Sunday · September 27, 2026
Get the app
Edited daily
American history, reported as it happened
Made for the 250th
The events of June 8 · Read the full edition → · More from June 8 →
19681776 Club

James Earl Ray caught at Heathrow; a ticket agent spots his name on a watchlist

The fugitive, traveling as Ramon George Sneyd on a false Canadian passport and bound for Brussels, is taken into custody two months after King's death in Memphis.

Two months after a single rifle shot killed Martin Luther King Jr. on a Memphis motel balcony, the fugitive responsible was still loose — moving through Canada, Portugal, and England on a stolen identity. On June 8, 1968, James Earl Ray walked up to a check-in counter at London Heathrow Airport carrying a false Canadian passport in the name of Ramon George Sneyd, bound for Brussels. A ticket agent noticed the name appeared on a Royal Canadian Mounted Police watchlist, and Ray was taken into custody on the spot. He had also been carrying a second passport under a different name. The UK extradited him to Tennessee within weeks…

1776 Club

This story is held for members.

Members read every story of the day — and tomorrow's, and the next.

Join the 1776 Club
$17.76 your first year · then $39.99/yr · cancel anytime
More from June 8
1789

Madison rises in the House with a list of amendments; rivals are still calling for a second convention

Drawing on more than two hundred proposals from state ratifying conventions, he moves to revise the Constitution before its opponents can dismantle it.
1906

Roosevelt signs the Antiquities Act; no proclamation needed from Congress to seal off federal land

For decades, pot hunters have stripped pottery and bones from Chaco Canyon and across the Southwest. The president can now designate national monuments alone, by proclamation.
1861

Tennessee votes to leave the Union; the eleventh state is also the last

Middle Tennessee swings from 51 percent against secession in February to 88 percent in favor today, providing the decisive margin, though East Tennessee refuses to accept the result.
17761776 Club
A local farmer leads the 2,000-man column off the road as British reinforcements land behind them, cutting off any retreat north.
Read this as a member →
Read the full June 8 edition →Everything that happened on June 8 →
More from Cold War America
1966

Warren's court rules 5–4: police must tell suspects they may stay silent before questioning begins

Ernesto Miranda's kidnapping conviction falls; he had signed a "voluntary" confession without ever being told he could refuse to speak or call a lawyer.
1967

Thurgood Marshall takes the oath; the Supreme Court has its first Black justice

The Senate confirmed Marshall 69–11 on August 30, brushing aside sustained Southern objections; he is sworn in today, October 2.
1971

The Times begins printing the Pentagon Papers; four presidents, the documents show, misled the country on Vietnam

A 7,000-page classified Defense Department study reveals the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations each obscured the true scope of U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia.
1961

Twelve nations' Antarctic pact takes force; military operations and nuclear tests are now banned on the continent

The agreement, signed in 1959 after Argentine marines fired on British researchers, designates everything south of 60°S as a scientific preserve open to all signatories.
The Daily Record · free by email

Tomorrow's edition in your inbox — one featured story, one quote, and today's flag status. Free, every morning.

The full experience

Read every story, narrated, in the app.

Take this story with you.

The complete daily edition, the deep-cut narration, and a library that's yours — the 1776 Club lives in the app.

Your membership comes with you — every event, narrated, with flag alerts, CarPlay, and your saved library.

Download on the App Store