Today in History: June 19, Union troops arrive in Galveston on ‘Juneteenth’

Today is Friday, June 19, the 170th day of 2026. There are 195 days left in the year. This is Juneteenth.Today in history:On June 19, 1865, Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, with news that the Civil War was over and that all remaining enslaved people in Texas were free — an event celebrated as the Juneteenth national holiday in the U.S.Also on this date:In 1910, the first-ever Father’s Day in the United States was celebrated in Spokane, Washington. (President Richard Nixon would make Father’s Day a federally recognized annual observation through a proclamation in 1972.)In 1953, Julius Rosenberg, 35, and his wife, Ethel, 37, convicted of conspiring to pass U.S. atomic secrets to the Soviet Union, were executed at Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, New York; they were the first American civilians to be executed for espionage.In 1963, Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova completed her historic flight as the first woman in space, landing safely at the conclusion of the Vostok 6 mission.In 1964, the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 was approved by the U.S. Senate, 73-27, after surviving a lengthy filibuster.Popular ReadsIn 1975, former Chicago organized crime boss Sam Giancana was shot to death in the basement of his home in Oak Park, Illinois; the killing has never been solved.In 1986, University of Maryland basketball star Len Bias, the first draft pick of the Boston Celtics two days earlier, suffered a fatal cocaine-induced seizure.In 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Edwards v. Aguillard, struck down a Louisiana law requiring any public school teaching the theory of evolution to teach creation science as well.In 1991, the last Soviet troops withdrew from Hungary after a decades-long presence, retreating amid the collapse of the Soviet bloc and under pressure from Hungary’s new democratic government. In 2018, President Donald Trump signed the nation's 10 millionth patent, awarding it to a California employee of the Raytheon Co. who found a new way to get real-time readings from large laser radars. Today’s Birthdays: Hall of Fame auto racer Shirley Muldowney is 86. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi is 81. Author Tobias Wolff is 81. Author Salman Rushdie is 79. Actor Phylicia Rashad is 78. Rock singer Ann Wilson (Heart) is 76. Actor Kathleen Turner is 72. Singer-choreographer-TV personality Paula Abdul is 64. TV host Lara Spencer is 57. Actor Jean Dujardin is 54. Actor Robin Tunney is 54. Basketball Hall of Famer Dirk Nowitzki is 48. Actor Zoe Saldaña is 48. Rapper Macklemore is 43. Actor Paul Dano is 42. NBA player Jordan Poole is 27. Actor Millie Gibson is 22.

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