Category Archives: History

With moments of joyous song and yet an acute awareness of history of slavery and discrimination, Gov. Phil Murphy joined about 100 people as they reflected on the past and the future in a Juneteenth celebration Monday.

The governor didnt mince words or sugarcoat New Jerseys troubled past inside of Greater Mount Zion AME Church in Trenton.

Its not a history of which we should be in anyway proud, he said, referring to slavery.

Murphy went on to note New Jersey was one of the last states to ratify the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which abolished slavery. The state was also one of the last to ratify the 14th and 15 amendments, which gave Black people equal protection under the law and the latter gave Black men the right to vote.

New Jersey didnt ratify the 14th Amendment until April 2003, Murphy noted.

The day remembers June 19, 1865, when Gen. Gordon Granger and Union soldiers brought news of the Emancipation Proclamation to enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, and declared that all people held in slavery in the U.S. must be freed. They were the last slaves to learn of their freedom because Texas was a remote state.

The governor also went as far as to point out that there were still enslaved Black people in New Jersey when Union soldiers brought the news to Texas.

But to be absolutely certain it is a history we must acknowledge and a history we must teach, Murphy said, adding, While we cannot undo our states sorry legacy on race, we can work to overcome and make up for it.

Mondays event was one of numerous celebrations and remembrances that took place across the state over the last few days.

Asbury Park held Juneteenth celebrations at Springwood Ave. Park, with 34 vendors and 10 performers in attendance at the second annual event. There was free food, vendors, activities, and performances for attendees to enjoy.

In South Jersey, the Gloucester County NAACP and Gloucester County Prosecutors Office hosted their third annual Juneteenth celebration in Deptford on Saturday at Fasola Park, featuring live music, food, vendors, a DJ, and more.

New Jersey celebrated Juneteenth as a state holiday on Friday, for the second year. But the federal holiday for Juneteenth is Monday.

NJ Advance Media Staff Writer Amethyst Martinez contributed to this report.

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Matt Arco may be reached at marco@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @MatthewArco.

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No sugarcoating N.J.s history with slavery from Murphy at Juneteenth event - NJ.com

Emberly McLean-Bernard, born six weeks premature in rural Mississippi, weighed less than five pounds when doctors sent her home. She did not cry and barely ate, her mother said, and not two days elapsed before she began to gasp for breath. Jocelyn McLean rushed her daughter to the nearest emergency room, but the baby was already turning blue.

The medical team went straight to code blue, pumping air into the babys lungs, trying to force an IV line into Emberlys neck and scalp, prodding her with a rectal thermometer but her vital signs kept failing. After four hours, they gave up.

A state medical examiner concluded that the death had not occurred because of a medical problem, but had been a homicide, the result of blunt force injuries with signs of strangulation.

Ms. McLean, a 29-year-old Black mother with two other small children, was charged with capital murder.

Ms. McLean was stunned. The emergency room doctor who had tried to save the baby was shocked. But Dr. Joye Carter, a forensic pathologist tapped by the defense to review the case, saw an all-too-familiar pattern: a medical examiner who made a ruling without talking to the doctor or even examining the hospital records. Supervisors who signed off on his decision. A criminal justice system that all too often sends Black people to prison on evidence that might not have convicted someone else. In court, Ms. McLean and her lawyer recalled, Ms. McLean was called a monster.

She spent more than a year in jail before Dr. Carters autopsy review forced the state medical examiner and prosecutor to acknowledge that the babys injuries could be explained by the desperate attempts to save her that night.

Im thankful that this woman didnt murder her child, Steven Jubera, the assistant district attorney in Tallahatchie County, said in an interview after the charges were dismissed. But the flip side of it is, My God, Ive had a woman locked up.

The nations death investigation system, a patchwork of medical examiners, freelance experts and elected coroners who may have no medical training, is responsible for examining suspicious and unexplained deaths. Wrapped in a mantle of scientific authority, its practitioners translate the complexities of disease, decomposition, toxicology and physics into simple categories like accident, homicide or death by natural causes, setting in motion the legal systems gravest cases and wielding tremendous influence over juries.

Yet these experts are far from infallible. As forensic science of all kinds faces scrutiny about its reliability, with blood spatter patterns, hair matching and even fingerprints no longer regarded as the irrefutable evidence they once were, the science of death has been roiled over the past year with questions about whether the work of medical examiners is affected by racial bias, preconceived expectations and the powerful influence of law enforcement.

A study published last year by the Journal of Forensic Sciences found evidence of cognitive bias when 133 forensic scientists were presented with identical medical evidence in hypothetical cases involving child deaths. The deaths were more likely to be ruled an accident if the child was white and the caregiver was a grandmother; they were more frequently ruled a homicide when the child was Black and being cared for by the mothers boyfriend.

The study, whose authors included Dr. Carter, touched on the very essence of the simmering debate over forensic pathology. It showed, its authors said, that judgments that ought to be based on science can become clouded by prejudice when medical examiners allow their findings to be affected by information that is not medically relevant. But many leaders in the field insist that medical examiners are obligated to consider the totality of the case before them including statistics showing that boyfriends are more likely than blood relatives to commit child abuse.

The new research was met by an explosive backlash. The National Association of Medical Examiners complained that the study had been poorly designed and improperly conducted. One association member filed an ethics complaint against Dr. Carter and the three other forensic pathologists listed as authors, claiming that the paper would do incalculable damage to our profession.

