Today in History
Today is Tuesday, June 30, the 181st day of 2026. There are 184 days left in the year.
Today鈥檚 Highlight in History:
On June 30, 1934, Adolf Hitler launched his 鈥渂lood purge鈥� of political and military rivals in Germany in what came to be known as the 鈥淣ight of the Long Knives.鈥�
Also on this date:
In 1918, labor activist and socialist Eugene V. Debs was arrested in Cleveland, charged under the Sedition Act of 1917 for a speech in which he denounced U.S. involvement in World War I. (Debs was sentenced to 10 years in prison and disenfranchised for life; President Warren G. Harding commuted Debs’ sentence to time served in 1921.)
In 1921, President Warren G. Harding nominated former President William Howard Taft to be chief justice of the United States, succeeding the late Edward Douglass White.
In 1936, Margaret Mitchell鈥檚 novel 鈥淕one With the Wind鈥� was released.
In 1958, the U.S. Senate passed the Alaska statehood bill.
In 1971, the Supreme Court ruled, 6-3, that the government could not prevent The New York Times or The Washington Post from publishing the Pentagon Papers.
In 1971, a Soviet space mission ended in tragedy when three cosmonauts aboard Soyuz 11 were found dead of asphyxiation inside their capsule after it had returned to Earth.
In 1985, 39 American hostages from a hijacked TWA jetliner were freed in Beirut after being held for 17 days.
In 1994, the U.S. Figure Skating Association stripped Tonya Harding of the national championship and banned her for life for her role in the attack on rival Nancy Kerrigan.
In 2009, U.S. Army Pfc. Bowe R. Bergdahl went missing from his base in eastern Afghanistan, and was later confirmed to have been captured by insurgents after walking away from his post. (Bergdahl was released on May 31, 2014, in exchange for five Taliban detainees; he pleaded guilty to desertion and misbehavior before the enemy, but was spared a prison sentence by a military judge.)
In 2012, Islamist Mohammed Morsi was sworn in as Egypt鈥檚 first freely elected president.
In 2016, then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced that transgender people would be allowed to serve openly in the U.S. military, ending one of the last bans on service in the armed forces.
In 2019, Donald Trump became the first sitting U.S. president to set foot in North Korea, meeting Kim Jong-un at the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea.
In 2020, then-Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves signed a bill retiring the last U.S. state flag bearing the Confederate battle emblem. The same day, Boston鈥檚 arts commission voted to remove a statue depicting a freed slave kneeling at Abraham Lincoln鈥檚 feet.
In 2022, Ketanji Brown Jackson was sworn in to the U.S. Supreme Court, shattering a glass ceiling as the first Black woman on the nation’s highest court.
Today鈥檚 Birthdays: Actor Nancy Dussault (doo-SOH鈥�) is 90. Olympic track champion Billy Mills is 88. Oceanographer Robert Ballard is 84. Singer-songwriter Glenn Shorrock (Little River Band) is 82. Jazz musician Stanley Clarke is 75. Actor David Garrison (鈥淢arried鈥ith Children) is 74. Conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen is 68. Actor Vincent D鈥橭nofrio is 67. Actor Deirdre Lovejoy (鈥淭he Wire鈥�) is 64. Actor Rupert Graves is 63. Boxer Mike Tyson is 60. Actor Monica Potter is 55. Actor Rick Gonzalez is 47. Actor Lizzy Caplan is 44. Country music singer-songwriter Cole Swindell is 43. Singer and actress Fantasia is 42. Olympic swimming champion Michael Phelps is 41. Baseball player Trea Turner is 33.
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