Today in History, June 23rd
On June 23, 1972, Title IX became law, banning sex discrimination in federally funded schools. Plus the Brexit vote of 2016.
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June 23 is best known for 1972, when Title IX became law and barred sex discrimination in federally funded schools, opening the door for millions of girls and women in sports. The date also saw Britain vote to leave the European Union in 2016 and a Thai youth soccer team get trapped in a flooded cave in 2018.
The big story: Title IX becomes law (1972)
Title IX was a short passage tucked into the Education Amendments of 1972, and it became law on June 23 of that year. Its opening words say that no person in the U.S. shall, on the basis of sex, be shut out of any education program that gets federal money. That covered nearly every school in the country, from elementary schools to universities. The law is best known for what it did to sports. It did not demand that men’s and women’s teams get the same budgets. It required equal access and fair treatment, from locker rooms and coaching to travel and equipment, with scholarship money split in proportion to participation. The numbers shifted fast. In 1972 about 30,000 women played NCAA sports, against about 170,000 men; that count later passed 200,000. High school girls in sports went from 295,000 to more than 3 million. Supporters also credit the law with helping more girls finish high school and more women earn college degrees.
More events on June 23
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1865 | Cherokee chief and Confederate general Stand Watie surrendered, among the very last Confederate officers to give up. |
| 1868 | Christopher Latham Sholes and two partners received a patent for a typewriter, the machine that gave us the QWERTY keyboard. |
| 1956 | Gamal Abdel Nasser, the only name on the ballot, was elected the first president of the Republic of Egypt with 99.95 percent of the vote. |
| 1972 | On a secretly recorded White House tape, aide H.R. Haldeman urged President Richard Nixon to lean on the FBI to stay out of the Watergate investigation. |
| 1989 | Tim Burton’s Batman, starring Michael Keaton, opened in theaters. |
| 1992 | Mob boss John Gotti, the “Teflon Don,” was sentenced to life in prison. |
| 2013 | Nik Wallenda walked a 2-inch steel cable about 1,500 feet above the Little Colorado River Gorge near Grand Canyon National Park, with no safety harness. |
| 2016 | Voters in the United Kingdom chose to leave the European Union, with about 52 percent backing Brexit. Britain formally left on January 31, 2020. |
| 2018 | Monsoon rains flooded a cave in Thailand while a 25-year-old coach and his Wild Boars youth soccer team were inside, trapping them. |
Born on June 23
- 1912: Alan Turing, British mathematician who helped found computer science and broke codes in World War II, born in London.
- 1927: Bob Fosse, dancer, choreographer and director who reshaped the musical, born in Chicago.
- 1940: Wilma Rudolph, the first U.S. woman to win three track-and-field gold medals at a single Olympics, born near Clarksville, Tennessee.
Sources
- Title IX enacted, History.com
- This Day in History: June 23, History.com
- On This Day: June 23, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Brexit, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Stand Watie, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Alan Turing, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Bob Fosse, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Wilma Rudolph, Encyclopaedia Britannica
