On This Day, June 12: Civil rights leader Medgar Evers slain

On this date in history:

In 1935, U.S. Congress passed legislation establishing Big Bend National Park in southwest Texas. The park opened to visitors July 1, 1944.

In 1939, the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum was dedicated at Cooperstown, N.Y.

In 1963, a sniper killed civil rights leader Medgar Evers outside his home in Jackson, Miss.

In 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states couldn't outlaw interracial marriages.

In 1971, Tricia Nixon, daughter of U.S. President Richard Nixon, married Edward Finch Cox in the first wedding in the Rose Garden of the White House. The event featured a 7-foot-tall, 350-pound lemon wedding cake.

In 1979, Bryan Allen, 26, pedaled the 70-pound Gossamer Albatross 22 miles on the first human-powered flight across the English Channel.

In 1982, an estimated 700,000 people gathered in New York's Central Park to call for world nuclear disarmament.

In 1987, President Ronald Reagan asked Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this wall."

UPI File Photo

In 1989, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that white workers who believe they were treated unfairly because of affirmative action programs can sue for remedies under civil rights legislation.

In 1991, Boris Yeltsin became the first freely elected Russian president. Yeltsin, a key figure in the demise of the Soviet Union, was president until his resignation in 1999.

In 2010, Abby Sunderland, a 16-year-old California girl trying to sail solo around the world, was rescued by a French fishing vessel after her boat lost its mast in rough weather in the Indian Ocean.

In 2012, Ron Barber, former aide to Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., who was seriously wounded in a shooting rampage, won a special election to replace her. Six people were killed and a dozen others, including Barber, were wounded in the Jan. 8, 2011, attack by Jared Lee Loughner.

In 2014, former President George H.W. Bush parachuted from a helicopter near his summer home at Kennebunkport, Maine, on his 90th birthday. Bush jumped in tandem with Mike Elliott, a retired member of the Army's Golden Knights parachute team.

File Photo by Pat Benic/UPI

In 2016, gunman Omar Mateen killed 50 people in a mass shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla. It was the deadliest attack on the American LGBTQ community in U.S. history and the shooter pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.

In 2018, President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un took part in a summit in Singapore to discuss denuclearization on the Korean peninsula.

In 2020, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed legislation banning police from using chokeholds on citizens and making race-based false police reports a crime.

In 2022, MJ, Company, Take Me Out and A Strange Loop each won multiple statues at the Tony Awards, which were held for the first time since 2019 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.