Today is Thursday, June 19, the 170th day of 2025. There are 195 days left in the year. This is Juneteenth.
Today in history:
On June 19, 1865, Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, with news that the Civil War was over and that all remaining enslaved people in Texas were free — an event now celebrated nationwide as Juneteenth.
Also on this date:
In 1910, the first-ever Father's Day in the United States was celebrated in Spokane, Washington. (President Richard Nixon would make Father's Day a federally recognized annual observation through a proclamation in 1972.)
In 1953, Julius Rosenberg, 35, and his wife, Ethel, 37, convicted of conspiring to pass U.S. atomic secrets to the Soviet Union, were executed at Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, New York; they were the first American civilians to be executed for espionage.
In 1963, Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova completed her historic flight as the first woman in space, landing safely by parachute to conclude the Vostok 6 mission.
In 1964, the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 was approved by the U.S. Senate, 73-27, after surviving a lengthy filibuster.
