This day in history - June 30

[seamusTX]

1906 - President Theodore Roosevelt signed the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act.

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These laws were one of the earliest and greatest expansions of the federal government into daily life.

1908 - An aerial explosion over the Tunguska River, a remote area of Siberia, leveled 800 square miles.

The event is generally thought to be the action of a meteor burning in the atmosphere, but explanations have ranged from black holes to UFOs.

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Had this event occurred over a city, the effects would have been as bad as a hydrogen bomb.

1921 - Former President William Howard Taft was appointed chief justice of the United States.

He was the last former president to hold a political office. (Only three have done so, not counting Cleveland.)

1936 - Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell was published.

1948 - Bell Labs publicly announced the invention of the transistor. It had been developed in the preceding years by John Bardeen, William Shockley, and Walter Brattain. All three received Nobel prizes for the invention.

The importance of the transistor cannot be overstated.

1971 - The 26th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, guaranteeing the right to vote to those age 18 or older.

Soyuz 11 returned to earth with three dead cosmonauts aboard. A series of failures had caused the cabin to lose pressure in the vacuum of outer space.

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1974 - Alberta Williams King, the 71-year-old mother of Martin Luther King Jr, and two other worshipers were fatally shot inside Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. The assassin was a lunatic who claimed to hate all Christians.

- Jim