James Earl Ray, the man who assassinated Martin Luther King Jr. is arrested at London Heathrow Airport.

James Earl Ray was an American fugitive who was convicted of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968. After the assassination, Ray fled to London and was captured there. Ray was convicted in 1969 after entering a guilty plea—thus forgoing a jury trial and the possibility of a death sentence—and was sentenced to 99 years of imprisonment.

Martin Luther King Jr., an American civil rights activist, was fatally shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968, at 6:01 p.m. CST. He was rushed to St. Joseph's Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 7:05 p.m at age 39.

Martin Luther King Jr. was an American Baptist minister, civil rights activist and political philosopher who was a leader of the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968. He advanced civil rights for people of color in the United States through the use of nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience against Jim Crow laws and other forms of legalized discrimination.

Heathrow Airport, also colloquially known as London Heathrow Airport and named London Airport until 1966, is the primary and largest international airport serving London, the capital and most populous city of England and the United Kingdom. It is the largest of the six international airports in the London airport system.

June 8 is the 159th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar; 206 days remain until the end of the year.