By The Associated Press

Today is Thursday, June 27, the 178th day of 2019. There are 187 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On June 27, 1991, Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first black jurist to sit on the nation’s highest court, announced his retirement. His departure led to the contentious nomination of Clarence Thomas to succeed him.

On this date:

In 1844, Mormon leader Joseph Smith and his brother, Hyrum, were killed by a mob in Carthage, Illinois.

In 1846, New York and Boston were linked by telegraph wires.

In 1880, author-lecturer Helen Keller, who lived most of her life without sight or hearing, was born in Tuscumbia, Alabama.

In 1905, the Industrial Workers of the World was founded in Chicago.

In 1944, during World War II, American forces liberated the French port of Cherbourg from the Germans.

In 1957, Hurricane Audrey slammed into coastal Louisiana and Texas as a Category 4 storm; the official death toll from the storm was placed at 390, although a variety of state, federal and local sources have estimated the number of fatalities at between 400 and 600.

In 1974, President Richard Nixon opened an official visit to the Soviet Union.

In 1984, the Supreme Court ended the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s monopoly on controlling college football telecasts, ruling such control violated antitrust law.

In 1988, at least 56 people were killed when a commuter train ran into a stationary train at the Gare de Lyon terminal in Paris. In 1988, Mike Tyson retained the undisputed heavyweight crown as he knocked out Michael Spinks 91 seconds into the first round of a championship fight in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

In 1990, NASA announced that a flaw in the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope was preventing the instrument from achieving optimum focus.

The problem was traced to a mirror that had not been ground to exact specifications; corrective optics were later installed to fix the problem.