1880 Helen Keller is born.
1927 Actor Bob Keeshan (the original Captain Kangaroo, The Howdy Doody Show‘s Clarabell The Clown) is born. He dies in 2004.
1949, Captain Video & His Video Rangers, a science-fiction adventure show, debuted on TV. Captain Video battled bad guys from all over the universe.
1950, President Harry Truman ordered the Air Force and Navy into the Korean conflict, following a call from the United Nations Security Council for member nations to help South Korea repel an invasion from North Korea.
1966 The vampire-themed soap opera Dark Shadows premieres.
1969, patrons at the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City’s Greenwich Village, clashed with police during a raid. The incident is considered a landmark of the gay rights movement.
1973, former White House counsel John W. Dean told the Senate Watergate Committee about the existence of an “enemies list” kept by the White House.
1973 The James Bond movie Live And Let Die, starring Roger Moore, Yaphet Kotto, and Jane Seymour, opens.
1974 The TV series The Flip Wilson Show airs for the last time.
1975, golfers Lee Trevino, Bobby Nicholas, and Jerry Heard were struck by lightning during the Western Open in Chicago. Previously, the three had won a total of 34 tournaments, however for several years after the strike, only one of them won a tournament.
1980, President Jimmy Carter signed legislation into law that revived draft registration.
1984 The PG-13 rating is instituted by the MPAA.
1985, the legendary Route 66, which originally ran from Chicago to Santa Monica, California, was decertified by officials.
1991, Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first black member of the nation’s highest court, announced his retirement after 24 years.
1994 Playboy Playmate Anna Nicole Smith and billionaire J. Howard Marshall II are married. He dies in August 1995, and Smith battled for the rest of her life for what she claimed was her fair share of his estate.