Today in History for June 21, 2015

Robert E.L. Key in 1952.

June 21, 1631 – English admiral and explorer John Smith died at the age of 51 in London, England. He was considered to have played an important part in the establishment of Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in North America. He was a leader of the Virginia Colony (based at Jamestown) between September 1608 and August 1609, led an exploration along the rivers of Virginia and the Chesapeake Bay and was the first English explorer to map the Chesapeake Bay area and New England.

June 21, 1779 - Spain declared war on Great Britain, creating a de facto alliance with the Americans.

June 21, 1788 – New Hampshire ratified the Constitution of the United States and was admitted as the ninth state in the United States.

June 21, 1803 – Paleontologist Timothy Abbott Conrad was born near Trenton, N.J. He studied the fossil beds at Claiborne for two years with Charles Tait and published the first geologic map of Alabama. Conrad shipped cases full of fossils back to Philadelphia for identification.

June 21, 1817 – Citizens of Murder Creek (Sparta area) sent a petition to Gen. Edmund P. Gaines, Commandant at Camp Montgomery, in Baldwin County, praying for protection from the Indians and protesting the theft of their cattle, hogs and grain.

June 21, 1821 – The Claiborne Masonic Lodge united with eight other lodges in the formation of the Grand Lodge of Alabama and was given the serial number three, a designation retained today by the lodge in Monroeville, Ala. Alabama governor John Murphy was first Worshipful Master.

June 21, 1864 – During the Civil War, the Battle of Jerusalem Plank Road began as Union General Ulysses S. Grant continued to stretch his lines around Petersburg, Va. The Confederates were able to halt Grant's attempt to cut off their control of the Weldon Railroad.

June 21, 1865 - President Andrew Johnson appointed Lewis Parsons provisional governor of Alabama. Parsons, the grandson of Great Awakening leader Jonathan Edwards, was born in New York and moved to Talladega in 1840. Although a Unionist, Parsons followed moderate policies as he reorganized Alabama's state government under Johnson's reconstruction plan. His term ended in December 1865.

June 21, 1898 – Naturalist and writer Donald Peattie was born in Chicago.

June 21, 1912 – Author Mary McCarthy was born in Seattle, Wash.

June 21, 1915 – The weather bureau thermometer in Evergreen, Ala. on this Monday reached 100 degrees during a heat wave that hit Conecuh County.

June 21, 1930 – “The Social Lion,” a movie version of Alabama author Octavus Roy Cohen's book “Marco Himself,” was released.

June 21, 1933 - Author Gerald W. Barrax was born in Atalla, Ala.

June 21, 1938 – Monroeville, Ala. held its first ever Monroe Mills Day.

June 21, 1939 – National Baseball Hall of Fame first baseman Lou Gehrig quit baseball due to illness.

June 21, 1940 – The first successful west-to-east navigation of the Northwest Passage began at Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

June 21, 1948 – Novelist Ian McEwan was born in Aldershot, England.

June 21, 1952 – Alabama Gov. Gordon Persons named prominent Evergreen attorney Robert E.L. Key as Circuit Solicitor of the 21st Judicial Circuit, which included Conecuh, Escambia and Monroe counties. Key was to fill the unexpired term of Archie Elliott, who’d been named Circuit Judge to fill the unexpired term of the late Judge F.W. Hare. Key was the first circuit court official from Conecuh County in three decades, the last being the late Col. G.O. Dickey, who had served as Circuit Solicitor for a number of years.

June 21, 1953 – Strong winds ripped the screen into hundreds of pieces at the Moonlite Drive-In Theatre four miles outside of Evergreen, Ala. on the Brooklyn Highway. Owned by Bert Gorum, the winds caused damaged estimated at $1,200 and put the theater out of business for a week.

June 21, 1964 – Three civil rights workers, Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Mickey Schwerner, were murdered in Neshoba County, Miss. by members of the Ku Klux Klan. Their bodies were found on Aug. 4, 1964 in an earthen dam, and eight Ku Klux Klan members later went to federal prison on conspiracy charges.

June 21, 1967 – The annual Evergreen Rotary Club Fish and Wildlife Camp began at Tal Stuart’s Pone near Belleville, Ala. Sixty-one boys participated in the two-day camp, which wrapped up on the following day.

June 21, 1982 – A jury in Washington, D.C. found John Hinckley Jr. not guilty by reason of insanity for the attempted assassination of U.S. President Ronald Reagan.

June 21, 1983 – Former Conecuh County Tax Assessor James L. Lee passed away in a Brewton, Ala. nursing home at the age of 96. He was a native and longtime resident of Conecuh County and held the office of tax assessor longer than any person had held an elected office in the history of Conecuh County.

June 21, 1985 - Scientists announced that skeletal remains exhumed in Brazil were those of Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele.

June 21, 1989 - The television program “Lover Come Hack to Me,” teleplay by Alabama author Robert McDowell, was broadcast as part of the “Tales from the Crypt” series.

June 21, 2003 - The fifth Harry Potter book, "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," was published by J.K. Rowling. Amazon.com shipped out more than one million copies on this day making the day the largest distribution day of a single item in e-commerce history. The book set sales records around the world with an estimated five million copies were sold on the first day.