One of the authors suggested retracting the paper simply to end the controversy. I cant even sleep at night because of all the hate and vitriol that Ive received, he wrote in an email shared with The Times. In frustration, Dr. Carter, who had spent years trying to expand racial representation in the profession, resigned as head of the organizations diversity committee.

Recent cases like the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis where some experts contended that the prolonged weight of police officers on Mr. Floyd was not the cause of his death have catapulted the debate over bias into the public arena.

Dr. Andrew Baker, the chief medical examiner in Minneapolis, who would go on to perform the official autopsy in the Floyd case, acknowledged in an address to the American Academy of Forensic Sciences in 2015 that egregious failures of the system have led to tragic consequences for innocent defendants.

But he attributed the failings to bad apples in the profession, not a failure to implement safeguards against error. Overt failings such as incompetence, dishonesty, fraud and corruption do not constitute cognitive bias, he said.

Dan Simon, a professor of law and psychology who served for six years on the federal committee charged with creating better forensic standards, said medical examiners have been uniquely resistant to adopting reforms. They stand out in their recalcitrance, he said. And its a serious problem.

Critics say that a reluctance to admit the possibility of bias, combined with a lack of diversity in the profession and a traditionally cozy relationship with law enforcement, can increase the chances of racial disparities when medical examiners err. A string of Black and Latino defendants have been freed in recent years, some from death row, after the autopsy findings that had helped convict them were disproved.

In one California case, Vicente Benavides spent 25 years on death row on charges of raping and sodomizing his girlfriends 21-month-old daughter so brutally that it killed her. Mr. Benavides was released in 2018 after experts said the cause of death presented at trial was anatomically impossible.

Before getting involved in the case of Emberlys death in Mississippi, Dr. Carter had spent much of her career taking on the issue of racial bias in the forensics profession.

She attended medical school at Howard University, which was then the only historically Black school with a pathology residency, and in 1992 became the first Black woman to lead a medical examiners office, in Washington. She realized that there was virtually no pipeline to train and recruit nonwhites in her profession even though more than half of homicide victims in the country are Black.

Later on, she heard absurd claims from fellow medical examiners, including that Black people were impervious to pain and that bruises cannot be detected on dark skin. She came to believe that a lack of cross-cultural training was causing mistakes with large consequences.

Some of those ramifications became apparent during her forensic pathology residency, in the 1980s, when she was the only Black pathologist in the office of the medical examiner in Miami.

A string of poor Black women were turning up dead in dismal settings cheap hotels, abandoned buildings, open fields. Though the women were found in similar poses, the deputy medical examiner believed their deaths had been triggered by a combination of cocaine use and voluntary sex. Nearly all were classified as drug-induced accidents.

Dr. Carter pushed back. The victim she examined had a severe crack habit, but Dr. Carter declined to call the death an accident.

She was right after a public outcry, the autopsies were reviewed; injuries were found that had been overlooked or dismissed, and the deaths were all reclassified as homicides. A man with prior rape convictions became the prime suspect in 32 killings over nearly a decade. He died before he could be brought to trial.

Over the years, the most commonly cited source of bias in forensic pathology has been law enforcement influence, in part because in some places police detectives are routinely present during autopsies.

In the Mississippi case, it may have been the other way around: The prosecutor, Mr. Jubera, said there was no suspicion of foul play in Emberlys death until the pathologist called it a homicide. That left, he said, only one suspect: her mother.

For months after Emberlys death, Jocelyn McLean called the county coroner and the state medical examiners office looking for an explanation of why her daughter had died, worried that she had missed a warning sign, or that the hospital had released the baby too soon.

She got no answers. The medical examiners office had a massive backlog that was forcing families, the police and courts across the state to wait lengthy periods for autopsy reports.

But unlike in many jurisdictions, Mississippis medical examiners were board-certified forensic pathologists working in a state-of-the-art lab. Still, 15 months ticked by before the local prosecutor was notified by the pathologist on the case, Dr. J. Brent Davis, that the death was a homicide.

Ms. McLean, who was living near Atlanta and had been visiting Mississippi when she went into labor, saw the first sign of trouble in December 2017, when she received a Facebook message from a caseworker at the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services warning that if Ms. McLeans two living children were not seen by the agency within 48 hours, they would be removed from her custody.

During the subsequent visit, the caseworker disclosed that state authorities in Mississippi had concluded that Emberly had been a victim of child abuse. I was like, aint no way. Aint no way that could have happened, Ms. McLean said. She was in my custody the whole time.

Emberlys siblings, who were then toddlers, were forced to strip naked for an exam and were removed from Ms. McLeans custody for almost a year.

Her first chance to see the autopsy report came in early 2019, when she agreed to sit down with Mississippi homicide investigators to give a voluntary statement.

During that interview, one of the investigators claimed that a tear in Emberlys rectum could have been caused only by sexual abuse.

Ms. McLean responded in a tone of subdued disbelief: Are you saying she was raped?

As she began to grasp what the investigators were implying, she twice asked to take a lie-detector test. None was administered.

The prosecutor, Mr. Jubera, said he ultimately disregarded the medical examiners findings of potential sexual abuse, saying that they didnt make sense in this scenario. But he did not question the homicide ruling. I have to rely on my experts, he said.

He theorized that Ms. McLean, upset by relationship problems with Emberlys father, had killed the baby in a postpartum snap.

Three years after Emberlys death, Ms. McLean was indicted on a charge of capital murder.

She remained in jail for almost a year, telling her children over video visits that she was working at a new job. When the pandemic delayed her trial, a judge allowed her release on a $250,000 bond and a $350-a-month ankle monitor.

