This Day in History: June 12

1898 -- Philippine was declared independent of Spain by General Emilio Aguinaldo.

1940 -- 13,000 British and French troops surrendered to Major General Erwin Rommel at Saint-Valery-en-Caux during World War II.

1943 -- German troops marched down and shot dead 1,180 Jews at Brzeżany graveyard, Poland (now Berezhany, Ukraine).

1964 -- Anti-apartheid activist and ANC leader Nelson Mandela was sentenced to life in prison for sabotage in South Africa.

1967 -- The United States Supreme Court declared all U.S. state laws which prohibited interracial marriage to be unconstitutional.

1978 -- David Berkowitz, the "Son of Sam" killer in New York City, was sentenced to 365 years in prison for six killings.

1987 -- The Central African Republic's former Emperor Jean-Bédel Bokassa was sentenced to death for crimes he had committed during his 13-year rule.

1993 -- Nigerians took to the polls to elect Chief MKO Abiola as president in unarguably the country's freest and fairest election ever conducted. The election was later to be annulled by the country's military regime.

1994 -- Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were murdered outside her home in Los Angeles, California. O.J. Simpson was later acquitted of the killings, but is held liable in wrongful death civil suit.

1994 -- The Boeing 777, the world's largest twinjet, made its first flight.

2009 -- A disputed presidential election in Iran led to wide ranging protests in Iran and around the world.



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