Today in history

1788: The United States Constitution went into effect as New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify it.

1834: Cyrus Hall McCormick received a patent for his reaping machine.

1945: During World War II, American soldiers on Okinawa found the body of the Japanese commander, Lt. General Mitsuru Ushijima, who had committed suicide.

1963: Cardinal Giovanni Battista Montini was chosen to succeed the late Pope John XXIII; the new pope took the name Paul VI.

1964: Civil rights workers Michael H. Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James E. Chaney disappeared in Philadelphia, Miss.; their bodies were found buried in an earthen dam six weeks later.

1973: The Supreme Court ruled that states may ban materials found to be obscene according to local standards.

1982: A jury in Washington, D.C., found John Hinckley Junior innocent by reason of insanity in the shootings of President Reagan and three other men.

1985: Scientists announced that skeletal remains exhumed in Brazil were those of Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele.