William Howard Taft nominated for president

Today is June 18. On this date in:

1778

American forces entered Philadelphia as the British withdrew during the Revolutionary War.

1812

The War of 1812 began as Congress approved, and President James Madison signed, a declaration of war against Britain.

1815

Napoleon Bonaparte met his Waterloo as British and Prussian troops defeated the French in Belgium.

1908

Cincinnati’s William Howard Taft was nominated for president by the Republican National Convention in Chicago.

1940

During World War II, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill urged his countrymen to conduct themselves in a manner that would prompt future generations to say, “This was their finest hour.”

1940

Charles de Gaulle delivered a speech on the BBC in which he rallied his countrymen after the fall of France to Nazi Germany.

1942

Musician Paul McCartney of the Beatles was born in Liverpool, England. 

1948

Columbia Records unveiled its new long-playing phonograph record in New York.

1953

A U.S. Air Force Douglas C-124 Globemaster II crashed near Tokyo, killing all 129 people on board. Egypt’s 148-year-old Muhammad Ali Dynasty came to an end with the overthrow of the monarchy and the proclamation of a republic.

1964

President Lyndon B. Johnson and Japanese Prime Minister Hayato Ikeda spoke to each other by telephone as they inaugurated the first trans-Pacific cable completed by AT&T between Japan and Hawaii.

1979

President Jimmy Carter and Soviet President Leonid I. Brezhnev signed the SALT II strategic arms limitation treaty in Vienna.

1983

Astronaut Sally K. Ride became America’s first woman in space as she and four colleagues blasted off aboard the space shuttle Challenger.

1986

A twin-engine plane and helicopter carrying sightseers collided over the Grand Canyon, killing 25.

1992

The U.S. Supreme Court, in Georgia v. McCollum, ruled that criminal defendants could not use race as a basis for excluding potential jurors from their trials.

1996

Richard Allen Davis was convicted in San Jose, California, of the 1993 kidnap-murder of 12-year-old Polly Klaas of Petaluma. (Davis remains on death row.)