Category: Today

June 23

1280 – During the Reconquista, in the Battle of Moclín,  the Emirate of Granada ambush a superior pursuing force, killing most of them in a military disaster for the Kingdom of Castile.

1683 – William Penn signs a friendship treaty with Lenni Lenape Indians in Pennsylvania.

1780 – American General Nathaniel Greene, commanding 1500 men of the New Jersey Militia, defeats a 5000 man force of British Army troops and Hessian mercenaries at the Battle of Springfield, effectively ending British ambitions in New Jersey.

1810 – John Jacob Astor forms the Pacific Fur Company and orders the construction of a base of operations; Fort Astoria, present-day Astoria, Oregon – at the mouth of the Columbia River.

1812 – During the War of 1812, Britain revokes the restrictions on American commerce it had try to enforce, thus eliminating one of the chief reasons for going to war.

1865 – Confederate Brigadier General Stand Watie surrenders his army at Fort Towson in the Oklahoma and Indian Territory

1868 – Christopher Latham Sholes received a patent for an invention he calls the “Type-Writer.”

1894 – At the initiative of Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the International Olympic Committee is founded at the Sorbonne in Paris to organize modern athletic competition modeled after the ancient Olympic Games.

1914 – Pancho Villa defeats Victoriano Huerta at Zacatecas

1926 – The College Board administers the first SAT exam.

1931 – Pilot Wiley Post and Navigator Harold Gatty take off from Roosevelt Field, Long Island, in the Lockheed Vega Winne Mae, to make the first circumnavigation of the world in a single engine plane.

1938 – The Civil Aeronautics Act is signed into law, forming the Civil Aeronautics Authority in the United States.

1947 – The Senate follows the House of Representatives in overriding President Truman’s veto of the Taft–Hartley Act, restricting the power of labor unions

1959 – Convicted Manhattan Project spy Klaus Fuchs is released after only 9 years in prison and allowed to emigrate to Dresden, East Germany.

1960 – The FDA declares G. D. Searle & Company’s Enovid to be the first officially approved combined oral contraceptive pill in the world.

1961 – The Antarctic Treaty, which sets aside Antarctica as a scientific preserve and bans military activity on the continent, comes into force

1969 – Warren E. Burger is sworn in as Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court by retiring Chief Justice Earl Warren.

1972 – Title IX of the United States Civil Rights Act of 1964 is amended to prohibit sexual discrimination to any educational program receiving federal funds.

2013 – Nik Wallenda becomes the first man to successfully walk across the Grand Canyon on a tight rope.

2016 – The United Kingdom votes in a referendum to leave the European Union, by 52% to 48%.

 

June 22

1593 – The allied Christian armies of Austria and Croatia under Ruprecht von Eggenberg and Tamás Erdődy, defeat the moslem Ottoman army of Gazi Telli Hasan Pasha, at Sisak in central Croatia, at the confluence of the Sava and Kupa rivers.

1633 – The Holy Office in Rome forces Galileo Galilei to recant his view that the Sun, not the Earth, is the center of the Universe in the form he presented it in.

1807 – In the Chesapeake–Leopard Affair, the British warship HMS Leopard attacks and boards the American frigate USS Chesapeake off the coast of Norfolk, Virginia in the search for deserting British sailors.

1839 – Cherokee leaders Major Ridge, John Ridge, and Elias Boudinot are assassinated in Indian Territory for signing the Treaty of New Echota, which had resulted in the removal of most members of the tribe to Indian Territory referred to as the Trail of Tears.

1870 – The United States Department of Justice is created by the U.S. Congress.

1898 – During the Spanish-American War,  6,000 men of the U.S. Fifth Army Corps begin landing at Daiquirí, Cuba, unopposed against a force nearly double in size.

1918 – The collision of a Michigan Central Railroad troop train running into the rear of the Hammond Circus train, near Hammond, Indiana, kills 86 people and injures 127 more.

1940 – France is forced to sign the Second Compiègne armistice with Germany, in the same railroad car in which the Germans signed the Armistice in 1918.

1941 – Nazi Germany invades the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa.

1942 – The Pledge of Allegiance is formally adopted by Congress.

1944 –President Roosevelt signs the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, commonly known as the G.I. Bill, into law

1948 – Due to the introduction of the West German Deutsche Mark the previous day, making the Reichsmark, which was still legal tender in the Soviet zone worthless, the East German puppet government introduces their version of the Deutsche Mark.

1969 – The Cuyahoga River catches fire in Cleveland, Ohio, spurring the passing of the Clean Water Act and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency.

1978 – Charon, the first of Pluto’s satellites to be discovered, is first seen by astronomer James W. Christy, at the United States Naval Observatory, in Washington D.C.

