“Pages of history” features excerpts from The News Journal archives including the Wilmington Morning News and the Evening Journal.
June 13, 2016, The News Journal
50 massacred; Rehoboth LGBTQ community holds vigil for victims of Florida nightclub shooting
Hours after a gunman killed 50 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando, members of Delaware’s LGBTQ community gathered in Rehoboth Beach to grieve, pray and share their love….
About a hundred people comforted one another during an evening vigil hosted by CAMP Rehoboth Community Center, a nonprofit gay and lesbian community service organization on Baltimore Avenue….
Some struggled to understand how, in 2016, people in the LGBTQ community could be gunned down in a club many frequent to celebrate their sexuality….
In addition to the dead, another 53 were wounded in the attack at Pulse Orlando, the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.
The shooter, who was killed by police, has been identified as Omar Mateen of Port St. Lucie, Florida….
June 14, 1967, Evening Journal
Certain approval seen on Marshall for Supreme Court
Editor’s note: The wording in this story is how it appeared in 1967.
President Johnson’s appointment of Solicitor General Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court – the first Negro so named – appears certain to be confirmed when the Senate gets to it.
Johnson’s announcement yesterday that he is nominating Marshall, 58, to succeed retiring Associate Justice Tom C. Clark surprised neither the solicitor general’s critics nor his supporters.
Civil rights leaders around the nation today generally applauded the appointment and praised Johnson for making it.
A senator who maintains close relations with the President said he felt certain Clark’s successor would be either a Negro or a woman.
“That man is going to be first in everything he can,” the senator said of the President. “I’d be willing to bet that if there is another vacancy, we’ll have a woman member of the court”….
June 15, 1940, Wilmington Morning News
Nazis invade Paris; Britain will fight on if France quits
The main armies of France fell back June 14 far below abandoned, German-invaded Paris in a fighting retreat that may be their last movement of the war.
Other forces far to the east were declared to have thrown back with “tremendous losses” the German head-on attack against the Maginot Line.
All but broken under the mightiest assault ever thrown against men, the Poilus, who fought the main battle of France, counter-attacked with a desperate fury as they retired under the Nazi pressure. They did not even know whether their command could continue the struggle.
Paris, from which the government long since had fled, was gone – occupied by Germans and ringed by their armored units and infantrymen.
Tours, the new emergency seat of the ministers from which Premier Reynaud sent a “last appeal” to President Roosevelt last night for American aid, was being abandoned for yet another refuge – presumably the far southern seaport of Bordeaux….
This “blackest week in history” for Britain and France drew from official circles today the dogged assertion that “whatever happens Britain will fight on” against Nazi Germany, while press and radio turned eager, speculative eyes on “the prospects of American intervention.”
Confronted with the fall of Paris hard in the wake of Italy’s entry into the war as a foe of the Allies, the British flung open their war chest to make immediate purchases of everything needed to prosecute the conflict….
June 18, 1994, The News Journal
O.J. Simpson’s run ends in arrest, charged in double slaying
O.J. Simpson was captured in his driveway Friday night after running from charges of murdering his ex-wife and her male friend and leading police along 60 miles of freeways and city streets.
“I can’t express the fear I had that this matter would not end the way it did,” said Simpson’s attorney, Robert Shapiro, who had worried earlier that the former football great would kill himself….
The arrest shortly before 9 p.m. culminated an incredible drama that unfolded on live national TV. Police first announced charges against Simpson, then said he had disappeared and finally followed him along the highways for more than an hour.
After the white Ford Bronco came to a halt at Simpson’s estate, a man believed to be his lifelong friend and teammate, Al Cowlings, got out. Simpson’s lawyer arrived at the mansion nearly an hour later and the arrest came minutes later….
Reach reporter Ben Mace at rmace@gannett.com.
