June 12 Birthday
On June 12, 1987, President Reagan stood before the Berlin Wall at the Brandenburg Gate and challenged Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" The speech was controversial — State Department officials had tried to remove the line, fearing it was too provocative. Reagan kept it. Two years later, the wall fell. Whether the speech accelerated the process is debated, but it captured the moral clarity of the moment. Reagan died in 2004, seventeen years after the speech. Nelson Mandela was sentenced to life in prison on June 12, 1964, at the Rivonia Trial. He had been arrested in 1962 and charged with sabotage and conspiracy. At the trial, Mandela delivered a statement from the dock that ended: "I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society... It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die." He was twenty-five when sent to Robben Island. He was released in 1990 and became president in 1994. Anne Frank, born this day in 1929, received her diary on her thirteenth birthday, June 12, 1942. People born on June 12 fall under the zodiac sign of Gemini. The birthstone is Pearl and the birth flower is Rose. Historical events on June 12 include 1939: Baseball Hall of Fame opens in Cooperstown, New York, 1964: Nelson Mandela sentenced to life in prison at Rivonia Trial, 1987: President Reagan speaks at Brandenburg Gate ("Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall"). Famous people born on June 12 include George H.W. Bush (1924), Anne Frank (1929), Jim Nabors (1930).