1984 – Virgin Atlantic beings service with a flight from London to Newark.

1990 – Checkpoint Charlie is dismantled in Berlin.

2009 – A Washington D.C Metro train traveling southbound near Fort Totten station collides into another train waiting to enter the station killing 9 people including the train operator and injuring 80 more.

June 21

1768 – In a speech to the Massachusetts General Court, James Otis Jr. is noted for offending the King and Parliament, when he refers to the British House of Commons as a gathering of “button-makers, horse jockey gamesters, pensioners, pimps, and whore-masters.” being denounced by the colony’s royal governor as the most “insolent, treasonable declamation that perhaps was ever delivered.”

1788 – New Hampshire becomes the 9th and last necessary state to ratify The Constitution of the United States.

1898 – The U.S. captures Guam from Spain during the Spanish-American War.

1900 – By edict of the Empress Dowager Cixi, China formally declares war on the United States, Britain, Germany, France and Japan, during the Boxer Rebellion.

1905 – The New York Central Railroad’s flagship passenger train, the 20th Century Limited, is derailed in an apparent act of sabotage in Mentor, Ohio, killing 21 people.

1915 – In the case of Guinn v. United States, the Supreme Court rules that the Oklahoma grandfather clause legislation, which had the effect of denying the right to vote to blacks was unconstitutional.

1942 – During World War II, the Japanese submarine I-25, commanded by Lt Cmdr Meiji Tagami, surfaces off the coast of Oregon, and fires at Fort Stevens at the mouth of the Columbia river, missing all shots fired and being quickly attacked in return and forced to submerge by a U.S. Army bomber

1945 – During World War II, the Battle of Okinawa ends when organized resistance of Imperial Japanese Army forces collapses in the Mabuni area on the southern tip of the island.

1973 – In the case of Miller v. California, the Supreme Court rules that all of the 3 parts of the ‘Miller Test’:
Whether “the average person, applying contemporary community standards”, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest.
Whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct or excretory functions specifically defined by applicable state law.
Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.
must be met for speech or expression is obscene and not protected under the 1st amendment to the U.S. constitution.

1970 – The Penn Central Railroad declares Section 77 bankruptcy in what is the largest U.S. corporate bankruptcy to date.

1982 – John Hinckley is found not guilty by reason of insanity for the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan. 40 years later, he is released from any form of restriction and set totally free.

1989 – In the case of Texas v. Johnson, the Supreme Court rules that American flag burning is a form of political protest protected by the 1st Amendment

2001 – A federal grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, indicts 13 Saudis and a 1 Lebanese in the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia

2004 – SpaceShipOne becomes the first privately funded space plane to achieve spaceflight.

2006 – Pluto’s moons, newly discovered by the Hubble space telescope, are officially named Nix and Hydra.

 

June  20

451 – The forces of Roman General Flavius Aetius and Visigoth King Theodoric engage the Hun army of Attila on the Catalaunian plain in what is now northeastern France. Although the battle is inconclusive, Attila retreats back to Hungary to regroup his forces.

1782 – The U.S. Congress adopts the Great Seal of the United States.

1787 – Oliver Ellsworth makes a motion at the Federal Convention to call the government the ‘United States’.

1819 – The SS Savannah arrives at Liverpool,  completing the first crossing of the Atlantic by a steam powered vessel

1837 – Princess  Alexandrina Victoria of Kent and Strathearn becomes Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland on the death of her uncle, King William IV

1840 – Samuel Morse receives a patent for the telegraph.

1863 – The state of West Virginia,  a split off of counties that do not adhere to the Confederacy, is admitted as the 35th state.

1877 – Alexander Graham Bell installs the world’s first commercial telephone service in Hamilton, Ontario. And away we went until we’ve ended up here today with ‘smart’ cell phones.

1893 – Lizzie Borden is acquitted of the murders of her father and stepmother.

1900 –The Imperial Chinese Army, in direct support of the Righteous and Harmonious Fists movement, called the ‘Boxers’,  begins a 55 day siege of the Legation Quarter in Beijing, China.

1942 – During World War II, Kazimierz Piechowski and 3 other prisoners, dressed as German officers, steal a staff car and escape from the Auschwitz concentration camp to carry a report that Polish military intelligence officer Witold Pilecki, who deliberately allowed himself to be imprisoned in Auschwitz, had prepared about the camp for the Allies.

1943 – During World War II, the Royal Air Force launches Operation Bellicose, the first shuttle bombing raid of the war. Avro Lancaster bombers damage the V-2 rocket production facilities at the Zeppelin Works while enroute to an air base in Algeria.

