“Pages of history” features excerpts from The News Journal archives including the Wilmington Morning News and the Evening Journal.
June 26, 2009, The News Journal
King of Pop dead at 50
Michael Jackson, the “King of Pop” who reigned over the music world like no other, died yesterday as he prepared for a comeback bid to vanquish nightmare years of sexual scandal and financial calamity. He was 50.
Jackson died at UCLA Medical Center after being stricken at his rented home in Holmby Hills. Paramedics tried to resuscitate him at his home for nearly three-quarters of an hour, then rushed him to the hospital where doctors continued to work on him.
“It is believed he suffered cardiac arrest in his home. However, the cause of his death is unknown until results of the autopsy are known,” his brother Jermaine said….
Jackson’s death brought a tragic end to a long, bizarre, sometimes farcical decline from his peak in the 1980s when he was popular music’s premier all-around performer, a uniter of black and white music who shattered the race barrier on MTV, dominated the charts and dazzled even more on stage.
His 1982 album “Thriller” – which included the blockbuster hits “Billie Jean,” “Beat It” and “Thriller” – is the best-selling album of all time, with an estimated 50 million copies sold worldwide….
Wilmington entertainment news:The Grand pulls back curtain for 2023-24 Broadway season with ‘Pretty Woman’ & more
June 28, 1948, Wilmington Morning News
U.S. transport planes rush to buck Berlin blockade
The Air Force is sending a fleet of big transport planes to Germany to help supply the Berlin area which the Russians have cut off from normal surface contacts.
About 39 C-54 Skymasters, capable of carrying about seven tons per flight on the Berlin run, will be dispatched….
The planes will start within 24 hours, Air Force officers said, leaving their bases singly or in groups as they are readied….
Americans and Britons in Berlin were subjected to partial rationing today as the Russian land blockade of the city went into its second week….
However, the U.S. Air Force’s emergency cargo service into Templehof Airport will be expanded to 100 planes daily, bringing in as many essential items as possible for the German population in addition to supplies for Americans here….
Also from June 28, 1948, Wilmington Morning News
Federal budget surplus will set record
The budget surplus at the end of the fiscal year Wednesday will set a new record. It may run close to $8 billion. The previous high was $1.155 billion from 21 years ago.
Most of the money, $6.683 billion, already has been used to lower the federal debt to about $251.6 billion, an analysis of Treasury records showed today.
The rest, about $1.4 billion, has come into the Treasury’s cash coffers, swelling its cash balance to $4.8 billion.
June 29, 2007, from The News Journal
Supreme Court curbs school integration plans
They started their day, by custom, by shaking hands all around. A short while later, Supreme Court justices were throwing darts at each other on a topic that has divided Americans like no other – race.
They accused each other of betraying the Supreme Court’s most acclaimed ruling, the 53-year-old decision outlawing segregated schools, and of misapplying the law.
In the end, a conservative majority held sway in a decision that clamped new limits on local school efforts to make sure children of different races share classrooms.
The court voted 5-4 to strike down school integration plans in Louisville, Ky., and Seattle, a decision that imperiled similar plans that hundreds of cities and counties use voluntarily to integrate their schools.
The ruling does not affect several hundred other public school districts that remain under federal court order to desegregate….
Catch up on history:Lindbergh’s Atlantic flight, Bonnie & Clyde killed: News Journal archives, week of May 21
June 30, 1995
U.S. shuttle docks with Russian space station
Americans and Russians clasped hands, kissed and hugged after their two spacecraft linked high above Earth on Thursday and began a historic five-day voyage as a single unit. It was a triumph for both space faring nations.
The seven men and women aboard shuttle Atlantis were greeted with salt and bread, a Russian tradition, when they entered space station Mir through a 3-foot-long pressurized docking tunnel. In turn, Atlantis commander Robert “Hoot” Gibson gave the three Mir men fresh oranges, grapefruit, chocolate, three carnations and three silk roses.
President Clinton said he felt the docking was a reinforcement that the Cold War had ended.
Together, Atlantis and Mir formed the largest spacecraft ever, an awesome half-million pounds hurtling around Earth at 17,500 mph….
Reach reporter Ben Mace at rmace@gannett.com.
