Francisco Pizarro, the governor of Peru and conqueror of the Inca civilization, is assassinated in Lima by Spanish rivals. The illegitimate son of a Spanish gentleman, Pizarro served under Spanish conquistador Alonso de Ojeda during his expedition to Colombia in 1510 and was with Vasco Nunez de Balboa when he encountered the Pacific Ocean in […]

At the Battle of Mechanicsville, Virginia, Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia strikes Union General George B. McClellan’s Army of the Potomac, beginning the Seven Days’ Battles. Although the Confederates sustained heavy losses and did not succeed in decisively defeating the Yankees, the battle had unnerved McClellan. During the next week, Lee […]

In the Herbst Theater auditorium in San Francisco, delegates from 50 nations sign the United Nations Charter, establishing the world body as a means of saving “succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” The Charter was ratified on October 24, and the first U.N. General Assembly met in London on January 10, 1946. Despite the […]

On June 26, 1956, the U.S. Congress approves the Federal-Aid Highway Act, which allocates more than $30 billion for the construction of some 41,000 miles of interstate highways; it will be the largest public construction project in U.S. history to that date. Among the pressing questions involved in passing highway legislation were where exactly the […]

President John F. Kennedy expresses solidarity with democratic German citizens in a speech on June 26, 1963. In front of the Berlin Wall that separated the city into democratic and communist sectors, he declared to the crowd, “Ich bin ein Berliner” or “I am also a citizen of Berlin.” In his speech, Kennedy assured West […]

After 13 years together as a couple and six years of marriage—the last three for the cameras—pop singers and TV entertainers Sonny and Cher are legally divorced on June 26, 1975. With a string of pop hits in the mid-1960s that began with the career-defining “I Got You Babe” (1965), Sonny and Cher Bono established […]

In retaliation for an Iraqi plot to assassinate former U.S. President George H.W. Bush during his April visit to Kuwait, President Bill Clinton orders U.S. warships to fire Tomahawk cruise missiles at Iraqi intelligence headquarters in downtown Baghdad. On April 13, 1993, the day before George Bush was scheduled to visit Kuwait and be honored […]

Strom Thurmond, who served in the United States Senate for a record 48 years, dies on June 26, 2003. Thurmond’s long and controversial political career had ended with his retirement one year earlier. Thurmond was born on December 5, 1902, in Edgefield, South Carolina, where he also died. He graduated from what is now Clemson […]