Moments in Time – June 5, 2019

#Middlebury

• On June 21, 1788, New Hampshire becomes the ninth and last necessary state to ratify the Constitution of the United States, thereby making the document the law of the land. Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia, and Connecticut were the first to sign.
• On June 22, 1937, in Chicago’s Comiskey Park, Joe Louis wins the world heavyweight boxing title when he knocks out Jim Braddock in the eighth-round. Louis was the first black heavyweight champ since Jack Johnson, who lost the title in 1915.
• On June 20, 1947, Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, who brought organized crime to the West Coast, is killed in a hail of gunfire at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif. Siegel got his start in Brooklyn, where he terrorized peddlers and collected protection money in the 1930s.
• On June 23, 1959, after nine years in prison, Klaus Fuchs, the German-born Los Alamos scientist whose espionage helped the USSR build its first atomic and hydrogen bombs, is released from a British prison.
• On June 18, 1966, Gen. William Westmoreland, senior U.S. military commander in Vietnam, requests an additional 111,588 troops for the war in 1967, bringing the total to 542,588.
• On June 19, 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court rules against Curt Flood in Flood v. Kuhn, denying him free agency as a baseball player. He was trying to break the reserve clause that tied players to one team. Three years later an arbitrator ruled in favor of free agency, but it was too late for Flood, who never played baseball again.
• On June 17, 1994, “O.J.” Simpson, a former football player suspected of a double murder, flees along I-405 in Los Angeles in a white Ford Bronco with police in pursuit. News helicopters followed from above, and millions watched on television. Simpson was arrested at home an hour later.

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