On This Day, June 21: Typhoon Fengshen kills 1,400 in Philippines
On this date in history:
In 1788, the U.S. Constitution became effective when it was ratified by a ninth state, New Hampshire.
In 1942, German forces, led by Gen. Erwin Rommel, took control of Tobruk, Libya, in an assault on British forces. The North African city was a key port on the Mediterranean Sea.
In 1945, Japanese defenders of Okinawa surrendered to U.S. troops.
In 1964, Ku Klux Klan members killed three civil rights activists -- James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner -- and hid their bodies in unmarked graves. An informer led the FBI to the three men's graves 44 days later.
In 1982, John Hinckley Jr. was found not guilty by reason of insanity in the March 1981 shootings of U.S. President Ronald Reagan and three other people who were also wounded. Hinckley has been in a hospital in Washington, with permission in recent years to spend time outside the institution with his family.
In 1985, international experts in Sao Paulo, Brazil, conclusively identified the bones of a 1979 drowning victim as the remains of Dr. Josef Mengele, a Nazi war criminal, ending a 40-year search for the "angel of death" of the Auschwitz concentration camp.
In 1990, an earthquake measuring 7.7 on the Richter scale struck northwestern Iran, killing up to 50,000 people.
In 1997, Cambodia announced the capture of former Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot.
In 2000, NASA announced that its Mars Global Surveyor had spotted grooved surface features, suggesting a relatively recent water flow on the planet.
In 2005, a Mississippi jury convicted 80-year-old former Ku Klux Klan leader Edgar Ray Killen of manslaughter in the 1964 killings of three civil rights workers. He was sentenced to 60 years in prison and died in 2018.
In 2008, nearly 1,400 people, most of them on a ferry that capsized, were killed in Typhoon Fengshen in the Philippines.
In 2011, a RusAir passenger plane flying from Moscow to Petrozavodsk in rain and fog crashed on a highway near an airport and broke apart in flames. Forty-four people died, eight survived.
In 2021, Las Vegas Raiders defensive lineman Carl Nassib became the first active NFL player in league history to come out as gay.
In 2021, Laurel Hubbard made history as the first openly transgender athlete to be selected to compete in an Olympic Games, qualifying for a spot on New Zealand's weightlifting team.
In 2023, the Food and Drug Administration granted approval for GOOD Meat, the meat division of Eat Just, and UPSIDE Foods, to sell cultivated poultry in the United States. It was the first approval by the regulatory body for companies to produce meat by growing cells extracted from an animal's body.
