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Gates and Allen convert a partnership to a corporation; Microsoft is now a Washington company on paper

Six years after selling BASIC out of Albuquerque, the firm behind MS-DOS swaps its garage-era legal structure for one built to scale.

Six years after Bill Gates and Paul Allen started selling BASIC interpreters out of Albuquerque, their company was still technically a partnership — a legal structure built for a garage, not a software empire. In 1981, with MS-DOS already shaping the personal computer market, Microsoft formally incorporated in Washington state, the home it had adopted when it moved to Bellevue in January 1979. The paperwork was routine. What it formalized was anything but…

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More from June 25
1788

Virginia ratifies, 89 to 79; the union's largest state is in

Patrick Henry's three weeks of thunder fall short as Edmund Randolph switches sides, and the promise of a Bill of Rights seals the margin.
2013

CIA releases documents confirming a classified base at Groom Lake, Nevada exists

The disclosure, triggered by a Freedom of Information Act request filed eight years ago by a George Washington University researcher, answers narrow historical questions; current operations remain classified.
1950

North Korean guns open on the 38th parallel at dawn; Seoul has no tanks to stop them

Kim Il Sung's forces pour south into an almost entirely unprepared country; the U.N. Security Council condemns the invasion, and Truman moves toward committing U.S. troops.
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The Presentment Clause forbids the president from unilaterally excising provisions from enacted law, the Court rules, voiding cuts to a New York liability exemption and a Snake River potato-farmer tax break.
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Read the full June 25 edition →Everything that happened on June 25 →
More from Cold War America
1964

Senate breaks the longest filibuster in its history; civil rights vote is cleared

Robert Byrd's 14-hour, 13-minute speech closes 72 days of Southern obstruction, and cloture passes 71 to 29.
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.
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