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The events of June 25 · Read the full edition → · More from June 25 →
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Gates and Allen convert a partnership to a corporation; Microsoft is now a Washington company on paper

Six years after selling BASIC out of Albuquerque, the firm behind MS-DOS swaps its garage-era legal structure for one built to scale.

Six years after Bill Gates and Paul Allen started selling BASIC interpreters out of Albuquerque, their company was still technically a partnership — a legal structure built for a garage, not a software empire. In 1981, with MS-DOS already shaping the personal computer market, Microsoft formally incorporated in Washington state, the home it had adopted when it moved to Bellevue in January 1979. The paperwork was routine. What it formalized was anything but…

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More from June 25
1788

Virginia ratifies, 89 to 79; the union's largest state is in

Patrick Henry's three weeks of thunder fall short as Edmund Randolph switches sides, and the promise of a Bill of Rights seals the margin.
2013

CIA releases documents confirming a classified base at Groom Lake, Nevada exists

The disclosure, triggered by a Freedom of Information Act request filed eight years ago by a George Washington University researcher, answers narrow historical questions; current operations remain classified.
1950

North Korean guns open on the 38th parallel at dawn; Seoul has no tanks to stop them

Kim Il Sung's forces pour south into an almost entirely unprepared country; the U.N. Security Council condemns the invasion, and Truman moves toward committing U.S. troops.
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The Presentment Clause forbids the president from unilaterally excising provisions from enacted law, the Court rules, voiding cuts to a New York liability exemption and a Snake River potato-farmer tax break.
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More from Cold War America
1958

Eisenhower signs Alaska into the union; the territory has waited forty years for this moment

The House voted 210-166, the Senate 64-20; Alaska is cleared to become the 49th state, though formal admission is not yet complete.
1962

AT&T's Telstar 1 rides a Delta rocket into orbit from Cape Canaveral

The 88-centimeter sphere is now circling Earth; AT&T says it is built to carry live television across the Atlantic.
1962

NASA picks lunar orbit rendezvous as its path to the Moon

A command ship will hold orbit while a separate lander descends to the surface, and one Saturn V rocket can carry the whole mission.
1979

Carter tells the nation it suffers a 'crisis of confidence'; he never says the word malaise

With gas lines stretching for hours and inflation gnawing at paychecks, the President goes on live television to diagnose a mood, not announce a fix.
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