Today is Thursday, June 28, the 180th day of 2012. There are 186 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlights:
On June 28, 1712, philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, one of the most influential thinkers of the 18th century Enlightenment, was born in Geneva.
On this date:
In 1778, the Revolutionary War Battle of Monmouth took place in New Jersey; it was from this battle that the legend of “Molly Pitcher” arose.
In 1836, the fourth president of the United States, James Madison, died in Montpelier, Va.
In 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife, Sophie, were assassinated in Sarajevo by Serb nationalist Gavrilo Princip — the event which sparked World War I.
In 1919, the Treaty of Versailles was signed in France, ending the First World War. In Independence, Mo., future president Harry Truman married Elizabeth Virginia Wallace.
In 1922, the Irish Civil War began between rival nationalists over the Anglo-Irish Treaty establishing the Irish Free State. (The conflict lasted nearly a year, resulting in defeat for anti-treaty forces.)
In 1939, Pan American Airways began regular trans-Atlantic air service with a flight that departed New York for Marseilles, France.
In 1950, North Korean forces captured Seoul, the capital of South Korea.
In 1962, a jury in New York awarded $3.5 million to former radio-TV personality John Henry Faulk in his libel suit against the group AWARE Inc. and two individuals who’d accused him of Communist sympathies and gotten him blacklisted. (The judgment was reduced to $550,000 by an appeals court.)
In 2000, seven months after he was cast adrift in the Florida Straits, Elian Gonzalez was returned to his native Cuba.
Associated Press
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