History of the Day for:
June 19
- 1586: English colonists sailed from Roanoke Island, N.C., after failing to establish England's first permanent settlement in America.
- 1846: The first baseball game with set rules was played at the Elysian Fields in Hoboken, N.J.
- 1862: Slavery was banned in U.S. territories.
- 1903: Lou Gehrig, the New York Yankees' "Iron Horse," was born.
- 1910: Father's Day was first celebrated.
- 1934: The Federal Communications Commission was established.
- 1953: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed by electric chair at Sing Sing prison for conspiring to pass U.S. atomic secrets to the Soviet Union.
- 1961: The Supreme Court struck down a provision in Maryland's constitution requiring state officeholders to profess a belief in God.
- 1964: The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed after an 83-day filibuster in the U.S. Senate.
- 1977: Pope Paul VI proclaimed Philadelphia bishop John Neumann the first male U.S. saint.
- 1978: The comic strip "Garfield" debuted in 21 newspapers.
- 1986: Artificial heart recipient Murray P. Haydon died in Louisville, Ky., after 16 months on the manmade pump.
- 1987: The Supreme Court struck down a Louisiana law requiring any public school teaching the theory of evolution to teach creationism science as well.
- 1987: Basque separatist group ETA commits one of its most violent attacks, in which a bomb is set off in a supermarket, Hipercor, killing 21 and injuring 45.
- 2006: Prime ministers of several northern European nations participate in a ceremonial "laying of the first stone" at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Spitsbergen, Norway.
- 2009: British troops begin Operation Panther's Claw, one of the largest air operations in modern times, when more than 350 troops made an aerial assault on Taliban positions and subsequently repelled Taliban counter-attacks.