On June 17

On this day in ...
... 1903 (105 years ago today), Ruth Graves Wakefield (left) was born. After graduating from Massachusetts' Framingham State Normal School Department of Household Arts in 1924, she worked as a dietition and lecturer on food, and operated Toll House Inn in Whitman, Mass., along with her husband Ken. It is said that a shortage of ingredients for the treat she typically prepared for the inn's guests led to her becoming inventor of the Toll House, or chocolate chip, cookie. From the 1930s till her death in 1977, she joined marketing forces with Nestlé. The rest, as they say, is culinary history.
... 1940, the Soviet Union completed the forcible occupation of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, an effort begun just 2 days earlier. The 3 Baltic states would regain independence in 1991. (map credit)

On November 21, ...

... 2002 (5 years ago today), the 19 members states then comprising the North Atlantic Treaty Organization voted to invite 7 former Soviet Socialist Republics to join the collective security entity. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania were slated for full admission to NATO in 2004.
... 1967 (40 years ago today), at a press conference, Gen. William Westmoreland, the U.S. commander in Vietnam, assured the public regarding an intervention that had begun 2 years earlier:

I am absolutely certain that whereas in 1965 the enemy was winning, today he is certainly losing.

"[M]ost Americans" thus "were stunned when the communists launched a massive offensive," during which they "actually penetrated the ground floor of the U.S. Embassy," during the Tet holiday the following January. The United States eventually withdrew in April 1975.

... 1964, U.S. Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.) was born in Brooklyn, New York.