Today in History: June 26, first Harry Potter novel published – The Mercury News

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Today is Friday, June 26, the 177th day of 2026. There are 188 days left in the year.
On June 26, 1997, the first Harry Potter novel, “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” by J.K. Rowling, was published in the United Kingdom. It was later released in the United States under the title “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.”
In 1917, U.S. troops entered World War I as the first soldiers of the American Expeditionary Force landed in Saint-Nazaire, France.
In 1945, the charter of the United Nations was signed by 50 countries in San Francisco.
In 1948, the Berlin Airlift began in earnest after the Soviet Union cut off land and water routes to the isolated western sector of Berlin.
In 1963, President John F. Kennedy visited West Berlin, where he delivered his famous speech expressing solidarity with the city’s residents, declaring: “Ich bin ein Berliner” (“I am a Berliner”).
In 1993, President Bill Clinton announced the U.S. had launched missiles against Iraqi targets because of “compelling evidence” Iraq had plotted to assassinate former President George H.W. Bush.
In 1996, in the case of United States v. Virginia, the U.S. Supreme Court found that the Virginia Military Institute’s male-only admission policy violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. (VMI enrolled its first female cadets the following year.)
In 2008, in District of Columbia v. Heller, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a handgun ban in the District of Columbia as it affirmed, 5-4, that an individual’s right to gun ownership is protected by the Second Amendment.
In 2013, in the case of United States v. Windsor, the U.S. Supreme Court gave the nation’s legally married same-sex couples equal federal footing with all other married Americans, and cleared the way for same-sex marriages to resume in California in a separate decision.
In 2015, in its 5-4 Obergefell v. Hodges decision, the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage across the country, ruling that state-level bans on same-sex marriage violated the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment.
In 2024, former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez was sentenced in federal court in New York to 45 years in prison and fined $8 million for conspiring to distribute more than 400 tons of cocaine and for firearms offenses. (Hernandez was freed in 2025 after a pardon by President Donald Trump, who said Hondurans believed Hernandez had been “set up.”
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