What Happened On This Day In History?

1788

Virginia ratified the U.S. Constitution.

1868

Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina were readmitted to the Union.

1876

Lt. Col. George A. Custer and his 7th Cavalry were wiped out by Sioux and Cheyenne Indians in the Battle of Little Big Horn in Montana.

1942

Some 1,000 British Royal Air Force bombers raided Bremen, Germany, during World War II.

1950

War broke out on the Korean peninsula as forces from the communist North invaded the South.

1951

The first commercial color telecast took place as CBS transmitted a one-hour special from New York to four other cities.

1962

The Supreme Court ruled that the use of an unofficial, nondenominational prayer in New York public schools was unconstitutional.

1967

The Beatles performed a new song, ''All You Need Is Love,'' during a live international telecast.

1973

Former White House Counsel John Dean began testifying before the Senate Watergate Committee.

1981

The Supreme Court decided that male-only draft registration was constitutional.

1987

Pope John Paul II received Austrian President Kurt Waldheim at the Vatican, a meeting fraught with controversy because of allegations that Waldheim had hidden a Nazi past.

1991

Following months of unsuccessful talks among Yugoslavia's six republics about the future of the federation, the western republics of Croatia and Slovenia declared their independence.

1996

A truck bomb killed 19 Americans and injured hundreds at a U.S. military housing complex in Saudi Arabia.

1997

An unmanned cargo ship crashed into Russia's Mir space station, knocking out half of the station's power and rupturing a pressurized laboratory.

1998

The Supreme Court rejected a 1997 line-item veto law as unconstitutional, and ruled that those infected with HIV are protected by the Americans With Disabilities Act.

1988

American-born Mildred Gillars, better known during World War II as ''Axis Sally'' for her Nazi propaganda broadcasts, died in Columbus, Ohio, at age 87.

1995

Warren E. Burger, the 15th chief justice of the United States, died in Washington, D.C., of congestive heart failure at age 87.