1944 – The Battle of the Philippine Sea concludes with a decisive U.S. naval victory. The naval air battle is known as the “Great Marianas Turkey Shoot”.
The experimental German V-2 rocket reaches an altitude of 110 miles, becoming the first man made object to reach outer space.

1945 – The U.S. Secretary of State approves the transfer of Wernher von Braun and his team of Nazi rocket scientists to the U.S.

1956 – Linea Aeropostal Venezolana Flight 253 , a Lockheed L-1049 Super Constellation, crashes in the Atlantic Ocean off Asbury Park, New Jersey as it tries to return to Idlewild Airport for an engine problem, killing all 74 passengers and crew aboard.

1963 – Following the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Soviet Union and the United States sign an agreement to establish the so-called “red telephone” link between Washington D.C. and Moscow.

1972 –  An 18½-minute gap  is noticed in the tape recording of the conversations between President Richard Nixon and his advisers.

1975 – The film Jaws is released in the United States

1982 – The International Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide opens in Tel Aviv, despite attempts by the Turkish government to cancel it, as it included presentations on the Armenian genocide.

1990 – At the Palomar Observatory in California, astronomers David H. Levy and Henry Holt discover an asteroid sharing the same orbit as Mars, they name 5261 Eureka.

1991 – After German Unity, the German Bundestag votes to move the seat of government from the former West German capital of Bonn back to the original capital of Berlin.

2003 – The Wikimedia Foundation is founded in St. Petersburg, Florida.

2019 – Iran’s Air Defense Forces shoot down an American surveillance drone over the Strait of Hormuz .

June 19

325 – The original Nicene Creed is adopted at the First Council of Nicaea.

1586 – English colonists leave Roanoke Island, after failing in the attempt to establish England’s first permanent settlement in North America.

1846 – The first officially recorded, organized baseball game is played under Alexander Cartwright’s rules on Hoboken, New Jersey’s Elysian Fields with the New York Base Ball Club defeating the Knickerbockers 23–1 with  Cartwright umpiring.

1865 – Over two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, slaves in Galveston, Texas, United States, are finally informed of their freedom. The anniversary is officially celebrated as Juneteenth.

1875 – Aided with weapons and volunteers from the principalities of Montenegro and Serbia, Herzegovinian Serbs rebel against the moslem Ottoman Empire’s treatment of Christians in the province of Bosnia.

1910 – The first Father’s Day is celebrated in Spokane, Washington.

1934 – The Communications Act of 1934 establishes the U.S. Federal Communications Commission.

1949 – The first ever NASCAR race is held at Charlotte Speedway, where Jim Roper wins the inaugural event.

1953 –Convicted of espionage for the communist Soviet Union, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are executed in the electric chair at Sing Sing Prison, in New York. After the fall of the Soviet Union, and release of documents by the Russian government, their treason is confirmed.

1964 – The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is passed by Congress and sent to President Johnson for signing into law.

2017 – Otto Warmbier, an American college student is detained in North Korea

2018 – The 10,000,000th United States Patent is issued.

June 18

1178 – Canterbury monks see an impact event believed to have been the formation of the Giordano Bruno crater on the moon. It is believed that the current oscillations of the Moon’s distance from the Earth -on the order of meters -are a result of this collision.

1429 – The French army of King Charles VII under the leadership of Joan of Arc defeats the main English army of Lord John Talbot, led by Sir John Fastolf at the Battle of Patay, turning the tide of the Hundred Years’ War.

1684 – The charter of the Massachusetts Bay Colony is revoked by order  English court

1778 – Due to France’s earlier recognition of the United States, and open letters published noting the identities of people to be treated as traitors; loyalists and British troops abandon Philadelphia during the Revolutionary War.

1812 – The United States declaration of war on the United Kingdom is signed by President James Madison, beginning the War of 1812.

1873 – Susan B. Anthony is fined $100 for attempting to vote in the 1872 presidential election.

1908 – Japanese immigration to Brazil begins when 781 people arrive in Santos aboard the ship Kasato-Maru.

1923 – Checker Taxi puts its first taxi on the streets in Chicago.

1948 – Britain, France and the United States occupation forces announce that on June 21st, the Deutsche Mark will be introduced to replace the Reichmark in western Germany and West Berlin.

1953 – A United States Air Force C-124 of the 374th Troop Carrier Group, crashes and burns near Tachikawa, Japan, killing all 129 servicemembers aboard.

1965 – The U.S. Air Force begins Operation Arc Light during the Vietnam War, using B-52 bombers stationed in Thailand and Guam to attack Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army forces in South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

1979 – The SALT II, strategic arms treaty is signed by the United States and the Soviet Union.

