Today in History, 6/21

1639: Increase Mather, Puritan minister, is born.
1749: Halifax, Nova Scotia is founded.
1782: General Pyotr Kotlyarevsky is born. He was an early player of The Great Game, the proxy war between Britain and Russia for control of Central Asia during the 18th and 19th Centuries.1788: The US Constitution goes into effect when New Hampshire becomes the ninth state to ratify it.
1798: During the Irish Rebellion of 1798, the British Army defeats the Irish rebels at the Battle of Vinegar Hill.
1834: Cyrus McCormick receives a patent for his reaping machine.1854: The first Victoria Cross is won during the bombardment of Bomarsund in the Aland Islands in the Baltic Sea during the Crimean War. This was the first British military award that could be given regardless of rank or social status.1877: The Molly Maguires, a group of Irish immigrants and alleged criminals, are hanged in Pennsylvania.
1896: Charles Momsen is born. He invented an underwater breathing apparatus that allowed the crew of the submarine USS Squalus to escape a watery grave in 1939.1898: Guam becomes a US territory.
1903: Al Hirschfeld is born. He was an often-imitated caricaturist. Here's his self-portrait.1905: John-Paul Satre is born.
1919: Admiral Ludwig von Reuter scuttles the German fleet in Scapa Flow, Orkney. The nine German soldiers killed are the last casualties of WWI.
1921: Jane Russell is born. Howard Hughes dedicated a team of aircraft engineers to designing a bra that would keep her ample bosom from destroying the Earth while she rode a horse in The Outlaw.

1925: Maureen Stapleton is born. She was in all kinds of movies, but I remember her best as Marilu Henner's bisexual mother-in-law in Johnny Dangerously.

1940: France surrenders to Germany.
1941: Joe Flaherty is born. He played Count Floyd on SCTV.

1942: A Japanese submarine surfaces near the Columbia River in Oregon firing 17 shells at Fort Stevens. It is one of the few Japanese attacks on the US mainland during WWII.
1944: Ray Davies, of The Kinks, is born.

1947: Meredeth Baxter (Birney) is born.
1947: Michael Gross is born. Hey, they both played the parents on the excruciating sitcom Family Ties! Sha-la-la-laa!

1948: The Manchester Baby runs the first ever computer program stored in electronic memory.1948: Columbia Records introduces the long-playing record.
1953: Benazir Bhutto, former Prime Minister of Pakistan, is born.1954: Robert Pastorelli is born. He is most famous for playing Murphy Brown's layabout house painter Eldin Bernecky.
1957: Berkeley Breathed, creator of Bloom County, is born.1961: Kip Winger, rocker, is born.

1964: Three civil rights workers, Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Mickey Schwermer are murdered in Mississippi by the Klu Klux Klan.
1965: Larry Wachowski, of the Wachowski, uh, siblings is born. They directed the Matrix trilogy.1973: Juliette Lewis is born.1982: John Hinckley is found not guilty by reason of insanity in the attempted assassination of President Reagan.

Today in History elements mostly cribbed from The History Channel, Wikipedia, The New York Times, The Jewish World Review, The Writer's Almanac and anything else I can dig up.