On this day, June 19, in 1953, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed for conspiracy to commit espionage. The husband and wife were arrested the previous year on accusations that they led a spy ring that gave secret information about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union.
The Rosenbergs said they were innocent, but were convicted in a March 1951 trial. The next month, a judge sentenced them to death.
Some people believed that the Rosenbergs were victims of anticommunist hysteria. But President Eisenhower declined to spare them from the death penalty.
They were executed by the electric chair.
– Emily Babay