Her court-appointed lawyer, Tara Lang, was troubled by the case. Mississippi has the countrys highest infant mortality rate, and the baby had been released from the neonatal ward before she began to gain weight.

Dr. Rodney Baine, the doctor who had tried to save Emberlys life, told Ms. Lang that the baby showed no signs of injury when she arrived at the hospital but was simply very vulnerable and very sick.

He reiterated that contention in an interview with The Times. Its just A.O.G., Dr. Baine said. Act of God.

Ms. McLean found herself wondering if the medical examiner would have looked at the death of a white child differently. Im a Black mother, she said. He just knew, off rip she killed her baby.

Her lawyer was introduced to a medical expert she was told might be able to help: Dr. Carter.

When I looked at the autopsy, I had already read the medical records, Dr. Carter, 65, said. So then I was like, What? This doesnt make any sense. This makes no sense at all.

The medical examiners report, she wrote in a memo, did not mention several alternative explanations for the babys condition: a post-mortem test for a virus that came back positive, thermometer probes that could have caused the rectal tear, multiple attempts to find a vein that left bruising and puncture wounds in her head and neck.

It was clear immediately to me that the doctor hadnt reviewed the medical records, Dr. Carter said.

It is not clear why Dr. Davis did not have the records in his case file or insist on getting them.

Ive done I dont know how many autopsies the first thing you look at is the emergency room records, said Dr. Baine, the emergency room physician who had tried to save Emberly.

The Tallahatchie County coroner, Ginger Meriwether, did not return calls for comment. Dr. Davis, who conducted the examination, and the supervisors who approved it also declined to comment.

This is the kind of case that chills you to the bone, Dr. Carter said.

In October, more than five years after Emberly died, Jocelyn McLeans capital murder trial was finally set to begin.

Her lawyer, Ms. Lang, had been raising serious questions about the case for more than a year, sending the prosecutor first the missing medical records, then Dr. Carters review of the autopsy report.

Mr. Jubera had in turn sent them to the state medical examiners office and to Dr. Davis, who was by then working in Utah.

Months went by with no response. So Ms. Lang prepared to confront Dr. Davis on the witness stand about how he had reached his conclusions.

Just days before trial, Dr. Davis abruptly changed his mind. The death was not a homicide after all, he wrote in a memo to Mr. Jubera. The babys injuries were consistent with lifesaving efforts and, in the genital area, diaper rash.

Dr. Davis wrote that the revision was prompted by a review of the hospital records, which he said he had not seen before. Without them, he said, there had been no other explanation for the injuries. The charges were dropped.

The Innocence Project has filed a civil rights lawsuit against the medical examiners involved, saying that a grossly inadequate and reckless investigation had deliberately ignored evidence that weighed in Ms. McLeans favor.

On the eve of her trial, Ms. McLean had made arrangements for her children to be cared for while she was in Mississippi, and had even planned a good-luck dinner with her co-workers at McDonalds, where she is an assistant manager.

Instead, she found herself seated in the back corner of a library in Douglasville, Ga., speaking to a reporter.

She was relieved that the case had been dropped, she said, but for her the real turning point had come many months before, when her lawyer called with the news that Dr. Carter had recognized that no one had killed her baby.

It was a type of relief, she said, that somebody believed me.

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Autopsies Have a History of Costly Mistakes, Yet Change Is Slow - The New York Times

The cocktail shaker is an essential tool for every mixologist, from novice to certified professional. If youve spent any time at a bar, youve likely witnessed the display of entertainment that is a bartender shaking a cocktail around the back of their head before elegantly straining the contents into a glass. Whether youve taken one for a spin yourself or simply find yourself admiring the flashy mixology happening behind the bar on nights out, the cocktail shaker is an accessory certain to catch your eye.

The history of mixing drinks dates back as far as 7000 B.C., as proven by fragments of gourd containing traces of alcohol found in South America by archeologists. The first mention of what would later become the modern cocktail shaker appears in a 1520 letter by Spanish explorer Hernando Cortez, who wrote of cacao mixtures made in a golden cylinder-shaped container.

While first mentioned in the 16th century, the cocktail shaker as we know it today did not become a staple behind the bar until the mid-1800s. The modern cocktail shaker is likely a derivative of a simpler, albeit much messier, means of cocktail mixing sticking two glasses together and shaking. It is impossible to say who was first to use a cocktail shaker, and even harder to determine who invented the tool, but The New York Times cites George Foster, a reporter for the New York Tribune, as being the first to observe the practice. With his shirt sleeves rolled up, and his face in a fiery glow, Foster wrote in 1848, [he] seems to be pulling long ribbons of julep out of a tin cup.

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By the end of the 19th century, three distinct versions of the original cocktail shaker had been invented, and they still prevail today the French, the Boston, and the cobbler shaker.

The first cocktail shakers were early forms of the Boston shaker, a two-piece combination of a 16-ounce mixing tin or glass and 28-ounce metal tin shaker. Its important to note that while a mixing glass may be of similar size and appearance to a pint glass, they are not interchangeable. A mixing glass has been created with the explicit purpose of shaking cocktails, and thus has been heat-treated accordingly. If you swap in a pint glass for a mixing glass, its likely the weaker glass would chip into the cocktail.

The Boston shaker prevailed in terms of popularity in the United States when shakers were first introduced, but it was the French shaker that dominated at European bars. Rather than using a glass to mix cocktails, the French shaker consists of two tin pieces, with a top acting as a lid. While the aesthetics are simple and sleek, the French shaker requires bartenders to use a separate strainer, preventing the style from ever gaining popularity stateside.