1981 – The Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk, the first operational aircraft initially designed around stealth technology, makes its first flight.

1983 – Aboard Shuttle Challenger on mission STS-7, Astronaut Sally Ride becomes the first American woman in space.

2007 –  9 firefighters are killed while putting out a fire in the Sofa Super Store in Charleston, South Carolina.

2009 – NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is launched from Cape Canaveral.

June 17

1462 – One of the warlords of ancient Wallachia, Vlad III Țepeș Dracula the Impaler, attempts to assassinate the Ottoman Sultan, Mehmed II, at Târgovişte, Romania but the Sultan and his army manage to escape and hastily retreat back to Turkey.

1579 – On his voyage of circumnavigation, Sir Francis Drake claims the land he calls Nova Albion – modern California – for England.

1631 – Mumtaz Mahal dies during childbirth. Her husband, Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, builds a mausoleum for her tomb, the Taj Mahal.

1773 – Cúcuta, Colombia, is founded by Juana Rangel de Cuéllar.

1775 – During the siege of Boston, Colonial Militia defending Breed’s Hill,  on the Charlestown peninsula across the Charles river from Boston, inflict heavy casualties on assaulting British troops before running out of ammunition, and being forced to a fighting retreat in good order over Bunker Hill to Cambridge, leave the British in control of the peninsula.

1876 –1,500 Sioux and Cheyenne led by War Chief Tħašúŋke Witkó – Crazy Horse – repulse an attack by  General George Crook’s forces at Rosebud Creek in Montana Territory.

1877 – The Nez Perce inflict serious casualties, killing 34 of the 106 troopers and civilian volunteers of the U.S. 1st Cavalry Regiment in the first battle of the Nez Perce War at White Bird Canyon in the Idaho Territory, southwest of the present day city of Grangeville.

1885 – The Statue of Liberty arrives in New York Harbor.

1898 – The United States Navy Hospital Corps is established.

1901 – The College Board introduces its first standardized test, the forerunner to the SAT.

1930 – President Herbert Hoover signs the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act into law.

1932 – Around 1000 World War I veterans, called the Bonus Army, amass at the United States Capitol as the Senate considers a bill that would give them certain bonus benefits earlier than originally promised

1933 – At the Union Station in Kansas City, Missouri, 4 FBI agents and captured fugitive Frank Nash are gunned down by gangsters attempting to free Nash.

1948 – United Airlines Flight 624, a Douglas DC-6, en route from Chicago to LaGuardia Airport in New York City, crashes near Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania, killing all 43 passengers and crew on board.

1960 – The Nez Perce tribe is awarded $4 million for 7 million acres  of land undervalued at 4¢ an acre in the 1863 treaty.

1963 – In the case of Abington School District v. Schempp, the Supreme Court rules against requiring the reciting of Bible verses and the Lord’s Prayer in public schools.

1972 – 5 White House operatives are arrested for burgling the offices of the Democratic National Committee during an attempt by members of the administration of President Nixon to illegally wiretap the political opposition.

1985 – Space Shuttle Discovery is launched on mission STS-51-G with Sultan bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud aboard as a payload specialist, the first Arab and first moslem in space.

1992 – A “joint understanding” agreement on arms reduction, later codified as START II, is signed by President Bush and Russian President Boris Yeltsin.

1994 – Following a televised low speed/high drag highway chase, O. J. Simpson is arrested for the murders of his ex wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman.

2015 – 9 people are killed and 3 wounded in a shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

2021 – President Biden signs legislation enacting June 19th as the Juneteenth National Independence Day federal holiday.

June 16

1760 – During the French and Indian War, Robert Rogers and his Rangers surprise French held Fort Sainte Thérèse on the Richelieu River near Lake Champlain. The fort is raided and burned.

1829 –  Goyaałé of the Bedonkohe Chiricahua Apache – known to the Spanish as Geronimo -is born near what is now Turkey Creek Arizona.

1858 – Accepting the Illinois Republican Party’s nomination as that state’s US Senator, Abraham Lincoln delivers a speech at Springfield, Illinois in which he declares “A house divided against itself, cannot stand.”

1884 – The first purpose built roller coaster, LaMarcus Adna Thompson’s “Switchback Railway”, opens in New York’s Coney Island amusement park.

1897 – A treaty between the governments of the Republic of Hawaii and the United States to annex the nation is signed, to take effect the next year.

1903 – The Ford Motor Company is incorporated.

1911 – IBM is founded as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company in Endicott, New York.

