Today in History Friday June 21

1529 – French forces are driven out of northern Italy by Spain at the Battle of Landriano during the War of the League of Cognac.

1621 – Execution of 27 Czech noblemen on the Old Town Square in Prague as a consequence of the Battle of White Mountain.

1788 – New Hampshire ratifies the Constitution and is admitted as the ninth state in the United States.

1898 – The United States captures Guam from Spain.

1942 – World War II: A Japanese submarine surfaces near the Columbia River in Oregon, firing 17 shells at Fort Stevens in one of only a handful of attacks by Japan against the United States mainland.

1964 – Three civil rights workers, Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Mickey Schwerner, are murdered in Neshoba County, Mississippi, United States, by members of the Ku Klux Klan.

1970 – Penn Central declares Section 77 bankruptcy, largest ever US corporate bankruptcy up to this date.

	Jody Foster in Taxi Driver

1982 – John Hinckley is found not guilty by reason of insanity for the attempted assassination of U.S. President Ronald Reagan.

1989 – The Supreme Court ruled in Texas v. Johnson that American flag-burning was a form of political protest protected by the First Amendment.

2004 – SpaceShipOne becomes the first privately funded spaceplane to achieve spaceflight.

2006 – Pluto’s newly discovered moons are officially named Nix and Hydra.

1535 – Leonhard Rauwolf, German physician and botanist (d. 1596)

1732 – Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach, German pianist and composer (d. 1791)

1882 – Rockwell Kent, American painter and illustrator (d. 1971)

1903 – Al Hirschfeld, American caricaturist, painter and illustrator (d. 2003)

1905 – Jean-Paul Sartre, French philosopher and author (d. 1980)

1953 – Benazir Bhutto, 11th Prime Minister of Pakistan (d. 2007)

1967 – Pierre Omidyar, French-American businessman, founded eBay

870 – Al-Muhtadi, Muslim caliph

1954 – Gideon Sundback, Swedish-American engineer, developed the zipper (b. 1880)

2003 – Leon Uris, American soldier and author (b. 1924)