Today is Saturday, June 16, the 167th day of 2007. There are 198 days left in the year.

Today's Highlight in History:

On June 16, 1858, in a speech in Springfield, Ill., Senate candidate Abraham Lincoln said the slavery issue had to be resolved, declaring, "A house divided against itself cannot stand."

On this date:

455 Rome is sacked by the Vandal army.

1815 Napoleon defeats the Prussians at the Battle of Ligny.

1858 Abraham Lincoln, in accepting the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate in Illinois, declares that, "A house divided against itself cannot stand."

1864 The siege of Petersburg and Richmond begins after a moonlight skirmish.

1883 1883 The New York Giants baseball team admitted all ladies for free to the ballpark. It was the first Ladies Day.

1884 First roller coaster in America opens

1897, the government signed a treaty of annexation with Hawaii.

1903, Ford Motor Co. was incorporated. The ten employees began producing the company's first car, the Model A.

1907 The Russian czar dissolves the Duma in St. Petersburg.

1910 The first Father's Day is celebrated in Spokane Washington.

1922 Henry Berliner accomplished the first helicopter flight at College Park, MD.

1925 France accepts a German proposal for a security pact.

1932 The ban on Nazi storm troopers is lifted by the von Papen government in Germany.

1932, President Hoover and Vice President Charles Curtis were renominated at the Republican National Convention in Chicago.

1935 President Roosevelt's New Deal legislation is passed by the House of Representatives.

1940 French Chief of State, Henri Petain asks for an armistice with Germany.

1943, comedian Charles Chaplin, 54, married his fourth wife, 18-year-old Oona O'Neill, daughter of playwright Eugene O'Neill, in Carpinteria, Calif.

1952 Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl is published in the United States.

1955 The U.S. House of Representatives votes to extend Selective Service until 1959.

1955, Pope Pius XII excommunicated Argentine President Juan Peron — a ban that was lifted eight years later.

1961 Ballet star Rudolf Nureyev defects from the Soviet Union while in Paris.

1963, the world's first female space traveler, Valentina Tereshkova, was launched into orbit by the Soviet Union aboard Vostok 6.

1967, the three-day Monterey International Pop Music Festival opened in northern California.

1971 An El Greco sketch, "The Immaculate Conception," stolen in Spain 35 years earlier, is recovered in New York City by the FBI.

1976, riots broke out in the black South African township of Soweto.

1977, Soviet Communist Party General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev was named president, becoming the first person to hold both posts simultaneously.

1978 The film adaptation of "Grease" premiered in New York City.

1981 The "Chicago Tribune" purchased the Chicago Cubs baseball team from the P.K. Wrigley Chewing Gum Company for $20.5 million.

1985 Willie Banks broke the world record for the triple jump with a leap of 58 feet, 11-1/2 inches in the U.S.A. championships in Indianapolis, IN.

1987, a jury in New York acquitted Bernhard Goetz of attempted murder in the subway shooting of four young blacks he said were going to rob him; however, Goetz was convicted of illegal weapons possession. (In 1996, a civil jury ordered Goetz to pay $43 million to one of the persons he'd shot.)

1999 The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that a 1992 federal music piracy law does not prohibit a palm-sized device that can download high-quality digital music files from the Internet.

2000 U.S. federal regulators approved the merger of Bell Atlantic and GTE Corp. The merger created the nation's largest local phone company.

2000 U.S. Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson reported that an employee at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico had discovered that two computer hard drives were missing.




Ten years ago:
The British government broke off contacts it had just renewed with Sinn Fein after the Irish Republican Army killed two Protestant policemen in Lurgan, Northern Ireland.


Five years ago:
French conservatives won a landslide victory in legislative elections.

A runaway winner again in the U.S. Open, Tiger Woods became the first player since Jack Nicklaus in 1972 to capture the first two major championships of the year.


One year ago:
The House rejected a timetable for pulling U.S. forces out of Iraq, 256-153.

In Iraq, three 101st Airborne Division soldiers were killed in an attack while two others were abducted (their mutilated bodies were found three days later).

In Martinez, Calif., Susan Polk was convicted of stabbing to death her millionaire psychotherapist husband, whom she had met as a 14-year-old girl in treatment.


Today's Birthdays:
1888 Bobby Clark, comedian and actor.
1890 Stan Laurel, British-born entertainer, partner of Oliver Hardy.
1902 Barbara McClintock, geneticist.
1902 George Gaylord Simpson, paleontologist.
1917 Katharine Graham, publisher of the Washington Post.
1917 Irving Penn, fashion photographer, brother of film director Arthur Penn.
1920 John Howard Griffin, writer (Black Like Me).
1935 Jim Dine, American artist.
1938 Torgny Lindgren, Swedish writer.
1971 Tupac Shakur, rapper

Actor Bill Cobbs is 72.
Author Erich Segal is 70.
Author Joyce Carol Oates is 69.
Songwriter Lamont Dozier is 66.
Rhythm-and-blues singer Eddie Levert is 65.
Actress Joan Van Ark is 64.
Rhythm-and-blues singer James Smith (The Stylistics) is 57.
Boxer Roberto Duran is 56.
Pop singer Gino Vannelli is 55.
Actress Laurie Metcalf is 52.
Model-actress Jenny Shimizu is 40.
Actor Eddie Cibrian is 34.
Actress China Shavers is 30.
Actress Missy Peregrym is 25.
Actress Olivia Hack is 24.
Singer Diana DeGarmo ("American Idol") is 20.
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1890 Stan Laurel, British-born entertainer, partner of Oliver Hardy.

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