Invented by Edward Hauck in 1884, the Cobbler shaker may be the version of the cocktail shaker youre most familiar with. It derives from the Boston shaker, but instead is an all-in-one mixing tool consisting of a metal tin, cap, and strainer. The name of the Cobbler shaker is said to come from the Sherry Cobbler, a famous 19th-century cocktail that needed to be shaken and then strained.

While early versions of the cocktail shaker were made from a variety of materials, when stainless steel was invented in 1913, it quickly became the primary material used for cocktail shakers. By the 1920s, it was general consensus among bartenders and drinks lovers alike that stainless steel was the best due to its rust-resistant and long-lasting qualities and it remains the material of choice for shakers today.

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The History of the Cocktail Shaker - VinePair

California is brimming with both little towns and big cities that are loaded with a fascinating history. And a lot of it started during the Gold Rush Era that began in the 1800s. Each locale offers a distinctive window into that time which helped shape the Golden State into what it is today. One of those little towns is Yreka.

Historical accounts differ as to the origin of its name. Some say it came from a Native American tribe and means "white mountain" or "north mountain." Others believe it came about from a spelling error. And still, others contend that a bakery sign was missing the b, then read backward by someone. Whatever the real origin, the name stuck.

The first to discover the shiny golden nuggets in the area was said to be a mule train packer named Abraham Thompson. Once the word got out, Thompson was joined by almost 2,000 other fortune hunters, transforming the previously unknown and virtually non-existent region into a thriving boom town.

The Siskiyou County Museum is a 2--acre outdoor site highlighting the surrounding countys rich history dating back to prehistoric times. The West Miner Street-Third Street Historic District, which is still the main thoroughfare here, is a wonderful mix of historic buildings and modern structures.

The current population hovers at just over 7,000 people and is one of those places where everybody knows your name.

Inside youll find a gold panning exhibit as well as an antique mining camp that speak to the significance of the Gold Rush here back in the day.

One can only imagine that the early miners thought this to be a good sign that they had indeed found a new golden life.

Chock full of history, possessing a thriving historical district, and still maintaining its original character and charm, Yreka is an ancient California town worth a visit.

Have you been to Yreka? If so, wed love to see your photos and hear about your experience there.

If you love history, youll no doubt be fascinated with these other ancient Northern California towns.

Address: Yreka, CA 96097, USA

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The Ancient Town In Northern California Thats Loaded With Fascinating History - Only In Your State

Tuscarawas County native William Franklin Gilmore developed a strong regional reputation as a watercolor artist, creating more than a thousand drawings in his lifetime.

His works depicted scenery in Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee and the Carolinas. Some focused on his old hometown of Gilmore in southern Tuscarawas County, including West Union United Methodist Church and Devil's Den.

He taught art in Canton public schools from 1898 to 1931 and was considered the dean of Canton artists when he died 1946. His paintings were exhibited several times at the Massillon Museum.

"During the last 15 years of his life, Mr. Gilmore's watercolor paintings were noted for their extraordinary brilliance, which he attributed to a special technique which he developed," his obituary in the Canton Repository said."Instead of mixing his bright colors, he placed them in juxtaposition on the white paper, and permitted the colors to blend together by optical illusion."

A relative, Greg McFee, is writing a book on Gilmore's life.

"The running theme in his life that I've gotten from everything was he was a strong Christian. He loved the outdoors. Most of his paintings are of the outdoors," McFee said.

Gilmore was born in a log house in Rush Township, a short distance from Gilmore, on April 1, 1865, two weeks before the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. He was the oldest child of Gordon and Roann Lakin Gilmore. McFee's great-grandmother, Lessie McFee, was Gilmore's sister.

Frank, as he was known, began teaching at age 19. He taught in Gnadenhutten and later Conover, Ohio. He was the principal of the school at Conover, but when a fire destroyed the building, he lost his job.

That's when he decided to become an artist. He enrolled in an art school in Columbus. Following graduation, he worked as an illustrator at an engraving firm.

Early in 1898, he learned that the job of supervisor of drawing and penmanship was open in the Canton schools. He landed that job, and continued to teach in the school district until his retirement.

After his retirement, Gilmore spent a year traveling on the course of the old Sandy & Beaver Canal from Bolivar to Smith's Ferry, Pa. He documented the canal with his paintings and by talking to people, McFee said. Gilmore used the information he gathered to publish a book on the canal.

In 1935, he accepted an offer as art instructor at Union College, a school in the mountains of southeastern Kentucky. He spent several summers at the school, and, in his spare time, made trips to Cumberland Gap and Cumberland Falls to paint.

Gilmore was one of the founding members of the Canton Art Institute in 1935. He taught classes in art for the education program without pay.

He was awarded honorary annual membership by the Ohio Watercolor Society, a group restricted to 50 artists who submit works around the country in a circulation exhibit. He was awarded first prize in the print division of the 1939 May Show at the Canton Art Institute and was a regular exhibitor every year.

In the summer of 1944, Gilmore took Cleveland Plain Dealer columnist Grace Goulder and several others on a tour of southern Tuscarawas County.

The trip began with lunch at Miller's Restaurant on Water Street in Uhrichsville, where they dined on chicken pie, country style, and homemade berry pie. Then they headed on to the town of Gilmore, founded by Frank's great-grandfather William Gilmore,and to Frank's boyhood home in Rush Township.

Goulder wrote that the house and barn at the family farm were empty.

"Where Mr. Gilmore's mother once had had a garden, scarlet rambler roses rioted through the weeds and spilled over the white picket fence," she wrote. "Giant hydrangea blossoms stood at the front door."

