Portal:United States/Anniversaries/June/June 24

1916 – Mary Pickford (pictured) becomes the first female film star to sign a million dollar contract.
1664 – The colony of New Jersey is founded.
1947 – Kenneth Arnold makes the first widely reported UFO sighting near Mount Rainier, Washington.
1949 – The first Television Western, Hopalong Cassidy, is aired on NBC starring William Boyd.
1957 – In Roth v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that obscenity is not protected by the First Amendment.
2010 – John Isner of the United States defeats Nicolas Mahut of France at Wimbledon, in the longest match in professional tennis history.

On this day for the United States

Events

1916 – Mary Pickford becomes first female film star to get million dollar contract.
1938 – A 450 metric ton meteorite strikes the earth in an empty field near Chicora, Pennsylvania.
1947 – Kenneth Arnold makes the first widely reported UFO sighting near Mount Rainier, Washington.
1957 – The U.S. Supreme Court rules that obscenity is not protected by the First Amendment.
1975 – An Eastern Air Lines Boeing 727 crashes at John F. Kennedy Airport, New York. 113 people die.
1983 – Space Shuttle program: STS-7 Mission Sally Ride, first female American astronaut, returns to earth.
1985 – STS-51-G Space Shuttle Discovery completed its mission, best remembered for having Sultan bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the first Arab and first Muslim in space, as a Payload Specialist.
1993 – Yale computer science professor Dr. David Gelernter loses the sight in one eye, the hearing in one ear, and part of his right hand after receiving a mailbomb from the Unabomber.
1994 – A United States Air Force B-52 aircraft crashes at Fairchild Air Force Base, killing all four members of its crew.
2004 – In New York, capital punishment was declared unconstitutional.
2007 – The Angora Fire starts near South Lake Tahoe, California destroying 200+ structures in its first 48 hours.