By The Associated Press

Today in History

Today is Saturday, June 17, the 168th day of 2017. There are 197 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On June 17, 1972, President Richard Nixon’s eventual downfall began with the arrest of five burglars inside Democratic national headquarters in Washington, D.C.’s Watergate complex.

On this date:

In 1397, the Treaty of Kalmar created a union between the kingdoms of Sweden, Denmark and Norway.

In 1775, the Revolutionary War Battle of Bunker Hill resulted in a costly victory for the British, who suffered heavy losses.

In 1885, the Statue of Liberty arrived in New York Harbor aboard the French ship Isere (ee-SEHR’).

In 1928, Amelia Earhart embarked on a trans-Atlantic flight from Newfoundland to Wales with pilots Wilmer Stultz and Louis Gordon, becoming the first woman to make the trip as a passenger.

In 1930, President Herbert Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which boosted U.S. tariffs to historically high levels, prompting foreign retaliation.

In 1942, the U.S. Army began publishing Yank, the Army Weekly, featuring the debut of the cartoon character G.I. Joe.

In 1957, mob underboss Frank Scalice was shot to death at a produce market in the Bronx, New York.

In 1967, China successfully tested its first thermonuclear (hydrogen) bomb.

In 1987, Charles Glass, a journalist on leave from ABC News, was kidnapped in Beirut by pro-Iranian guerrillas. (Glass escaped his captors in Aug. 1987.)

In 1992, President George H.W. Bush and Russian President Boris Yeltsin signed a breakthrough arms-reduction agreement.

In 1994, after leading police on a slow-speed chase on Southern California freeways, O.J. Simpson was arrested and charged with murder in the slayings of his ex-wife, Nicole, and her friend, Ronald Goldman. (Simpson was later acquitted in a criminal trial, but held liable in a civil trial.)

In 2015, nine people were shot to death in a historic African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina; suspect Dylann Roof was arrested the following morning. (Roof has since been convicted of federal hate crimes and sentenced to death; he later pleaded guilty to state murder charges and was sentenced to life in prison without parole.)