Today in History....June 26

On this day in …


* 1945, the charter of the United Nations was signed by 50 countries in San Francisco

* 948, the Berlin Airlift began in earnest after the Soviet Union cut off land and water routes to the isolated western sector of Berlin

* 1950, President Truman authorized the Air Force and Navy to enter the Korean conflict

* 1959, President Eisenhower joined Britain's Queen Elizabeth II in ceremonies officially opening the St. Lawrence Seaway

* 1963, President Kennedy visited West Berlin, where he made his famous declaration: "Ich bin ein Berliner" (I am a Berliner) --- despite reports to the contrary in venues as prestigious as the New York Times and Newsweek, he didn't say "I am a jelly doughnut."

* 1973, former White House counsel John W. Dean told the Senate Watergate Committee about an "enemies list" kept by the Nixon White House

* 1997, in a series of decisions, the Supreme Court ruled that terminally ill Americans had no constitutional right to doctor-assisted suicide, but did nothing to bar states from legalizing the process; struck down a congressional attempt to keep smut off the Internet, saying it violated the First Amendment; let stand the president's line-item veto authority without addressing its constitutionality

* 2002, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools was unconstitutional.
(The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the decision in 2004 on a
technicality.) ALSO: The Group of Eight nations, meeting in Canada, announced that Russia would be made a full-fledged member of the elite group

* 2006, President Bush said it was "disgraceful" that newspapers had disclosed a secret CIA-Treasury program to track millions of financial records in search of terrorist suspects