Today is Sunday, June 15, the 166th day of 2025 with 199 to follow.
Today is Father's Day.
The moon is waning. Morning stars are Mars, Neptune, Saturn and Venus. Evening stars are Jupiter and Mars.
Those born on this date are under the sign of Gemini. They include England's "Black" Prince Edward in 1330; musician Edvard Grieg in 1843; musician Erroll Garner in 1923; musician Waylon Jennings (Highwaymen) in 1937; Baseball Hall of Fame member Billy Williams in 1938 (age 87); musician Harry Nilsson in 1941; actor Simon Callow in 1949 (age 76); musician Russell Hitchcock (Air Supply) in 1949 (age 76); businessman Lakshmi Mittal in 1950 (age 75); musician Steve Walsh (Kansas) in 1951 (age 74); actor Jim Varney in 1949; Chinese President Xi Jinping in 1953 (age 72); actor Jim Belushi in 1954 (age 71); actor Julie Hagerty in 1955 (age 70); Baseball Hall of Fame member Wade Boggs in 1958 (age 67); actor Helen Hunt in 1963 (age 62); musician Scott Rockenfield (Queensrÿche) in 1963 (age 62); actor Courteney Cox in 1964 (age 61); actor/musician Ice Cube (N.W.A.) in 1969 (age 56); actor Leah Remini in 1970 (age 55); actor Jake Busey in 1971 (age 54); actor Neil Patrick Harris in 1973 (age 52); actor Elizabeth Reaser in 1975 (age 49); musician Dryden Mitchell (Alien Ant Farm) in 1976 (age 49); Mohamed Muizzu, president of the Maldives, in 1978 (age 47); musician Billy Martin (Good Charlotte) in 1981 (age 44); musician Wayne Sermon (Imagine Dragons) in 1984 (age 41); wrestler Bayley in 1989 (age 36); musician Parker McCollum in 1992 (age 33); musician Hoshi (Seventeen) in 1996 (age 29); musician Peso Pluma in 1999 (age 26); musician Yeosang (Ateez) in 1999 (age 26); actor Sterling Jerins in 2004 (age 21).
On this date in history:
In 1215, under pressure from rebellious barons, England's King John signed the Magna Carta, a crucial first step toward creating Britain's constitutional monarchy.
In 1752, Benjamin Franklin, in a dangerous experiment, demonstrated the relationship between lightning and electricity by flying a kite during a storm in Philadelphia. An iron key suspended from the kite string attracted a lightning bolt.
In 1785, two Frenchmen attempting to cross the English Channel in a hot-air balloon were killed when their balloon caught fire and crashed. It was the first fatal aviation accident.
In 1846, the U.S.-Canadian border was established.
In 1877, Henry Ossian Flipper, born a slave in Thomasville, Ga., became the first Black cadet to graduate from West Point. The U.S. Army later court martialed and dismissed him, but President Bill Clinton posthumously pardoned him in 1999.
In 1904, the excursion steamboat General Slocum caught fire on the East River in New York, killing 1,121 people.
In 1934, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park was established on a tract of land straddling North Carolina and Tennessee. President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated the park on Sept. 2, 1940.
In 1944, U.S. forces invaded the Japanese-occupied Mariana Islands in World War II. By day's end, a beachhead had been established on the island of Saipan.
In 1987, Richard Norton of Philadelphia and Calin Rosetti of West Germany completed the first polar circumnavigation of Earth in a single-engine propeller aircraft, landing in Paris after a 38,000-mile flight.
In 2007, a Mississippi jury convicted a reputed Ku Klux Klansman, James Ford Seale, in the abductions and killings of two black teenagers 43 years earlier. Seale was sentenced to life in prison and died in 2011.
In 2012, an executive order by President Barack Obama would allow hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children to legally seek work permits and obtain documents such as driver's licenses. The program was called the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA.
In 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that federal civil rights law protects LGBTQ workers from being fired based on their sexual or gender orientation.
In 2023, a British parliamentary panel concluded that former Prime Minister Boris Johnson intentionally misled the House of Commons when he told it there had been no lockdown parties in Downing Street during the COVID-19 pandemic.
A thought for the day: "We must get the American public to look past the glitter, beyond the showmanship, to the reality, the hard substance of things." -- former N.Y. Gov. Mario Cuomo
