June 27 Birthday
On June 27, 1844, Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum were shot by a mob at the Carthage, Illinois jail, where they were awaiting trial for treason. Smith, the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, had been arrested after destroying a newspaper that had exposed his practice of plural marriage. He was thirty-eight. His death transformed the Mormon movement — Brigham Young assumed leadership and led the Saints west to Utah, beyond US jurisdiction at the time. The mob action convinced the Mormons that they could not coexist with their neighbors, and the exodus to the Great Salt Lake began. Helen Keller, born this day in 1880, lost her sight and hearing at nineteen months, probably from meningitis. Her teacher, Anne Sullivan, spelled words into her hand. The breakthrough came at a water pump: "As the cool stream gushed over one hand she spelled into the other the word water... Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten — a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me." Keller graduated from Radcliffe and became a prolific author and activist. People born on June 27 fall under the zodiac sign of Cancer. The birthstone is Pearl and the birth flower is Rose. Historical events on June 27 include 1950: President Truman orders US forces into Korea without congressional declaration of war, 1844: Joseph Smith, founder of Mormonism, murdered by mob in Carthage, Illinois, 2007: Tony Blair resigns as Prime Minister, succeeded by Gordon Brown. Famous people born on June 27 include Helen Keller (1880), Bob Keeshan (1927), J.J. Abrams (1966).