This Day in History: June 12

On this day, June 12 …
 
1994: Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman are slashed to death outside her Los Angeles home. (O.J. Simpson would later be accused of and acquitted of the killings in a criminal trial, but eventually would be held liable in a civil action.) 

Also on this day:

  • 1939: The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum is dedicated in Cooperstown, N.Y.
  • 1942: Anne Frank, a German-born Jewish girl living in Amsterdam, receives a diary for her 13th birthday, less than a month before she and her family go into hiding from the Nazis.

File - Medgar Evers (AP Photo/Francis H. Mitchell - Ebony Collection, File)

  • 1963: Civil rights leader Medgar Evers, 37, is shot and killed outside his home in Jackson, Miss. 
  • 1964: Nelson Mandela is sentenced to life in prison along with seven other people, including Walter Sisulu, for committing sabotage against the apartheid regime. (All would be eventually released, Mandela in 1990).
  • 1967: The U.S. Supreme Court, in Loving v. Virginia, unanimously strikes down state laws prohibiting interracial marriages.

Feb. 22, 1979: David Berkowitz, known as "Son of Sam," is shown during an interview at Attica Prison in New York.

  • 1978: David Berkowitz is sentenced to 25 years to life in prison for each of the six "Son of Sam" .44-caliber killings that terrified New Yorkers.
  • 1981: "Raiders of the Lost Ark," directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones, is first released.
  • 1987: President Ronald Reagan, during a visit to the divided German city of Berlin, exhorts Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev to "tear down this wall."
  • 1994: Boeing's new 777 jetliner goes on its first test flight.
  • 2009: U.S. television stations end analog broadcasts in favor of digital transmission. 
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