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On this day, June 19 …
1865: Union troops arrive in Galveston, Texas, with news that the Civil War is over, and that all remaining slaves in Texas are free. (The event is now celebrated as a federal holiday as Juneteenth.)
Also on this day:
- 1775: George Washington is commissioned by the Continental Congress as commander in chief of the Continental Army.
- 1934: The Federal Communications Commission is created; it replaces the Federal Radio Commission.
- 1952: The U.S. Army Special Forces, the elite unit of fighters known as the Green Berets, is established at Fort Bragg, N.C.
Ethel and Julius Rosenberg in 1951. (AP Photo, File)
- 1953: Julius Rosenberg, 35, and his wife, Ethel, 37, convicted of conspiring to pass U.S. atomic secrets to the Soviet Union, are executed at Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, N.Y.
- 1964: The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is approved after surviving a lengthy filibuster in the U.S. Senate.
- 1987: The U.S. Supreme Court strikes down a Louisiana law requiring any public school teaching the theory of evolution to teach creation science as well.
- 2017: Otto Warmbier, a 22-year-old American college student, dies in a Cincinnati hospital following his release by North Korea in a coma after more than a year in captivity.
- 2018: General Electric, the last remaining original member, is dropped from the Dow Jones industrial average.
- 2018: The United States says it is pulling out of the United Nations' Human Rights Council, a day after the U.N. human rights chief denounced the Trump administration for separating migrant children from their parents.
- 2019: A United Nations human rights expert says in a 101 report that there’s "credible evidence" that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is responsible for the killing of writer Jamal Khashoggi.
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