Today is Wednesday, June 28, the 179th day of 2017. There are 186 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlights in History

On June 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife, Sophie, were shot to death in Sarajevo by Serb nationalist Gavrilo Princip — an act which sparked World War I.

On this date

In 1778, the Revolutionary War Battle of Monmouth took place in New Jersey; from this battle arose the legend of “Molly Pitcher,” a woman who was said to have carried water to colonial soldiers, then taken over firing her husband’s cannon after he became disabled.

In 1836, the fourth president of the United States, James Madison, died in Montpelier, Virginia.

In 1838, Britain’s Queen Victoria was crowned in Westminster Abbey.

In 1867, Italian author and playwright Luigi Pirandello was born in Agrigento, Sicily.

In 1919, the Treaty of Versailles was signed in France, ending the First World War. In Independence, Missouri, future president Harry S. Truman married Elizabeth Virginia Wallace.

In 1939, Pan American Airways began regular trans-Atlantic air service with a flight that departed New York for Marseilles, France.

In 1944, the Republican national convention in Chicago nominated New York Gov. Thomas E. Dewey for president and Ohio Gov. John W. Bricker for vice president.

In 1950, North Korean forces captured Seoul, the capital of South Korea.

In 1964, civil rights activist Malcolm X declared, “We want equality by any means necessary” during the Founding Rally of the Organization of Afro-American Unity in New York.

In 1978, the Supreme Court ordered the University of California Davis Medical School to admit Allan Bakke, a white man who argued he’d been a victim of reverse racial discrimination.

In 1989, about 1 million Serbs gathered to mark the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo in 1389.

The Associated Press