• Today is Monday, June 11, the 163rd day of 2012. There are 203 days left in the year.
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• Today's Highlights in History:
• On June 11, 1962, three prisoners at Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay staged an escape, leaving the island on a makeshift raft. Frank Morris and brothers Clarence and John Anglin were never found or heard from again.
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• On this date:
• In 1509, England's King Henry VIII married his first wife, Catherine of Aragon.
• In 1770, Captain James Cook, commander of the British ship Endeavour, discovered the Great Barrier Reef off Australia by running onto it.
• In 1776, the Continental Congress formed a committee to draft a Declaration of Independence calling for freedom from Britain.
• In 1919, Sir Barton won the Belmont Stakes, becoming horse racing's first Triple Crown winner.
• In 1922, the groundbreaking documentary feature "Nanook of the North," produced by Robert J. Flaherty, premiered in New York.
• In 1936, Kansas Gov. Alfred "Alf" Landon was nominated for president at the Republican national convention in Cleveland.
• In 1937, eight members of the Soviet Red Army High Command accused of disloyalty were put on trial, convicted and immediately executed as part of Josef Stalin's Great Purge.
• In 1942, the United States and the Soviet Union signed a lend-lease agreement to aid the Soviet war effort in World War II.
• In 1963, a Buddhist monk (Thich Quang Duc) set himself afire on a Saigon street to protest the government of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem.
• In 1971, the year-and-a-half-long occupation of Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay by American Indian activists ended as federal officers evicted the remaining protesters.
• In 1977, Seattle Slew won the Belmont Stakes, capturing the Triple Crown.
• In 1987, Margaret Thatcher became the first British prime minister in 160 years to win a third consecutive term of office as her Conservatives held onto a reduced

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