The Statue of Liberty arrived in New York Harbor on June 17, 1885. On the same day in 1930, progressive Republican President Herbert Hoover — eager to please agricultural states, and confident that protectionism would yield greater wealth — signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff. The Great Depression deepened, ratcheting up as each provision of the bill took effect.
Three years later, investment author and two-time Libertarian Party presidential candidate Harry Browne was born.
On June 17, 1944, Iceland declared independence from Denmark.
On this day in 1971, President Richard Nixon declared a “War on Drugs,” which steadily decreased civil liberty and the rule of law in America.
Exactly one year later, five men were arrested for attempted burglary on the offices of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C., igniting the Watergate scandal that ultimately led to the resignation of U.S. President Richard Nixon more than two years later.