1933 – As part of the ‘New Deal’, the National Industrial Recovery Act is signed into law by President Roosevelt, allowing businesses to avoid antitrust prosecution if they establish voluntary wage, price, and working condition regulations on an industry-wide basis.

1944 – George Junius Stinney Jr., age 14, convicted in South Carolina for the rape and murder of two preteen girls, becomes the youngest person executed in the U.S. in the 20th century.

1963 – Aboard Vostok 6, Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova becomes the first woman in space.

1977 – Oracle Corporation is incorporated in Redwood Shores, California, as Software Development Laboratories (SDL), by Larry Ellison, Bob Miner and Ed Oates.

1981 – Ronald Reagan awards the Congressional Gold Medal to Ken Taylor, Canada’s former ambassador to Iran, for helping 6 Americans escape from Iran during the hostage crisis of 1979–81

2010 – Bhutan becomes the first country to institute a total ban on tobacco.

2012 – The United States Air Force’s robotic Boeing X-37B spaceplane returns to Earth after a classified 469-day orbital mission.

2016 – Shanghai Disneyland Park, the first Disney Park in Mainland China, opens to the public.

June 15

763 BC – Assyrian astrologers record a solar eclipse that is later used to fix the chronology of Mesopotamian history.

1215 – To make peace between the king and a group of rebel barons, King John of England is forced to affix his seal to Magna Carta, a declaration of certain rights protected from the power of the English throne.

1389 –The invading army of the Ottoman Empire under Sultan Murad Hüdavendigâr, barely defeats an army of Serbs and Bosnians led by the Serbian Prince Lazar Hrebeljanović on the east central plain of Kosovo. Both leaders are killed as both armies are nearly wiped out.

1502 – Christopher Columbus lands on the island of Martinique on his fourth voyage.

1520 – Pope Leo X threatens to excommunicate Martin Luther in Exsurge Domine.

1607 – Virginia colonists finish building James’s Fort – later Jamestown – on the James river southwest of modern Williamsburg, to defend against Spanish and Indian attacks.

1648 – Margaret Jones is hanged in Boston for witchcraft in the first such execution for the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

1776 –Delaware votes to suspend government under the British Crown and separate officially from Pennsylvania.

1804 – New Hampshire approves the Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratifying it.

1836 – Arkansas is admitted as the 25th U.S. state.

1844 – Charles Goodyear receives a patent for vulcanization, a process to strengthen rubber.

1846 – The Oregon Treaty of 1846 extends the border between the United States and British North America, established by the Treaty of 1818, westward to the Pacific Ocean.

1859 – Ambiguous language in the Oregon Treaty due to incomplete mapping of the region, leads to the “Northwestern Boundary Dispute” between American and British/Canadian settlers.

1864 – Arlington National Cemetery is established when 200 acres  of the Arlington estate formerly owned by Confederate General Robert E. Lee are officially set aside as a military cemetery by U.S. Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton.

1877 – Henry Ossian Flipper becomes the first African American cadet to graduate from the United States Military Academy.

1878 – Eadweard Muybridge takes a series of photographs to prove that all four feet of a horse leave the ground when it runs; the study becomes the basis of motion pictures.

1904 – A fire aboard the steamboat SS General Slocum causes it to sink in New York City’s East River killing 1,021 of the 1,342 people on board.

1916 – President Woodrow Wilson signs a bill incorporating the Boy Scouts of America with a federal charter.

1934 – The United States Great Smoky Mountains National Park is founded.

1944 – During World War II, the U.S. invades the island of Saipan, capital of Japan’s South Seas Mandate.

1970 – Charles Manson goes on trial for the Tate–LaBianca murders.

1992 – In the case of United States v. Álvarez-Machaín, the Supreme Court rules in that it is permissible for the United States to forcibly extradite suspects in foreign countries and bring them to the United States for trial, without approval from those other countries.

2012 – Nik Wallenda becomes the first person to successfully tightrope walk directly over Niagara Falls.

2022 – Microsoft retires Internet Explorer after 26 years and introduces a new browser; Microsoft Edge.

June 14

1158 – The city of Munich is founded by Henry the Lion.

1775 – The Second Continental Congress establishes the Continental Army, which later becomes the U.S. Army.

1777 – The Second Continental Congress passes the first Flag Act, adopting the Stars and Stripes as the Flag of the United States.
Resolved, That the flag of the thirteen United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation.

1789 – HMS Bounty mutiny survivors including Captain William Bligh and 18 others reach the island of Timor after a nearly 4,600 mile journey in an open boat.

1846 – Anglo settlers in Sonoma, California, start a rebellion against Mexico and proclaim the Republic of California.