She continued, "The view from the front of the house is north toward Uhrichsville, over valley land banded with blue hills on the horizon and a Puritan's prim white church cutting into the sky line, the Kennedy Church two and a half miles away, Mr. Gilmore said.

"Looking in the other direction, from the back porch, was gently sloping pasture land with a spring in it, and beyond it square patches of yellow ripening wheat and green corn and oats of still another green."

They then stopped at the house of Sarah Ann Sanders, 84, who lived alone. Part of her property included the famous Devil's Den.

The group wanted to visit the site. "But you can't drive to it," Sanders told her guests. "You'll have to walk, and it's quite a piece."

The group walked through a forest of beech, tulip and maple before they reached the scenic spot. Gilmore told the others how one time he and his brothers came for a visit, and their pet dog slid through a stone opening to his death on the rock floor below.

"There was a rickety flight of steps built against the rocky wall and leading to the 'den' below, but we remained above, satisfied to look from safer distance," Goulder wrote.

Frank Gilmore died two years later on Feb. 22, 1946, at Aultman Hospital in Canton of a heart ailment. He was buried in the cemetery in Gnadenhutten.

Several months after his death, the Canton Art Institute held a memorial exhibition of his work.

"As a memorial to his untiring work for the institute, a 'Gilmore Memorial Award' was included in last spring's list of prizes at the May Show, and this was won by Roy E. Wilhelm for the best watercolor landscape," the Repository reported.

Greg McFee has devoted a considerable amount of time researching the life of his great-great-uncle and is planning a reunion of the Gilmore family on July 24.

Jon Baker is a reporter for The Times-Reporter and can be reached at jon.baker@timesreporter.com.

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Hooked on History: Gilmore native gained fame as watercolor artist - Times Reporter

SAVANNAH, Ga. (WSAV) Through history, we can better understand ourselves and the world around us. There is a rich chronicle of the past in every field of topic, from politics to music, that helps in seeing a more detailed picture of where society stands today.

Known by Guinness World Record as the worlds most premature baby to survive, Hutchinson celebrated his first birthday.Hutchinson was born 5 months premature at Childrens Minnesota Hospital in Minneapolis where doctors gave him a 0% chance of survival. He weighed less than a pound and could fit into the palm of a hand. He spent more than 6 months in the neonatal intensive care unit.

President Trump was allowed to hold his first rally since the COVID-19 pandemic began, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled. Tulsa, Oklahoma attorneys requested a temporary injunction against the 19,000-seat BOK Center to prevent it from hosting the Saturday rally unless the campaign instituted social distancing protocols. The BOK Centers legal team argued the arena had already agreed to provide masks and check attendees temperatures, and the justices all agreed the attorneys couldnt point to a law that required those measures.

Spaceport America would take 18 months to complete and would house Virgin Galactics space tourism business as well as other companies involved in space tourism. The spaceport now provides access to both the National Airspace System and 6,000 square miles of restricted airspace from surface to unlimited. This unique environment creates a quiet zone with minimal commercial aviation traffic that reinforces privacy and allows the safe testing of new designs with fewer regulatory delays.

Atkins v. Virginia involved Daryl Renard Atkins, who was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death for abducting, robbing, and killing 21-year-old airman, Eric Michael Nesbitt.

During the penalty phase of the trial, the defense presented Atkinss school records and the results of an IQ test carried out by clinical psychologist Dr. Evan Nelson confirmed that he had an IQ of 59. On this basis they proposed that he had an intellectual disability. In this case the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the imposition of the death penalty in cases involving intellectually disabled defendants violated the Eighth Amendments protection against cruel and unusual punishment. Despite the ruling, the State of Virginia did not immediately reduce Daryl Atkins death sentence.

Roxette, a Swedish pop duo that gained fame starting in the 1980s, dominated the Billboard Hot 100s with this song that was written by Per Gessle, who was half of the duo.The other half, Marie Fredriksson, was known for her powerful voice and dynamic onstage presence passed away in 2019.

Johnny Carson married Alexis Maas in a secret ceremony at his Malibu beach home. He met Maas on a beach a couple of years prior.Carson was 61 years old at the time of the ceremony and host of The Tonight Show on NBC.

While the film hit theaters on June 20, 1975, it was originally planned for a Christmas 1974 release. However, it was a huge success and eventually created the genre of summer blockbusters. The film starred Roy Scheider as police chief Martin Brody, Robert Shaw as shark fisherman Quint, and Richard Dreyfuss as oceanographer Matt Hooper.

Kidman was born in Honolulu to Australian parents. She was raised in Sydney and launched her acting career as a teenager. She would go on to win an Academy Award for Best Actress in 2010 for the role of Becca Corbette in the film Rabbit Hole. She was also a Golden Globe recipient this year for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Drama for her role as Lucille Ball in the film Being the Ricardos. So far, she has received six Golden Globes in total. She has also won many other awards, including two Primetime Emmy Awards.

The hotline was designed to facilitate communication between the president and Soviet premier. The establishment of the hotline to the Kremlin came in the wake of the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, in which the U.S. and U.S.S.R had come dangerously close to a nuclear war.

The first child of the novelist Charles Dickens and his wife, Catherine, Dickens Jr., became the editor of his fathers magazine All the Year Round, and a successful writer of dictionaries. However, he is most remembered for his two 1879 books Dickenss Dictionary of London and Dickenss Dictionary of the Thames.

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Today in History: 10 historical events on June 20 - WSAV-TV

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Dr. Ben Carson illustrated the significance of teaching history properly during an appearance on "Sunday Night in America with Trey Gowdy."

