1844 Mormon leader Joseph Smith and his brother, Hyrum, were killed by a mob in Carthage, Ill.
1893 The New York stock market crashed.
1944 American forces completed their capture of the French port of Cherbourg from the Germans three weeks after D-Day.
1957 More than 500 people were killed when Hurricane Audrey slammed through coastal Louisiana and Texas.
1969 Patrons at the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City's Greenwich Village, clashed with police in an incident considered to be the birth of the gay rights movement.
1972 The video game company Atari was founded by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney in Santa Clara, Calif.
1977 Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI, was named a cardinal by Pope Paul VI.
1980 President Jimmy Carter signed legislation reviving draft registration.
1985 Route 66, which originally stretched from Chicago to Santa Monica, Calif., passed into history as officials decertified the road.
2005 BTK serial killer Dennis Rader pleaded guilty to 10 murders that spread fear across Wichita, Kan., beginning in the 1970s. (He later received multiple life sentences.)
2007 Gordon Brown became British prime minister, succeeding Tony Blair.
2011 Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was convicted by a federal jury in Chicago of corruption. (He was later sentenced to 14 years in prison.)