June seventh

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

On this date:
In 1654, Louis the 14th was crowned King of France in Rheims.

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 1939, King George the Sixth and his wife, Queen Elizabeth, arrived at Niagara Falls, New York from Canada on the first visit to the United States by a reigning British monarch.

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 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 Junior, a 49-year-old black man, was chained to a pickup truck and dragged to his death in Jasper, Texas. (Two white men were later sentenced to death for the crime; a third received life in prison.)

Ten years ago: South African President F.W. de Klerk announced he was lifting a four-year-old state of emergency in three of the country's four provinces, with the exception of Natal.

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

One year ago: The FBI put alleged terrorist mastermind Osama Bin Laden and anti-abortion activist and accused doctor killer James Charles Kopp on the bureau's list of the Ten Most Wanted fugitives. Gunmen killed popular Mexican television host Francisco "Paco" Stanley.

"Some seek bread; and some seek wealth and ease; and some seek fame, but all are seeking rest."

-- Frederick Langbridge, English clergyman and author (1849-1922).