Highlight: 1776, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia proposed to the Continental Congress a resolution stating “That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown.”

In 1654, King Louis XIV, age 15, was crowned in Rheims, 11 years after the start of his reign.

In 1769, frontiersman Daniel Boone first began to explore present-day Kentucky.

In 1862, William Bruce Mumford, a Confederate loyalist, was hanged at the order of Union military authorities for tearing down a U.S. flag that had been flying over the New Orleans mint shortly before the city was occupied by the North.

In 1863, French forces occupied Mexico City during the Franco-Mexican War.

In 1892, Homer Plessy, a “Creole of color,” was fined for refusing to leave a whites-only car of the East Louisiana Railroad. (Ruling on his case, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld “separate but equal” racial segregation, which it overturned in 1954.)

In 1929, the sovereign state of Vatican City came into existence as copies of the Lateran Treaty were exchanged in Rome.

In 1942, the World War II Battle of Midway ended in a decisive victory for American forces over the Imperial Japanese.

In 1967, the Haight Ashbury Free Medical Clinic opened in San Francisco.

In 1972, the musical “Grease” opened on Broadway, having already been performed in lower Manhattan.

In 1981, Israeli military planes destroyed a nuclear power plant in Iraq, a facility the Israelis charged could have been used to make nuclear weapons.

In 1993, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that religious groups can sometimes meet on school property after hours.

In 1998, in a crime that shocked the nation, James Byrd Jr., a 49-year-old black man, was hooked by a chain to a pickup truck and dragged to his death in Jasper, Texas. (Two white men were later sentenced to death for the crime; a third received life with the possibility of parole.)

Ten years ago: In a national first, New Hampshire Episcopalians elected the Rev. V. Gene Robinson, an openly gay man, their next bishop.

Five years ago: Hillary Clinton suspended her pioneering campaign for the presidency and endorsed fellow Democrat Barack Obama.

One year ago: Attorney General Eric Holder clashed with Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee seeking more information about a flawed gun-trafficking investigation in Arizona known as “Operation Fast and Furious.”

— From wire reports

It’s Friday, June 7, the 158th day of 2013. There are 207 days left in the year.

Singer Tom Jones is 73. Actor Ken Osmond (“Leave It to Beaver”) is 70. Actor Liam Neeson is 61. Singer-songwriter Prince is 55. TV personality Bear Grylls is 39. Tennis player Anna Kournikova is 32. Actor Michael Cera is 25.