1763
Jun 23, Josephine Martinique, empress of France (1804-14), was born.

1794
Jun 23, Empress Catherine II granted Jews permission to settle in Kiev.

1997
Jun 23, Kristen Modafferi (18) was last seen after she finished her shift at Spinelli’s coffeehouse at the Crocker Galleria in San Francisco. She had just moved to the Bay Area from Charlotte, N.C., lived in Oakland and worked in SF. In 2015 a cadaver dog picked up a scent of human remains at her former home near Lake Merritt in Oakland.

2003
Jun 23, Judith Miller, reporter for the NY Times, met with Lewis “Scooter" Libby, chief of staff for VP Dick Cheney, who gave her information about CIA operative Valery Plame. Reporter Bob Woodward also spoke with Libby on this day and on June 27 and in 2005 testified that Libby made no mention of Plame. Woodward did say another senior government official told him about Plame and her role in the CIA in mid-June.

2003
Jun 23, In Iran Zahra Kazemi (54), a Montreal-based journalist, was detained after taking pictures of Tehran's notorious Evin prison. She died Jul 11 of brain hemorrhage from inflicted blows. Iran later admitted that she was murdered while under police custody. Her family sought $14 million in damages, but a 1985 Canadian law held that foreign states are immune from the jurisdiction of Canadian courts.

2006
Jun 23, Poland's finance minister resigned after a prosecutor asked a court to investigate whether she collaborated with the country's communist-era secret police.

2011
Jun 23, A British court convicted Levi Bellfield (43) of abducting and murdering Milly Dowler (13) after she walked past his home in 2002. It took Milly's parents Bob and Sally nine years to get justice, even though her killer had been living 50 yards from where she was last seen in Station Avenue, Walton-on-Thames, Surrey. The former wheelclamper and bouncer went on to kill Miss McDonnell and to murder Amelie Delagrange (22), and attempt to murder Kate Sheedy (18) in 2004. Bellfield was jailed for life for those crimes in February 2008 and was told he would never be released.

2012
Jun 23, In Texas 2 women were found lying in "knee-deep" grass in a park in Portland. Mollie Judith Olgin (19) was pronounced dead at the scene. Her girlfriend, Mary Christine Chapa (18), was hospitalized with a single gunshot wound to the head.