1863 – A Union garrison is defeated by the Army of Northern Virginia in the Shenandoah Valley town of Winchester, Virginia.

1864 – Alois Alzheimer, German psychiatrist and neuropathologist is born in Marktbreit, Bavaria

1914 – Adlai Stevenson I, 23rd Vice President of the United States dies in Chicago.

1926 – Brazil leaves the League of Nations.

1937 – The House of Representatives passes the Marihuana Tax Act.

1940 –The German occupation of Paris begins.

1946 – Donald Trump, 45th President of the United States is born in Queens New York.

1949 – Albert II, a rhesus monkey, rides a V-2 rocket launched at Holloman Air Force Base’s Alamogordo Guided Missile Test Base, New Mexico to an altitude of 134 km, becoming the first mammal and first monkey in space but dies on reentry.

1951 – The Remington Rand UNIVAC I computer is dedicated for use by the U.S. Census Bureau.

1954 – President Eisenhower signs a Joint Resolution of Congress into law that places the words “under God” into the United States Pledge of Allegiance.

1967 – The Mariner 5 probe is launched from Cape Canaveral, for a fly by of Venus

2002 – The 240 foot diameter, Near Earth Asteroid 2002 MN, discovered in 2002 by the MIT Lincoln Laboratory in Lexington, Massachusetts, misses the Earth by 75,000 miles, about one third of the distance between the Earth and the Moon.

2017 – During practice for a charity baseball game in Alexandria, Virginia, Republican member of Congress and House Majority Whip, Steve Scalise of Louisiana is shot by a follower of Senator Bernie Sanders.

June 13

313 – The Edict of Milan, signed by Constantine the Great and co-emperor Valerius Licinius, grants religious freedom throughout the Roman Empire.

1525 – Martin Luther marries Katharina von Bora, against the celibacy rule decreed by the Roman Catholic Church for priests and nuns.

1774 – Rhode Island becomes the first of Britain’s North American colonies to ban the importation of slaves.

1777 – During the Revolutionary War, Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette arrives at Charleston, South Carolina, in order to help the Continental Congress to train its army.

1805 – Scouting ahead of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, Meriwether Lewis and four companions sight the Great Falls of the Missouri River in north central Montana.

1881 – During the exploration of the Artic, the stranded USS Jeannette is crushed in an  ice pack.

1893 – At the beginning of his second term in office, President Grover Cleveland notices a rough spot in his mouth and on July 1 undergoes secret, successful surgery to remove a large, cancerous portion of his jaw. The operation was not revealed to the public until 1917, nine years after the president’s death.

1927 – Aviator Charles Lindbergh receives a ticker tape parade down 5th Avenue in New York City.

1966 – In the case of  Miranda v. Arizona, the Supreme Court rules that the police must inform suspects of their of their 5th Amendment rights before questioning them.

1967 – President Johnson nominates Solicitor-General Thurgood Marshall to become the first black justice on the Supreme Court.

1971 – The New York Times begins publication of the Pentagon Papers, the classified Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force.

1983 – Pioneer 10 becomes the first man-made object to leave the central Solar System when it passes beyond the orbit of Neptune.

1994 – A jury in Anchorage, Alaska, finds Exxon corporation and Captain Joseph Hazelwood responsible for the Exxon Valdez disaster, allowing victims of the oil spill to seek $15 billion in damages.

1997 – A jury sentences Timothy McVeigh to death for his part in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

2002 – The United States withdraws from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia.

2015 – A man driving an armored van opens fire outside the police headquarters in Dallas, Texas and is killed in a gunfight with police after a vehicle pursuit ending in Hutchens, Texas.

2018 – Volkswagen is fined one billion euros over the emissions scandal, where the on board computer is programmed to change engine performance to meet exhaust standards when a vehicle is being tested.

June 12

1240 – At the instigation of King Louis IX of France, an inter-faith debate, known as the Disputation of Paris, starts between a Christian monk and four rabbis.

1429 – On the second day of the Battle of Jargeau, Joan of Arc leads the French army in their capture of the city.

1775 – British General Thomas Gage declares martial law in Massachusetts. The British offer a pardon to all colonists who lay down their arms. There would be only two exceptions to the amnesty: Samuel Adams and John Hancock, if captured, were to be hanged.

1776 – The Virginia Declaration of Rights is adopted.
Section 13
That a well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defense of a free state; that standing armies, in time of peace, should be avoided as dangerous to liberty; and that in all cases the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.

1864 – Ulysses S. Grant gives Robert E. Lee a victory when he pulls his Union troops from their position at Cold Harbor, Virginia and moves south.

