2009-06-21 02:12:01 -

Today is Saturday, June 27, the 178th day of 2009. There are 187 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date
1697 - Elector Augustus of Saxony is named King of Poland, succeeding John III.
1801 - Cairo surrenders to a British force.
1844 - Joseph Smith, founder of Mormonism, is shot dead by a mob in Carthage, Illinois.
1857 - Massacre of Cawnpore, India, where British soldiers and male residents are executed after promise of safe conduct by the Indians.
1929 - Kemal Ataturk suppresses communist propaganda in Turkey.
1932 - A constitution is proclaimed in Siam _ now Thailand.
1940 - Soviet Union invades Romania during World War II after King Carol refuses to cede Bessarabia and Bukovina.
1943 - U.S. bombers attack German-occupied Athens in World War II.
1944 - U.S. forces take critical port of Cherbourg, France, in World War II, allowing the expansion from Normandy beachhead.
1946 - Foreign Ministers of Britain, United States, Soviet Union and France transfer Dodecanese Islands from Italy to Greece, and areas of northern Italy to France.
1950 - U.N. Secretary General Trygve Lie urges members of United Nations to assist South Korea in repelling North Korean attacks; U.S. President Harry S. Truman orders U.S. Air Force and Navy into Korean conflict.
1967 - Police clash with the patrons of the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City. The incident becomes a focal point for gay rights advocates.
1972 - Northern Ireland enjoys first day of peace in almost three years as Irish Republican Army begins ceasefire.
1977 _ French Somaliland becomes Africa's 49th independent state, the Republic of Djibouti.
1988 - Pope John Paul II, on a visit to Austria, gives a warm greeting to President Kurt Waldheim, under attack for alleged complicity in Nazi war crimes.
1989 - More people put on trial in China for taking part in rioting during suppression of nation's democracy movement.
1990 - Contra commanders surrender their weapons to Nicaraguan President Violetta Barrios de Chamorro in ceremony marking the end of the country's civil war.
1992 - Crown Prince Alexander, the heir to the Yugoslav throne, receives an emotional welcome upon his return, hopeful of re-establishing the monarchy.
1993 - United States fires 23 Tomahawk cruise missiles at Iraqi intelligence compound in Baghdad.
1994 - Freezing temperatures cover large areas of Brazil's coffee-growing regions causing losses of nearly a quarter of next year's crop.
1995 - The Atlantis space shuttle blasts into orbit with a U.S.-Russian crew of seven on the first shuttle-docking mission with Russia's space station Mir.
1996 - U.S. President Bill Clinton and other world leaders at their annual G-7 summit in Lyon, France, pledge to combat international terrorism in the aftermath of a truck bomb that killed 19 Americans in Saudi Arabia.
1997 - Tajikistan's president and a rebel leader sign a peace pact ending five years of bitter civil war in the Central Asian nation, but fighting lingers.
1998 - An earthquake rattles Adana in southern Turkey, killing 144 people and injuring about 1,000.
2000 - The United Nations releases a report that says AIDS has killed 19 million people worldwide. The report predicts the disease will wipe out half the teenagers in some African nations, devastating economies and societies.

2001 - The World Court, formally known as the International Court of Justice, rules 14-1, that the United States had violated an international treaty by not halting the execution by the state of Arizona of two German brothers in 1999.
2004 - The premier under ousted Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide is detained on suspicion of orchestrating killings during the February rebellion, officials report.
2005 - Kenya's final attempt to prosecute suspects in the deadly 2003 bombing of an Israeli-owned hotel near Mombasa _ an attack claimed by al-Qaida _ ends with acquittals.
2006 - Inmates riot at a prison in central Venezuela, leaving seven prisoners dead and 11 wounded.
2007 - British Prime Minister Tony Blair resigns after a decade in power, in which he transformed the Labour Party and helped end Northern Ireland's troubles but angered many of his supporters by committing Britain to a bloody, unpopular war in Iraq.
2008 - North Korea destroys the most visible symbol of its nuclear weapons program, blasting the cooling tower at its main atomic reactor into a cloud of smoke as a sign of its commitment to stop making plutonium for atomic bombs.
Today's Birthdays
Alexis Bouvard, French astronomer (1767-1843); Charles Stewart Parnell, Irish Nationalist leader (1846-1891); Helen Keller, U.S. blind and deaf scholar (1880-1968); Eduard Spranger, German educator/philosopher (1882-1963); Emma Goldman, Russian labor leader/anarchist (1869-1940); Frank O'Hara, U.S. poet/critic (1926-1966); Bob Keeshan, U.S. actor «Captain Kangaroo» (1927-2004); Tobey Maguire, U.S. actor (1975--); J.J. Abrams, U.S. director/writer/producer (1966--).
Thought For Today
Genius is eternal patience _ Michelangelo, Italian artist (1475-1564).