Today in News History

On June 23, several notable moments in the history of News stand out. In 1881, Matthias Jakob Schleiden, German botanist and academic (born 1804) passed away. In 1905, Jack Pickersgill, Canadian civil servant and politician, 35th Secretary of State for Canada (died 1997) was born. In 1931, Wiley Post and Harold Gatty take off from Roosevelt Field, Long Island in an attempt to circumnavigate the world in a single-engine plane. In 1940, Adolf Hitler goes on a three-hour tour of the architecture of Paris with architect Albert Speer and sculptor Arno Breker in his only visit to the city. In 1943, Vint Cerf, American computer scientist and Internet pioneer was born. In 1959, Convicted Manhattan Project spy Klaus Fuchs is released after only nine years in prison and allowed to emigrate to Dresden, East Germany where he resumes a scientific career. In 1969, IBM announces that effective January 1970 it will price its software and services separately from hardware thus creating the modern software industry. In 1989, Werner Best, German police officer and jurist (born 1903) passed away. In 1994, NASA's Space Station Processing Facility, a new state-of-the-art manufacturing building for the International Space Station, officially opens at Kennedy Space Center. In 2014, The last of Syria's declared chemical weapons are shipped out for destruction. Together, these milestones provide historical context for today's news news and ongoing narratives.