Today in History

The body of Nazi war criminal Dr. Josef Mengele is located and exhumed near Sao Paolo, Brazil.

Israel invades southern Lebanon.

African American James Meredith is shot and wounded while on a solo march in Mississippi to promote voter registration among blacks.

Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung, one of the founders of modern psychiatry, dies.

D-Day: Operation Overlord lands 400,000 Allied American, British, and Canadian troops on the beaches of Normandy in German-occupied France.

The U.S. government authorizes the seizure of foreign ships in U.S. ports.

Marian Wright Edelman, first African-American woman to be admitted to the Mississippi Bar, founder of the Children’s Defense Fund.

Bill Moyers, American broadcast journalist, press secretary to President Lyndon Johnson.

Frozen foods are sold commercially for the first time.

Maxine Kumin, poet novelist and children’s author.

The German Reichstag accepts the Dawes Plan, an American plan to help Germany pay off its war debts.

U.S. Marines enter combat at the Battle of Belleau Wood.

Bill Dickey, professional baseball player.

Jimmie Lunceford, bandleader.

Thomas Mann, German novelist and essayist, forced into exile by the Nazis.

Alexandra, the last Russian Czarina.

Robert F. Scott, British explorer.

Confederate raider William Quantrill dies from a wound received while escaping a Union patrol near Taylorsville, Kentucky.

The city of Memphis surrenders to the Union navy after an intense naval engagement on the Mississippi River.

The United States invasion of Canada is halted at Stony Creek, Ontario.

Alexander Pushkin, Russian writer (Boris Godunov, The Queen of Spades).

John Trumbull, American painter.

Nathan Hale, American revolutionary.

Sivaji crowns himself King of India.

Spain loses Portugal.

Pierre Corneille, French author.

Gustav Vasa becomes king of Sweden.