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June 30
1905. Albert Einstein publicizes "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" introducing the concept of special relativity.
1908. The "Tunguska Event" occurs. A meteoroid or comet fragment bursts 5-10 kilometers above the ground in the remote reaches of Siberia with the force of approximately 10-15 megatons of TNT (i.e. 1,000 times the power of the Hiroshima or Nagasaki atomoc bombs).
1921. Former President William Howard Taft is appointed Chief Justice of the United States, the job he had always sought.
1934. The Night of the Long Knives, occurs, with Adolf Hitler removing most of his political enemies in Nazi Germany, including most notably Ernst Rohm, the head of the Brown Shirts. At least 85 people are killed.
1944. Nearly a month after D-Day, the city of Cherbourg on the Cotentin peninsula falls to the Allies. The deep water port city is critical to Allied supply logistics.
1986. The United States Supreme Court rules in Bowers v. Hardwick that states can outlaw homosexual acts between consenting adults. The case was a 5-4 decision and one of the members of the majority, Lewis Powell, would later go on to say that he believed he had erred in his decision. In 1995, Justice Blackmun, who had written the dissenting opinion, would note that the dissent was mostly written by his former law clerk (and now Stanford Law Professor) Pam Karlan, who was herself homosexual. The same state law that the Supreme Court had upheld in 1986 would be reversed by the Georgia Supreme Court, on state constitutional law grounds, in 1998, and Bowers itself would be overturned in 2003 by the Supreme Court. In overturning the case, the Court would note: "Bowers was not correct when it was decided, and it is not correct today."
1997. The United Kingdom turns sovereignty of Hong Kong over to China.
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