1898 – During the Spanish -American War, Philippine General Emilio Aguinaldo, recently returned from exile in Hong Kong, has Ambrosio Rianzares Bautista read the Philippines’ Declaration of Independence from Spain.

1899 – An F5 force  tornado strikes the city of New Richmond, Wisconsin, killing 117 people and injuring around 200 more.

1939 – The Baseball Hall of Fame opens in Cooperstown, New York.

1942 – Anne Frank receives a diary for her thirteenth birthday.

1944 – During the invasion of France, American paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division secure the town of Carentan, Normandy, France.

1963 – The film Cleopatra, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, is released in US theaters.  At the time, the most expensive film made.

1967 – In the case of Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court declares all U.S. state laws which prohibit interracial marriage to be unconstitutional.

1987 – At the Brandenburg Gate, U.S. President Ronald Reagan publicly challenges Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall.

1990 – After the fall of the Soviet Union, the parliament of the Russian Federation formally declares its sovereignty.

1991 – Russians elect Boris Yeltsin as the first democratically elected President of Russia.

1999 – Operation Joint Guardian begins when a NATO led United Nations peacekeeping force (KFOR) enters the province of Kosovo in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia under terms of a previous peace treaty.

1994 – Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman are murdered outside Simpson’s home in Los Angeles.

2016 – 49 people are are killed and 58 others injured in an attack on a nightclub catering to homosexuals in Orlando, Florida, by a moslem gunman who is killed in a gunfight with responding police.

2017 – American student Otto Warmbier returns home in a coma after spending 17 months in a North Korean prison and dies a week later.

2018 – President Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un of North Korea hold the first meeting between leaders of their countries in Singapore.

 

June 11

1125 – Forces of the Crusader States commanded by King Baldwin II of Jerusalem defeat Aq-Sunqur al-Bursuqi’s army of Seljuk Turks and take the city of Azaz in what is now northwestern Syria

1775 – The American Revolutionary War’s first naval engagement off Machias, Maine, results in the capture of British armed sloop HMS Margaretta by the Machias Militia aboard the private ships Unity and Falmouth Packet.

1776 – The Continental Congress appoints Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston to the Committee of Five to draft a declaration of independence.

1788 – Russian explorer Gerasim Izmailov reaches the North American land of Alyeska.

1805 – A fire consumes large portions of Detroit town in the Michigan Territory.

1919 – Sir Barton with jockey Johnny Loftus aboard, wins the Belmont Stakes, becoming the first horse to win the U.S. Triple Crown.

1935 – Inventor Edwin Armstrong gives the first public demonstration of FM radio broadcasting in the U.S. at Alpine, New Jersey.

1944 – BB-63, USS Missouri, the last battleship built by the U.S. Navy and future site of the signing of the Japanese Instrument of Surrender, is commissioned onto active duty.

1955 – At the 24 Hours of Le Mans race, 83 spectators are killed and at least 100 injured after an Austin Healey and a Mercedes Benz collide; the deadliest ever accident in motorsports.

1962 – Frank Morris, John Anglin and Clarence Anglin escape from the federal prison on Alcatraz Island. Most surmises are they drowned in San Francisco Bay, but no bodies are ever found.

1963 – Governor of Alabama George Wallace stands at the door of Foster Auditorium at the University of Alabama in an attempt to block two black students, Vivian Malone and James Hood, from attending that school. Later in the day, accompanied by federalized National Guard troops, they are able to register.

1970 – After being appointed on May 15, Anna Mae Hays and Elizabeth P. Hoisington are officially promoted to the rank of U.S. Army Brigadier General Officers, becoming the first women to attain the rank..

1971 – The U.S. Government officers forcibly remove the last holdouts to the Native American Occupation of Alcatraz, ending 19 months of occupation.

1979 – John Wayne dies of complications of stomach cancer at the UCLA Medical Center.

2001 – Timothy McVeigh is executed in the Federal Penitentiary in Terre-Haute, Indiana for his role in the Oklahoma City bombing.

2008 – The Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope is launched into orbit from Cape Canaveral.

 

June 10

323 BC – Alexander the Great dies in Babylon.

1190 – During the Third Crusade, Frederick I Barbarossa drowns in the river Saleph while leading an army to Jerusalem.

1692 –Bridget Bishop is hanged at Gallows Hill near Salem, Massachusetts, for “certaine Detestable Arts called Witchcraft and Sorceries”.

1805 – Yusuf Karamanli signs a treaty ending the First Barbary War between Tripolitania and the United States.

