Today in history: June 12
On June 12, 2016, a gunman opened fire at the Pulse nightclub, a gay establishment in Orlando, Florida, leaving 49 people dead and 53 wounded; Omar Mateen pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group during a three-hour standoff before being killed in a shootout with police.
1630: John Winthrop
In 1630, Englishman John Winthrop, leading a fleet carrying Puritan refugees, arrived at the Massachusetts Bay Colony, where he became its governor.
1942: Anne Frank
In 1942, Anne Frank, a German-born Jewish girl living in Amsterdam, received a diary for her 13th birthday, less than a month before she and her family went into hiding from the Nazis.
1963: Medgar Evers
In 1963, civil rights leader Medgar Evers, 37, was shot and killed outside his home in Jackson, Mississippi. (In 1994, Byron De La Beckwith was convicted of murdering Evers and sentenced to life in prison; he died in 2001.)
1964: Nelson Mandela
In 1964, South African Black nationalist Nelson Mandela was sentenced to life in prison along with seven other people, including Walter Sisulu, for committing sabotage against the apartheid regime (all were eventually released, Mandela in 1990).
1978: David Berkowitz
In 1978, David Berkowitz was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison for each of the six “Son of Sam” .44-caliber killings that terrified New Yorkers.
1987: Ronald Reagan
In 1987, President Ronald Reagan, during a visit to the divided German city of Berlin, exhorted Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev to “tear down this wall.”
1994: O.J. Simpson
In 1994, Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were slashed to death outside her Los Angeles home. (O.J. Simpson was later acquitted of the killings in a criminal trial but was eventually held liable in a civil action.)
2012: Henry Hill
Former mobster Henry Hill, the subject of the movie “Goodfellas,” died in Los Angeles a day after his 69th birthday.
2016: Pulse Nightclub shooting
On June 12, 2016, a gunman opened fire at the Pulse nightclub, a gay establishment in Orlando, Florida, leaving 49 people dead and 53 wounded; Omar Mateen pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group during a three-hour standoff before being killed in a shootout with police.
2018: Donald Trump & Kim Jong Un
In 2018, after a five-hour summit in Singapore, President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un signed a joint statement agreeing to work toward a denuclearized Korean Peninsula, although the timeline and tactics were left unclear; Trump declared that he and Kim had developed "a very special bond."
2020: Rayshard Brooks
One year ago: Rayshard Brooks, a 27-year-old Black man, was shot and killed by one of the two white officers who responded after he was found asleep in his car in the drive-thru lane of a Wendy’s restaurant in Atlanta; police body camera video showed Brooks struggling with the officers and grabbing a Taser from one of them, firing it as he fled. (An autopsy found that Brooks had been shot twice in the back. Officer Garrett Rolfe faces charges including murder.
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