Sunday marked Juneteenth, a federal holiday that commemorates the day slaves learned about the Emancipation Proclamation and the end of slavery in 1865. In regard to the holiday, Carson emphasized its importance noting "Theres so much progress thats been made" since that time.

"Juneteenth is so important because it actually efficiently recognizes the emancipation of the slaves, and slavery was a horrible thing, theres no question about it. But I think we need to recognize that slavery has been a part of virtually every civilization since there has been written history," Carson explained.

The Lincoln Emancipation Statue sits in Lincoln Park on November 11, 2017 in Washington D.C.'s Capital Hill neighborhood. Paid for by former slaves and placed in the park in 1876, the statue depicts racial attitudes of the 19th century from a northern perspective. (Getty Images)

He continued, "We in America have actually done something that no one else really did. That is, we had so many people who are opposed to it that we fought a Civil War, a bloody Civil War, lost a large portion of our population to get rid of this evil. And that says something about this nation as a people. Were not all the same. We have a lot of different opinions but overall tendency was to move toward freedom and justice for people."

LAWRENCE JONES ON JUNETEENTH, FATHERS DAY AND THE GREATNESS OF AMERICA

Acknowledging the countrys history with slavery, Carson explained the need to teach our children the good along with the bad.

"This is what we need to be teaching our children. We need to enhance that. We need to learn from that. We need to build on that rather than back and dredging up every negative thing we could find and saying that is what we are and that we cant get away from it," Carson said.

Republican presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson campaigning at Nashua Community College in Nashua, NH on December 20,2015. (Getty Images)

"I think you have to be truthful about our history because remember, our history is what gives you your identity. And your identity that is thing upon which your beliefs are built. If you disrupt that chain, then you become like a leaf blowing in the wind. You dont really have a foundation. You can learn from good and from bad, and thats what wise people do. They dont try to cover the bad up or rewrite the bad. They learn from the bad and definitely build on the good," he said.

GOP CONGRESSWOMAN-ELECT ON HISTORIC WIN: DEMOCRATS TOOK VOTERS IN TEXAS FOR GRANTED

Carson also expounded on the desire for "people who dont appreciate our freedoms" to learn the significance of the progress made since Juneteenth.

Chants for Antwon Rose Jr. fill the air on Fifth Avenue during Pittsburgh's Juneteenth Parade from Freedom Corner in the Hill District to Point State Park, Saturday, June 23, 2018. (Andrew Russell/Pittsburgh Tribune-Review via AP)

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"It would be very nice if a lot of the people who are complaining today about the United States could go and live in some other parts of the world for a little while, and I think they would have a tremendous appreciation of freedom we have and why it is so vitally important for us to not only understand it but to protect it for those who are coming behind us and particularly for our young people," Carson said.

Lindsay Kornick is an associate editor for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to lindsay.kornick@fox.com and on Twitter: @lmkornick.

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Dr. Ben Carson discusses Juneteenth and the importance of teaching history - Fox News

WILKES-BARRE, LUZERNE COUNTY (WBRE/WYOU) Many locations in northeastern and central Pennsylvania spent the weekend celebrating Juneteenth.

The Union Army captured New Orleans in 1862, and slave owners in confederate states moved to Texas with more than 150,000 enslaved African Americans. For 3 years, even after president Abraham Lincoln issued the emancipation proclamation, slaves in Texas continued to be deprived of their freedom.

On June 19, 1865, troops marched to Texas, to enforce the emancipation proclamation and free the last enslaved black Americans. Those who were freed from bondage celebrated their long-overdue emancipation on June 19. Nearly 160 years later many say its a good time to reflect.

Its just been a big battle for black people in this country so I think its important to show our representation. Its just a good time to embrace diversity, unity and bring everybody together, said Nanticoke resident, Deidra Lamont.

The date has been observed by many for decades but it officially became a federal holiday last year with a stroke of President Bidens pen.

We cant rest until the promise of equality is fulfilled for every one of us in every corner of this nation. That to me is the meaning of Juneteenth. Thats what its about, said President Biden.

At least 24 states and the District of Columbia are legally recognizing Juneteenth as a public holiday this year according to a Pew Research Center. Governor Tom Wolf designated Juneteenth as an official annual observance in 2019, but Pennsylvania does not recognize it as a federal holiday.

Due to the federal holiday banks will be closed alongside the U.S. Postal Service and DMV.

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Juneteenth and the history behind it - PAHomePage.com

This weekends upcoming Pride festival marks the 50th anniversary of the first Pride march in Minneapolis. This years events will focus on the history of Pride, celebrate the progress thats been made in the fight for LGBTQ rights, and look toward the future by spotlighting the next generation of community leaders.

The first Twin Cities Pride event occurred in 1972 to commemorate the 1969 events at the Stonewall Inn, a bar located in New York Citys Greenwich Village, which was a watershed moment for the LGBTQ rights movement.

At that time, many discriminatory laws were in effect across the U.S. including laws that criminalized dressing as a gender other than that assigned at birth and there were no laws protecting the LGBTQ community from discrimination.

Public gathering spaces were frequently raided, with police often beating and arresting members of the LGBTQ community. Historic events like those at Coopers Donuts, the Black Cat Tavern and Comptons Cafeteria led to increased momentum in the movement for gay rights across the country.

When police raided the Stonewall Inn on June 28, 1969, they were met with strong resistance. Frustrated by ongoing harassment, transgender women, drag queens and gay men of color led the fight against discrimination and violence toward their community. Patrons and community members protested the raid and polices actions for six days. The uprising reignited the gay rights movement and led to the creation of many LGBTQ advocacy organizations that continue to thrive today.

