President Franklin Roosevelt signs the G.I.Bill of Rights, which provides broad benefits for veterans of World War II. (Getty)
On this day, June 22 …
1944: President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, more popularly known as the GI Bill of Rights.
Also on this day:
- 1937: Joe Louis begins his reign as world heavyweight boxing champion by knocking out Jim Braddock in the eighth round of their fight in Chicago.
- 1944: President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, more popularly known as the “GI Bill of Rights.”
- 1969: Judy Garland dies in London at age 47.
- 1970: President Richard Nixon signs an extension of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that lowered the minimum voting age to 18.
- 1977: John N. Mitchell becomes the first former U.S. Attorney General to go to prison as he began serving a sentence for his role in the Watergate cover-up. (He was released 19 months later.)
- 1981: Mark David Chapman pleads guilty to killing John Lennon.
- 1992: The U.S. Supreme Court, in R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, unanimously rules that “hate crime” laws that banned cross burning and similar expressions of racial bias violated free speech rights.
Former Penn State University assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky arrives for an appeal hearing at the Centre County Courthouse in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, Oct. 29, 2015.
(AP)
- 2012: Ex-Penn State assistant coach Jerry Sandusky is convicted by a jury in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, on 45 counts of sexually assaulting 10 boys over 15 years. (Sandusky is appealing a 30- to-60-year state prison sentence.)
