On March 13

On this day in ...

... 1567, German mercenaries allied with Margaret of Parma (1522-86) (left), appointed as the Catholic regent of the Netherlands by her half-brother, the Spanish King Phillip II, defeated Calvinist rebels at the Battle of Oosterweel. Her brother soon would replace her with a duke even less tolerant of Protestantism.

... 1961, at the Old Bailey in London, Ethel Gee (near right below; credit), a British civil servant; homemaker Helen Kroger (far right; credit) and her husband, another civil servant; plus 2 other Britons went on trial on charges that they plotted to pass classified information to the Soviets in violation of the Official Secrets Act. The trial of the so-called Portland Spy Ring lasted about two weeks, during which the Krogers were determined to be fugitives from the Rosenberg espionage case in the United States.

(Prior March 13 posts are here and here.)

On June 19

On this day in ...
... 1953 (55 years ago today), in Rosenberg v. United States, U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas vacated a stay of execution he'd issued on behalf of a wife and husband (left) convicted and sentenced to death on charges that they'd conspired to violate the Espionage Act of 1917 by communicating, in time of war, secret atomic and other military information to a foreign government. Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were executed the same day at Sing Sing Prison in New York.
... 1912, Congress enacted a law requiring that "all contracts made on or behalf of the federal government, its territories, or the District of Columbia" limit laborers' workday to 8 hours.