One year after the uprising, members of the LGBTQ community returned to the Stonewall Inn and held what would later be recognized as the first Pride parade.

In the time since Stonewall, there has been significant progress made in the fight for equal rights for the LGBTQ community. In the last 15 years alone, weve seen the repeal of Dont Ask, Dont Tell, the legalizing of same-sex marriage and the lifting of the ban that prevented transgender people from serving in the military.

This progress took years of hard work and sacrifice and deserves to be celebrated. And yet, as we celebrate these crucial victories, so much work remains to be done.

The ban that prevented transgender people from serving in the military was initially lifted in 2016 only to see a new policy reimplement the ban in 2018. The 2018 policy was then overturned in 2021. In this brief window of very recent history, our country reversed course three times on basic rights for the transgender community. And this is only one example of ongoing legislative actions that target this community.

In the realm of health care, we saw arguments against the Affordable Care Act as recently as 2020, including the anti-discrimination protections offered by the law. Elimination of those protections would deepen the care gaps already experienced by the LGBTQ community and other marginalized communities, including discrimination that too often prevents essential access to affordable health care.

Since 2021, at least 17 states have enacted anti-LGBTQ legislation, including laws that make it a felony to provide gender-affirming health care to transgender youth, ban transgender girls from participating in sports and limit school curriculum that provides education about the LGBTQ community.

Our recent history and current reality make it clear: equal rights for the LGBTQ community continue to be debated in many spaces. And the fact that someones basic rights are up for discussion has a significant impact on physical, mental and emotional health.

Facing discrimination and barriers to health care continues to be a common experience in the transgender and non-binary community. Systemic issues include things like:

There are also distressing interpersonal interactions across the health system that have a significant impact on mental and physical health. Blue Cross own gender services consultant Alex Jackson Nelson recently described his experiences:

Curiosity about the transgender community has shown up in aggressive and invasive ways. One example was when I was in my early 20s and first went to the emergency room due to a horrible case of the flu. At the time I had a large chest (breasts) and facial hair. While I waited to see the doctor, several residents came in to gawk at me and ask me questions about my genitals and the effects of the testosterone I was taking. I failed to see the connection between these questions and my flu symptoms.

Ive also been asked to disrobe during medical appointments when seeing doctors for things like a long-lasting cold or seasonal allergies, or asked incredibly invasive questions about my body, my transition and my gender-affirming surgeries. These questions come up no matter what my appointment is for, whether it is for tendonitis in my elbow, dental work, a medication check or podiatry.

I regularly avoid making appointments for medical care, and meeting a provider for the first time makes me extremely anxious. This has gotten better over time as Ive learned to advocate for myself to get my needs met, but its still exhausting.

Blue Cross commitment

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota is committed to standing with and for the LGBTQ community and improving business operations to address disparities and achieve equity.

One way it does so is through its Gender Care and Service initiative, which is structured to eliminate barriers throughout the health care system and meet the needs of the transgender and non-binary community.

Looking to the future

As we celebrate Pride this weekend, were eager to honor the significant progress that has been made in the fight for equal rights for the LGBTQ community. Were also committed to maintaining focus on the work that remains to be done in order to achieve the vision that one day, everyone has what they need to attain their highest level of health.

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Celebrating the history of Pride on its 50th anniversary - Sahan Journal

The Army has adopted an all-around health program that targets a range of areas, including mental, spiritual and physical health. The Holistic Health and Fitness, or H2F, program aims to take the best of current mental and physical health science to improve the condition of soldiers across the force.

But this isnt the first time, by far, that the service has looked for ways to better mold soldiers for the rigors of modern battle.

Army Maj. Garrett Gatzemeyer, 37, has now documented this long and fascinating history in his recent book, Bodies for Battle: U.S. Army Physical Culture and Systematic Training, 1885-1957.

Gatzemeyer was commissioned out of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 2007, and later taught history there as an assistant professor from 2016 to 2019. Like soldiers everywhere, Gatzemeyer did his dose of calisthenics without fail when he hit the regular Army.

And, like many in uniform over the past century, he had a limited understanding of how the Army produced those bodyweight physical routines, its run distance and other measures of fitness.

As the service began revamping its protocols with combat fitness tests and other ways to keep soldiers in fighting shape, the Fruitland, Idaho, native was leafing through old Army manuals as he sought a dissertation topic while working on his doctoral degree at the University of Kansas.

Army Maj. Garrett Gatzemeyer, author of "Bodies for Battle," analyzes Army physical training between 1885 and 1957. (Garrett Gatzemeyer and University Press of Kansas)

The old physical training manuals from the 1920s and 1940s drew his attention.

The language was really rich and interesting, Gatzemeyer told Army Times. And in many ways, the PT manuals felt really, really familiar to me as an Army officer.

The pages, which dated to the pre-World War II era, had instructions on how to do burpees and a series of drills that soldiers had performed for generations.

That finding and a few more years of research led Gatzemeyer to draft his dissertation, obtain his doctoral degree and publish Bodies for Battle.

The first lesson for todays soldiers: What you do now has an origin story, and PT wasnt always the way it is now.

Gatzemeyer talked to Army Times recently about his findings. The interview was edited for length and clarity.

Q: Young students can ignore history. But there are cultural aspects in the military on how leaders and troops view physical fitness. What did you notice while you were researching that stood out?

