Today in history: June 7

updated 12:06 a.m. ET June 7, 2005

Today is Tuesday, June 7, the 158th day of 2005. There are 207 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:
On June 7, 1776, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia proposed to the Continental Congress a resolution calling for a Declaration of Independence.

On this date:
In 1753, Britain’s King George II gave his assent to an Act of Parliament establishing the British Museum.

In 1769, frontiersman Daniel Boone first began to explore the present-day Bluegrass State.

In 1848, French postimpressionist painter Paul Gauguin was born in Paris.

In 1864, Abraham Lincoln was nominated for another term as president at his party’s convention in Baltimore.

In 1929, the sovereign state of Vatican City came into existence as copies of the Lateran Treaty were exchanged in Rome.

In 1948, the Communists completed their takeover of Czechoslovakia with the resignation of President Eduard Benes.

In 1967, author-critic Dorothy Parker, famed for her caustic wit, died in New York.

In 1972, the musical “Grease” opened on Broadway.

In 1981, Israeli military planes destroyed a nuclear power plant in Iraq, a facility the Israelis charged could have been used to make nuclear weapons.

In 1998, in a crime that shocked the nation, James Byrd Jr., a 49-year-old black man, was dragged to his death behind a pickup truck in Jasper, Texas. (Two white men were later sentenced to death for the crime; a third received life in prison.)

Ten years ago: President Clinton vetoed his first bill, striking down a Republican plan to cut $16.4 billion in spending. Two buses carrying 108 U.N. peacekeepers freed by the Bosnian Serbs crossed into Serbia.

Five years ago: U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson ordered the breakup of Microsoft Corp., declaring the software giant should be split into two because it had “proved untrustworthy in the past.” Microsoft vowed to appeal. (An appeals court later threw out the breakup order; the Justice Department, under the Bush administration, said it would no longer seek a breakup of Microsoft.)

One year ago: A steady, near-silent stream of people circled through the rotunda of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif., where the body of the nation’s 40th president lay in repose before traveling to Washington for a state funeral. The Tampa Bay Lightning held off the Calgary Flames 2-1 in Game Seven to win their first Stanley Cup.

Today’s Birthdays: Movie director James Ivory is 77. Actress Virginia McKenna is 74. Singer Tom Jones is 65. Poet Nikki Giovanni is 62. Actor Ken Osmond (“Leave It to Beaver”) is 62. Talk show host Jenny Jones is 59. Actress Anne Twomey is 54. Actor Liam Neeson is 53. Actress Colleen Camp is 52. Singer-songwriter Johnny Clegg is 52. Actor William Forsythe is 50. Record producer L.A. Reid is 49. Singer-songwriter Prince is 47. Rock singer-musician Gordon Gano (The Violent Femmes) is 42. Rapper Ecstacy (Whodini) is 41. Rock musician Eric Kretz (Stone Temple Pilots) is 39. Rock musician David Navarro is 38. Actress Helen Baxendale is 35. Actress Larisa Oleynik is 24. Tennis player Anna Kournikova is 24. Actor Michael Cera is 17.

Thought for Today: “The slight that can be conveyed in a glance, in a gracious smile, in a wave of the hand, is often the ne plus ultra of art. What insult is so keen or so keenly felt, as the polite insult which it is impossible to resent?” — Julia Kavanagh, Irish novelist (1824-1877).

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