Today in History....June 27

On this day in …


* 1844, Mormon leader Joseph Smith and his brother, Hyrum, were killed by a mob in Carthage, Ill.

* 1846, New York and Boston were linked by telegraph wires

* 1893, the New York stock market crashed

* 1944, during World War II, American forces completed their capture of the French port of Cherbourg from the Germans

* 1950, the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution calling on member nations to help South Korea repel an invasion from the North

* 1977, the Supreme Court, in Bates v. State Bar of Arizona, struck down state laws and bar association rules that prohibited lawyers from advertising their fees for routine services

* 1997, the Supreme Court threw out a key part of the Brady gun-control law, saying the federal government could not make local police decide whether people were fit to buy handguns. However, the court left intact the five-day waiting period for gun purchases

* 2002, in a landmark church-state decision, the Supreme Court ruled
5-4 that tuition vouchers were constitutional. ALSO: The Group of Eight nations concluded a two-day summit in Alberta, Canada, by announcing aid packages for Russia and Africa

* 2006, a constitutional amendment to ban desecration of the American flag died in a Senate cliffhanger, falling one vote short of the 67 needed to send it to states for ratification. ALSO:
Surgeon General Richard Carmona issued a report saying breathing any amount of someone else's tobacco smoke harms nonsmokers