in 1981 the first Indiana Jones film, Raiders of the Lost Ark, was released in theaters.
On the other hand, the Virginia Declaration of Rights was adopted in 1776. Anne Frank received a diary for her 13th birthday in 1942, which all the world would read and weep. In 1967 the Supreme Court ruled in Loving v Virginia that laws prohibiting interracial marriage were unconstitutional. And in 2016 49 people were gunned down in a Pulse club shooting in Orlando Florida.
Those who joined the world community on this date in history include Swiss author of Heidi -Johana Spyri (1827), American director and producer Irwin Allen (1916) famous for disaster films such as Towering Inferno, late President George Bush Sr (1924), singer and actor Jim Nabors (1930) and the aforementioned Anne Frank (1929).
Those who departed our world include NAACP activist Medgar Evers assassinated in front of his own house in 1963, Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman in 1994, Well known actor and political activist Gregory Peck (2003) who not only portrayed a courageous attorney in To Kill A Mockingbird but also challenged the House UnAmerican Activities Committee in 1947.
Today is Loving Day in the US celebrating the Loving v Virginia decision and World Day Against Child Labor.
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