Today is Wednesday, June 21, the 172nd day of 2017. There are 193 days left in the year. Summer begins at 12:24 a.m.
Birthdays: Composer Lalo Schifrin is 85. Actor Bernie Kopell is 84. Actress Mariette Hartley is 77. The Kinks singer-songwriter Ray Davies is 73. Actress Meredith Baxter is 70. Actor Michael Gross is 70. Aerosmith drummer Joey Kramer is 67. Rock guitarist Nils Lofgren is 66. Cartoonist Berke Breathed is 60. Writer-director Lana Wachowski is 52. Actress Carrie Preston is 50. Country singer Allison Moorer is 45. Actress Juliette Lewis is 44. Actor Chris Pratt is 38. Britain’s Prince William is 35. Actor Michael Malarkey is 34. Pop singer Kris Allen (TV: ‘‘American Idol’’) is 32. Actor Jascha Washington is 28. Pop singer Rebecca Black is 20
In 1788, the US Constitution went into effect as New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify it.
In 1834, Cyrus Hall McCormick received a patent for his reaping machine.
In 1954, the American Cancer Society presented a study finding that men who regularly smoked cigarettes died at a considerably higher rate than non-smokers.
In 1963, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Montini was chosen during a conclave of his fellow cardinals to succeed the late Pope John XXIII; the new pope took the name Paul VI.
In 1964, civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney were slain in Philadelphia, Miss.; their bodies were found in an earthen dam six weeks later. (Forty-one years later on this date in 2005, Edgar Ray Killen, an 80-year-old former Ku Klux Klansman, was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to 60 years in prison.)
In 1982, a jury in Washington, D.C., found John Hinckley Jr. not guilty by reason of insanity in the shootings of President Reagan and three other men.
In 1997, the WNBA made its debut.
In 2012, the US Supreme Court unanimously threw out penalties against Fox and ABC television stations that violated the Federal Communications Commission policy regulating curse words and nudity on television, but the justices declined to issue a broader ruling.
Last year, the Obama administration approved routine commercial use of small drones in areas such as farming, advertising, and real estate after years of struggling to write rules to protect public safety.