A: That was about the time, mid-2015 to 2016, that the Army was working itself away from the Army Physical Fitness Test and moving toward what became the Army Combat Fitness Test. The study for what comes next had just concluded and one of the findings in the study was that the Army should reduce its run to 1.5 miles down from the 2-mile run, because science indicated that was the optimal distance to test cardiovascular fitness. I remember reading that the sergeant major of the Army wanted that overruled because, he said, that last half mile tested your spirit and your heart.

I was reading these old manuals at the time, and I said, theres clearly more to fitness than just measures of physiological performance, given the sergeant majors comments and then kind of reflecting on my own experience with how we associate good leaders or good soldiers with high PT scores.

A U.S. Army recruiting poster circa 1919, left, boasts that it will build men. A recruiting poster from 2019, conceived in response to the perceived shrinking of qualified recruits, targets Generation Z young adults with a focus that goes beyond traditional combat roles. (Army)

Q: On the civilian side, fitness goes through various trends and fads. From the jogging-centric 1970s to the bodybuilding craze of the 1980s and 90s and even CrossFit in recent decades. Has the Army seen such shifts?

A: Early in the period of my research I saw a tug-of-war in Army leadership, mostly at West Point, between cavalry, drill, organized sport and later systematic group exercise. And the science was just emerging. It was not just exercise for exercises sake. People are starting to learn that if you repeatedly work a muscle, for instance, that muscle can become larger or stronger and capable of carrying more weight. But theyre also trying to apply that concept more broadly and in an educative sense. So, they make connections between physical and bodily health and things like mental health, social well-being and morality.

The beginning of my research, the late 1800s to the early 1900s is also the Progressive Era. Thats when many people were looking to scientific methods to improve society, hygiene and community planning to make better citizens. The question they were asking was what the physical training was supposed to produce. Some saw it as simply a matter of becoming better horsemen, better at drill and other soldier tasks. That fit the tactics of the time, which required discipline and obedience. But some saw athletics to both improve fitness and create teamwork. But sport often meant injuries and often a focus on the talented star athletes on one team, instead of total force fitness development.

U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, cadets drill in group exercise circa 1903. (West Point archives)

Q: Itd be easy to see how some thought that combat-focused physical training was the priority, especially in the more physically demanding era of early 1900s soldiering. Was that always the case?

A: The Armys physical culture didnt start with training for specific skills or tasks. It was a little bit more abstract. It was about training the soldier and cultivating some characteristics that would be useful on the battlefield but not translate directly. So, theyre not, for instance, teaching grappling or combatives in this early period of the 1880s-1890s. But they are doing things to instill discipline and making a unit work well together.

Q: Much of physical fitness and physical culture came from a variety of other sources. How did the Army bring that knowledge into the force?

A: A lot of it was up to the individual unit commander to create. Then, with the rapid increase in the size of the Army for World War I and World War II, the force needed a more uniform way to bring all soldiers up to a standard. The Army just didnt have the depth and breadth of expertise among its physical trainers at that time. So, they had to turn to civilians and bring in experts from the outside. The institute was forced, in a way, to accept this outside advice and cede some of that territory. But, when the demands were gone, after the two world wars, military leadership took back more control and you see more of the traditional culture reemerge.

Q: You covered a lot of events in your book, from 1885 through 1957. Why did you pick those as the starting and ending points?

A: Within the Army, physical training began gaining traction after 1885 and physical educators took a major step forward, more broadly, with the founding of the American Association for the Advancement of Physical Education at that time. There are three evolutionary periods for the Armys physical culture between 1885 and 1957; the disciplinary era led by Herman Koehler, Master of the Sword at West Point; the combat-readiness interregnum of 1917-1919; and the rise of the scientific measurement school of thought after 1942. In 1957, the debate between drill and sport and systematic training had essentially ended, and Army leaders in a conference that year brought together all the leading physical fitness experts, establishing a doctrine and culture that is like what the Army has today. At that conference, for the first time since 1885, you dont see any question anymore that systematic training is valuable. A lot of it feels like consensus when you read the conference report about what the Army should be doing in terms of exercise and a daily routine for soldiers.

A U.S. Army training circular, published circa 1944, shows different body movements during exercises. (Army)

Q: What did you draw from your historical work thats applicable in thinking about soldier fitness today?

The total fitness model outline of the U.S. Army, circa 1957. (Army)

And it absolutely continues today. There is good evidence that Americans bodies are changing. I know it concerns a lot of people who are thinking on its national security implications. But one thing I can derive from looking at the past century of physical fitness in the Army is that generations tend to rise to the occasions; and the standards by which we measure people in peacetime, when we can afford to be very selective, change in wartime. Physical standards by which we measure the quality of a soldier, are all malleable, those standards are not set precisely down in stone. So, as military service changes, the character of combat evolves, and perhaps our definitions of physical fitness can also evolve alongside that. There is a lot to think about. For instance, when Space Force is standing up and thinking about what it wants its physical culture to look like, there are some big questions to ask.

Spc. Ryan Schultzman, an aircraft power plant repairer with the 404th Aviation Support Battalion, 4th Combat Aviation Brigade, 4th Infantry Division, completes the final lap of a two-mile run during the Best Army Combat Fitness Test Competition May 24 at Fort Carson, Colo. (Sgt. Clara Harty/Army)

Todd South has written about crime, courts, government and the military for multiple publications since 2004 and was named a 2014 Pulitzer finalist for a co-written project on witness intimidation. Todd is a Marine veteran of the Iraq War.

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As the Army pushes holistic health, an officer examines the history of soldier fitness - ArmyTimes.com