Today is Thursday, June 12, the 163rd day of 2025. There are 202 days left in the year.
Today in history:
On June 12, 2016, a gunman opened fire at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, leaving 49 people dead and 53 wounded in what was then the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history; the gunman, Omar Mateen, pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group during a three-hour standoff before being killed in a shootout with police.
Also on this date:
In 1939, the Baseball Hall of Fame was dedicated in Cooperstown, New York.
In 1942, Anne Frank, a German-born Jewish girl living in Amsterdam, received a diary for her 13th birthday, less than a month before she and her family went into hiding from the Nazis.
In 1963, civil rights leader Medgar Evers, 37, was shot and killed outside his home in Jackson, Mississippi. (In 1994, Byron De La Beckwith was convicted of murdering Evers and sentenced to life in prison, where he died in 2001.)
In 1964, eight South African anti-apartheid activists, including Nelson Mandela, were sentenced to life in prison for committing acts of sabotage against South Africa’ apartheid government.
In 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Loving v. Virginia, unanimously struck down state laws prohibiting interracial marriages, ruling that such laws violated the Fourteenth Amendment.
In 1978, David Berkowitz was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison for each of the six “Son of Sam” killings committed in New York City over the previous two years.
In 1987, President Ronald Reagan, during a visit to the divided German city of Berlin, exhorted Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall.”
In 1991, Russians went to the polls for their first-ever presidential election, which resulted in victory for Boris Yeltsin.
In 1994, Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were killed outside Simpson’s Los Angeles home. (O.J. Simpson, Nicole Brown Simpson’s ex-husband, was later acquitted of the killings in a criminal trial but was eventually held liable in a civil action.)
Today’s Birthdays:
- Actor Sonia Manzano is 75.
- Actor-director Timothy Busfield is 68.
- Olympic track gold medalist Gwen Torrence is 60.
- Actor Rick Hoffman is 55.
- Actor-comedian Finesse Mitchell is 53.
- Actor Jason Mewes is 51.
- Blues musician Kenny Wayne Shepherd is 48.
- Actor Timothy Simons is 47.
- Singer-songwriter Robyn is 46.
- Model Adriana Lima is 44.
- Actor Dave Franco is 40.
- Country musician Chris Young is 40.
