Today’s highlight

On June 30, 1934, Adolf Hitler launched his “blood purge” of political and military rivals in Germany in what came to be known as the “Night of the Long Knives.”

On this date

1918: Labor activist and socialist Eugene V. Debs was arrested in Cleveland, charged under the Espionage Act of 1917 for a speech he had made two weeks earlier in which he denounced U.S. involvement in World War I.

1958: The U.S. Senate passed the Alaska statehood bill.

1971: The Supreme Court ruled, 6-3, that the government could not prevent The New York Times or The Washington Post from publishing the Pentagon Papers.

2016: Then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced that transgender people would be allowed to serve openly in the U.S. military, ending one of the last bans on service in the armed forces.

2019: Donald Trump became the first sitting U.S. president to set foot in North Korea, meeting Kim Jong-un at the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea.

2022: Ketanji Brown Jackson was sworn in to the U.S. Supreme Court, shattering a glass ceiling as the first Black woman on the nation’s highest court.

Today’s birthdays

Actor Lea Massari (“L’Avventura”) is 92. Olympic track champion Billy Mills is 87. Oceanographer Robert Ballard is 83. Jazz musician Stanley Clarke is 74. Conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen is 67. Actor Vincent D’Onofrio is 66. Boxer Mike Tyson is 59. Country music singer-songwriter Cole Swindell is 42. Olympic swimming champion Michael Phelps is 40. Baseball player Trea Turner is 32.