Today in History: President Richard Nixon lifts trade embargo on China

Today in History: President Richard Nixon lifts trade embargo on China

Today is Monday, June 10, the 162nd day of 2024. There are 204 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On June 10, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon lifted a two-decades-old trade embargo on China.

On this date:

In 1692, the first execution resulting from the Salem witch trials in Massachusetts took place as Bridget Bishop was hanged.

In 1907, eleven men in five cars set out from the French embassy in Beijing on a race to Paris. (Prince Scipione Borghese of Italy was the first to arrive in the French capital two months later.)

In 1935, Alcoholics Anonymous was founded in Akron, Ohio, by Dr. Robert Holbrook Smith and William Griffith Wilson.

In 1963, President John F. Kennedy signed into law the Equal Pay Act of 1963, aimed at eliminating wage disparities based on gender.

In 1967, six days of war in the Mideast involving Israel, Syria, Egypt, Jordan and Iraq ended as Israel and Syria accepted a United Nations-mediated cease-fire.

In 1977, James Earl Ray, the convicted assassin of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., escaped from Brushy Mountain State Prison in Tennessee with six others; he was recaptured June 13.

In 1978, Affirmed, ridden by Steve Cauthen, won the 110th Belmont Stakes to claim horse racing’s 11th Triple Crown.

In 1991, 11-year-old Jaycee Dugard of South Lake Tahoe, California, was abducted by Phillip and Nancy Garrido; Jaycee was held by the couple for 18 years before she was found by authorities.

In 2009, James von Brunn, an 88-year-old white supremacist, opened fire in the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., killing security guard Stephen T. Johns. (Von Brunn died at a North Carolina hospital in January 2010 while awaiting trial.)

In 2013, a trial began in Sanford, Florida, in the trial of neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman, charged with second-degree murder in the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. (Zimmerman was acquitted.)

In 2016, Muhammad Ali was laid to rest in his hometown of Louisville, Kentucky, after an all-day send-off. “Mr. Hockey” Gordie Howe, who set scoring records that stood for decades, died in Sylvania, Ohio, at 88.

In 2020, protesters pulled down a century-old statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis in Richmond, Virginia, the former capital of the Confederacy.

In 2022, Britney Spears married her longtime partner Sam Asghari at a Southern California ceremony that came months after the pop superstar won her freedom from a court conservatorship. (Asghari would file for divorce 14 months later.)

In 2023, Ted Kaczynski, the Harvard-educated mathematician known as the “Unabomber” who retreated to a dingy shack in the Montana wilderness and ran a 17-year bombing campaign that killed three people and injured 23 others, died at a federal prison medical center.

Today’s Birthdays: Actor Alexandra Stewart is 84. Singer Shirley Alston Reeves (The Shirelles) is 82. Actor Jurgen Prochnow is 82. Media commentator Jeff Greenfield is 80. Actor Frankie Faison is 74. Football Hall of Famer Dan Fouts is 72. Country singer-songwriter Thom Schuyler is 71. Former Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., is 70. Actor Andrew Stevens is 68. Singer Barrington Henderson is 67. Rock musician Kim Deal is 62. Singer Maxi Priest is 62. Actor Gina Gershon is 61. Actor Jeanne Tripplehorn is 60. Rock musician Jimmy Chamberlin is 59. Actor Ben Daniels is 59. Actor Kate Flannery is 59. Model-actor Elizabeth Hurley is 58. Rock musician Joey Santiago is 58. Actor Doug McKeon is 57. Rock musician Emma Anderson is 56. Country musician Brian Hofeldt (The Derailers) is 56. Rapper The D.O.C. is 55. Rock singer Mike Doughty is 53. R&B singer Faith Evans is 50. Actor Hugh Dancy is 48. R&B singer Lemisha Grinstead (702) is 45. Actor DJ Qualls is 45. Actor Shane West is 45. Country singer Lee Brice is 44. Singer Hoku is 42. Actor Leelee Sobieski is 41. Olympic gold medal figure skater Tara Lipinski is 41. Americana musician Bridget Kearney (Lake Street Dive) is 38. Actor Titus Makin is 34. Actor Tristin Mays is 33. Sasha Obama is 22. Actor Eden McCoy is 20.