On this day, June 29: US Supreme Court declares death penalty unconstitutional

On this date in history:

In 1853, the U.S. Senate ratified the $10 million Gadsden Purchase from Mexico, expanding the territories of Arizona and New Mexico by more than 29,000 square miles and completing the modern geographic boundaries of the 48 contiguous states.

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In 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt founded Mesa Verde National Park to protect the cliff dwellings of the original Pueblo people in Colorado. The 52,485-hectare park is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

In 1933, Fatty Arbuckle, silent film comedian and one of Hollywood’s most popular personalities until a manslaughter charge (he was eventually acquitted) ruined his career, died while preparing for a comeback. He was 46 years old.

In 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Congress declared Mount Olympus National Monument a national park. The 922,650-hectare park in Washington is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

In 1972, the US Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty, as it was then imposed by the individual states, was unconstitutional. It was reinstated in 1976.

In 1974, Isabel Peron became President of Argentina, replacing her ailing husband Juan Peron, who died two days later. Her official term began on July 1, 1974.

In 1992, doctors in Pittsburgh reported the world’s first transplant of a baboon liver to a human patient. The recipient, a 35-year-old man, survived for three months.

In 1995, a department store collapsed in Seoul, killing about 500 people.

In 1995, the US space shuttle Atlantis docked with the Russian space station Mir for the first time. The NASA chief said the docking marked “a new era of friendship and cooperation” between the two countries.

In 2006, the US Supreme Court ruled that US President George W. Bush had no authority under military law or the Geneva Convention to set up military tribunals for terror suspects in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

In 2009, Bernard Madoff, the mastermind of a multi-billion dollar Ponzi scheme, was sentenced to 150 years in prison. The federal judge who handed down the sentence in New York City said Madoff’s crimes were “extraordinarily evil.” Madoff apologized in the courtroom, saying, “I am responsible for a lot of suffering and pain.”

In 2017, Iraqi forces captured the Great Al-Nuri Mosque in Mosul, the largely destroyed building where Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is said to have declared a “caliphate” exactly three years earlier.

In 2021, a scientific paper announced the discovery of the earliest known victim of the bubonic plague – a 5,000-year-old hunter-gatherer whose skeleton was excavated in Latvia.

In 2022, a French court found all 20 defendants guilty in the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks that killed 130 people and injured more than 500. The court sentenced the main defendant, Sarah Abdeslam, to 30 years in prison.

In 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down affirmative action discrimination in college admissions, declaring that the practice violated the equal treatment principle of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.