Today is Wednesday, June 22, the 174th day of 1988. There are 192 days left in the year. Today's Highlight in History: Fifty years ago, on June 22, 1938, heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis knocked out German boxer Max Schmeling just two minutes, four seconds into the first round of their rematch at New York's Yankee Stadium, two years after Schmeling knocked out Louis. (In addition to gaining a personal triumph, Louis dealt a body blow to Adolf Hitler's doctrine of ``Aryan supremacy.'' In 1981, when Louis died, Schmeling hailed his one-time adversary as a ``boxing genius'' and ``the greatest opponent I ever faced in the ring.'') On this date: In 1611, English explorer Henry Hudson, his son and several other people were set adrift in present-day Hudson Bay by mutineers. In 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte abdicated a second time. In 1868, Arkansas was re-admitted to the Union. In 1870, Congress created the Department of Justice. In 1911, Britain's King George V was crowned at Westminster Abbey. In 1937, Joe Louis began his reign as world heavyweight boxing champion by knocking out Jim Braddock in Chicago. In 1940, Adolf Hitler gained a stunning victory as France was forced to sign an armistice eight days after German forces overran Paris. In 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union during World War II. In 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the GI Bill of Rights. In 1969, singer-actress Judy Garland died in London at the age of 47. In 1970, President Richard M. Nixon signed a measure lowering the voting age to 18. In 1977, John N. Mitchell became the first former U.S. Attorney General to go to prison as he began serving a sentence for his role in the Watergate cover-up. (He was released 19 months later.) In 1981, Mark David Chapman pleaded guilty to killing rock star John Lennon outside Lennon's New York City apartment building the previous December. Ten years ago: A group of neo-Nazis called off plans to march in the predominantly Jewish community of Skokie, Ill., after winning a year-long battle for legal permission to demonstrate, but also said they would go ahead with plans for a rally in Chicago. Five years ago: The crew of the space shuttle Challenger released a West German satellite into space, then retrieved it with the shuttle's robot arm a total of five times _ demonstrating the shuttle's ability to retrieve and put back into orbit satellites in need of repair. One year ago: Dancer Fred Astaire, whose elegance and fancy footwork graced more than 30 movies, died at Century City Hospital in Los Angeles at age 88. Today's Birthdays: Movie director Billy Wilder (``Some Like It Hot'') is 82. Author Anne Morrow Lindbergh is 82. Broadway producer Joseph Papp is 67. Fashion designer Bill Blass is 66. Actor Ralph Waite is 60. Former San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein is 55. Singer-actor Kris Kristofferson is 51. CBS news correspondent Ed Bradley is 47. Singer-musician Todd Rundgren is 40. Actress Meryl Streep is 39. Actress Lindsay Wagner is 39. Thought for Today: ``The best compliment to a child or a friend is the feeling you give him that he has been set free to make his own inquiries, to come to conclusions that are right for him, whether or not they coincide with your own.'' _ Alistair Cooke, British-born American journalist and broadcaster.
