Today in History: June 25, Korean War begins
Today is Thursday, June 25, the 176th day of 2026. There are 189 days left in the year.
Today in history:
On June 25, 1950, war broke out in Korea as forces from the communist North invaded the South. The conflict would last for over three years and would bring about an estimated 4 million deaths, three quarters of them civilians.
Also on this date:
In 1876, the Battle of the Little Bighorn, also known as Custer’s Last Stand, began in the Montana Territory. As many as 100 Native Americans were killed in the battle, as were 268 people attached to the 7th Cavalry Regiment, including George Armstrong Custer and Mark Kellogg, the first Associated Press reporter to die in the line of duty.
In 1938, the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which set a minimum wage, guaranteed overtime pay and banned “oppressive child labor,” was signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
In 1947, “The Diary of a Young Girl,” the personal journal of Anne Frank, a German-born Jewish girl who hid with her family from the Nazis in Amsterdam during World War II, was first published.
In 1973, former White House Counsel John Dean began testifying before the Senate Watergate Committee, implicating top administration officials, including President Richard Nixon as well as himself, in the Watergate scandal and cover-up.
In 1990, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Department of Health, its first “right-to-die” decision, ruled 5-4 that family members could be barred from ending the lives of persistently comatose relatives who had not made their wishes known conclusively.
In 1993, Kim Campbell was sworn in as Canada’s 19th prime minister, the first woman to hold the post.
In 1996, a truck bomb killed 19 Americans and injured hundreds at a U.S. military housing complex in Saudi Arabia.
In 2015, in the case of King v. Burwell, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld nationwide tax subsidies under President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul in a 6-3 ruling that preserved health insurance for millions of Americans.
In 2021, a white former Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, was sentenced to 22 1/2 years in prison for the murder of George Floyd, a Black man whose death led to some of the biggest protests against racial injustice in the U.S. in generations.
Today’s Birthdays: Civil rights activist James Meredith is 93. Singer Carly Simon is 83. Actor-comedian Jimmie Walker is 79. Musician Tim Finn is 74. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor is 72. Actor-writer-comedian Ricky Gervais is 65. Hockey Hall of Famer Doug Gilmour is 63. Author Yann Martel (“Life of Pi”) is 63. Actor Angela Kinsey (“The Office”) is 55. Actor Linda Cardellini is 51. Actor Busy Philipps is 47. Singer Benson Boone is 24. Actor Kylie Cantrall is 21. Actor McKenna Grace is 20.
