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1975 : The summer blockbuster movie "Jaws" is released about a great white shark attacking swimmers at Amity Island, a fictional summer resort town.
1893 : In the case of the murder of her father Andrew Jackson Borden, and her stepmother, Abby Borden despite incriminating circumstances but with no murder weapon found and no blood evidence found. A jury in New Bedford, Mass., found Lizzie Borden innocent of the ax murders of her father and stepmother. The case was is best remembered by the popular jump-rope rhyme: Lizzie Borden took an axe And gave her mother forty whacks. And when she saw what she had done She gave her father forty-one.
1923 : A large fleet of Seaplanes are to be mobilized in an attempt to catch rum smugglers off the Atlantic Coast, it is believed these will be more successful than current means of catching the rum runners who are equipped with very fast boats that are outrunning federal agents.
1929 : Exchanges of gunfire on the Detroit river between rum runners and federal agents ended with federal agents using machine guns to sink the smugglers vessel, French boats are anchored off the coast outside of US jurisdiction and the rum runners are going between shore and the ships anchored off shore carrying cases of rum.
1937 : W2XBS (later WCBS-TV) televised the first TV operetta. The work was the "Pirates of Penzance" by Gilbert and Sullivan. The operetta became the duo's most popular creation and is still parodied in cartoons and other pop culture references today.
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Lionel Richie
Born: June 20th 1949, Tuskegee, AL
Known For : Lionel Richie American singer, songwriter, musician. During the 1970s, he recorded with the the Commodores, and his solo career made him one of the most successful singer / song writer of the 1980s. His top hits include "Endless Love" (with Diana Ross), "All Night Long (All Night)", "Hello", "Say You, Say Me" just to mention a few .
1947 : Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel is murdered at the Beverly Hills, Calif., mansion of his girlfriend, Virginia Hill, at the order of mob associates angered over the soaring costs of Siegel’s pet project, the Flamingo resort now costing in the region of $6,000,000 in Las Vegas, Nev. In the 1972 movie the Godfather the character of Moe Greene is heavily based on Siegel.
1956 : Venezuelan airliner plunges into Atlantic.
1963 : To lessen the threat of an accidental nuclear war, the United States and the Soviet Union agree to establish a "hot line" communication system between the two nations.
1967 : After appearing for his scheduled induction into the U.S. Armed Forces on April 28th, 1967 in Houston, he refused three times to step forward at the call of his name. On 20th June Muhammad Ali is convicted in Houston of violating Selective Service laws by refusing to be drafted. The decision is later overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.
1976 : As the fighting continues to escalate in Beirut and with westerners now facing increasing danger after the murder of the American ambassador Francis Meloy. Westerners are being evacuated by the US military and taken to safety in Syria.
1977 : Crude oil from North Alaska begins flowing south down the trans-Alaska pipeline to the ice-free port of Valdez, Alaska.
1984 : General Certificate of Education / GCE O-Level and CSE exams are to be abolished and replaced by a new examination for 16 year olds in Great Britain. General Certificate of Education / GCE O-Level and GCE A-Level were introduced in Great Britain replacing the older School Certificate (SC) and Higher School Certificate (HSC) in 1951. Certificate of Secondary Education (CSE) were introduced in 1965 designed for those students who were not capable of taking the "O Levels". The A-Level Examinations are still taken in the UK and are still used by most British Universities as a de facto university entrance examination, though some universities also require applicants to take separate entrance examinations.
2002 : A gas explosion caused by a build up of gas in a Chinese coal mine kills 111 workers. China has a poor safety record in mining due to poor safety regulations.
2007 : A crowd in Texas beat a passenger involved in an accident to death. David Rivas Morales was a passenger in an accident in which a driver hit a young child, and when Morales left the car to check on the injured child the gathering crowd of about twenty people turned on him and attacked, leaving him for dead. The driver was able to escape the scene safely and the child who was hit did not suffer any serious injuries.
2008 : Thousands of protesters gathered in Thailand's capital, Bangkok, to protest the current government. The protesters demanded that the current government step down and claimed that the government was only a proxy for a former leader that was ousted in 2006 by the military.
2008 : 100 Israeli fighter jets carry out maneuvers to simulate an attack on Iranian "nuclear facilities" creating increased concern over the future of oil supplies from the region and helping to keep the price of oil at an all time high. Israeli officials are denying that the exercise was for Iranian targets and only said the air force "regularly trains for various missions in order to confront and meet the challenges posed by the threats facing Israel". Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned on 4 June that drastic measures were needed to stop Iran obtaining nuclear weapons and the Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz - a former defense minister - said that military strikes to stop Iran developing nuclear weapons looked "unavoidable."
2009 : Construction begins in New Mexico on the first commercial spaceport. Spaceport America would take eighteen months to complete and would house Virgin Galactic's space tourism business as well as other companies involved in space tourism.
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DeForest Kelly
Born: June 20th, 1920, Atlanta, Georgia
Died: June 11th, 1999, Los Angeles, California
Known For :Bones was Captain Kirk's medical officer of the U.S.S. Enterprise, and DeForest Kelley was one of the original cast for the show's opening season (in 1966). He visited California for a couple of weeks at the age of seventeen and stayed there for a year. By the time of his return to Georgia he had decided to become an actor and moved there. He was seen by a Paramount talent spotter, and taken for the new show, in which he played Dr. Leonard McCoy for its all three seasons, and six films. He died of cancer in 1999.
2011 : The United States Supreme Court ruled against women suing Wal-Mart for discrimination, dismissing the largest class-action lawsuit in history. The women plaintiffs claimed that Wal-Mart discriminated against one and a half million female employees by paying them less than their male counterparts and denying them opportunities for advancement. Wal-Mart countered that the women were employed in a variety of different jobs and do not have common cause for such a large class-action lawsuit. The Supreme Court sided with Wal-Mart and told the women that they should pursue their discrimination claims individually.
2012 : The 1927 painting Peinture (Etoile Bleue) was sold at auction for over 23.5 million pounds at a London auction. The price set a record for one of Miro's paintings, the previous record had been 16.8 million pounds in February of 2012.
2013 : Wang Yaping, China's second female astronaut, delivered China's first ever video lecture from space. Yaping was part of the Shenzhou-10 space mission, the fifth space mission that China had launched.