1854 – The United States Naval Academy graduates its first class of Midshipmen

1861 – Confederate troops under John B. Magruder defeat a much larger Union force led by General Ebenezer W. Pierce at Big Bethel in Virginia

1864 – Confederate troops under Nathan Bedford Forrest defeat a much larger Union force led by General Samuel D. Sturgis at Brice’s Crossroads in Mississippi.

1871 – During the United States Expedition to Korea, Captain McLane Tilton USMC leads his 109 Marines in an attack on Han River forts on Kanghwa Island, Korea.

1898 – In the Battle of Guantánamo Bay during the Spanish-American War, U.S. Marines begin the American invasion of Cuba.

1916 – The Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire is declared by Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca. A few months later, British Military Intelligence sends Captain T.E. Lawrence to determine which of the Arab leaders to support on this new front against a German ally.

1940 – The Kingdom of Italy declares war on France and the United Kingdom. President Franklin D. Roosevelt denounces Italy’s actions in his “Stab in the Back” speech at the graduation ceremonies of the University of Virginia.

1942 – The Lidice massacre is perpetrated as a reprisal for the assassination of SS Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich.

1944 – 15 year old Joe Nuxhall of the Cincinnati Reds becomes the youngest player ever in a major league game.

1963 – The Equal Pay Act of 1963, aimed at abolishing wage disparity based on sex, was signed into law by John F. Kennedy as part of his New Frontier Program.

1964 – The Senate breaks a 54 day long filibuster by 18 southern Democratic Senators and 1 Republican Senator against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, leading to the bill’s passage.

1967 – The Six-Day War ends as Israel and Syria agree to a cease fire.

1977 – James Earl Ray escapes from Brushy Mountain State Prison in Petros, Tennessee. He is recaptured three days later.

1988 – Louis L’Amour, American novelist and short story writer dies at his home in Los Angeles.

1991 – 11 year old Jaycee Lee Dugard is kidnapped in South Lake Tahoe, California; she would remain a captive until August 2009.

2003 – The Mars Exploration Rover Spirit is launched from Cape Canaveral, beginning NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover missions.

2009 – 88 year old James von Brunn opens fire inside the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C., murdering Museum Special Police Officer Stephen Tyrone Johns. Other security guards returned fire, wounding von Brunn, who is arrested and while in custody dies of natural causes in January 2010 while still awaiting trial.

2018 – The Opportunity rover sends it last message back to earth. The mission is finally declared over on February 13, 2019.

2019 – Enroute from New York to Linden, New Jersey, an Agusta A109E helicopter crashes onto the AXA Equitable Center on Seventh Avenue in Manhattan, killing the pilot, the only one aboard.

June 9

68 – Emperor Nero commits suicide, prompting the Roman civil war known as the Year of the Four Emperors; Galba, Otho, Vitellius, and Vespasian.

721 – Duke Odo of Aquitaine defeats the army of Al-Samh al-Khawlaniin in the Battle of Toulouse, breaking a 3 month long siege and killing over 3000 moors, halting for awhile the further spread of the moslem invasion from Spain into Europe and giving Charles Martel, farther north, time to build an army.

1534 – Jacques Cartier is the first European to describe and map the Saint Lawrence River.

1732 – James Oglethorpe is granted a royal charter for a colony that becomes the colony and future state of Georgia.

1772 – Chasing the packet ship Hannah –later to be hired by General Washington as the first ship of the Continental Navy – the British customs schooner HMS Gaspee, enforcing British import and export taxes, runs aground in shallow water on the northwestern side of Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island. She is then attacked by members of The Sons of Liberty, and after a short fight, boarded and burned.

1862 –Stonewall Jackson concludes his successful Shenandoah Valley Campaign with a victory in the Battle of Port Republic. The tactics used during the campaign are now studied by militaries around the world

1915 – William Jennings Bryan resigns as Woodrow Wilson’s Secretary of State over a disagreement regarding the United States’ handling of the sinking of the RMS Lusitania after Wilson sent Germany a note of protest while still a neutral power.

1944 – 99 civilians are hanged from lampposts and balconies by German troops in Tulle, France, in reprisal for attacks by the French Resistance during World War II.

1953 – The Flint–Worcester tornado outbreak from the midwest to northern states in kills 94 people in Michigan and Massachusetts.

1959 – The first nuclear powered ballistic missile submarine, SSBN-598, USS George Washington is launched at Electric Boat Division, Groton, Connecticut.

1967 – Israel captures the Golan Heights from Syria during the Six-Day War.

1972 – Severe rainfall causes the Canyon Lake dam in the Black Hills of South Dakota to burst, creating a flood that kills 238 people, mostly In Rapid City, and causes $160 million in damage.

1973 – Winning the Belmont Stakes at Belmont Park in Elmont, New York, while setting the current track record of 2:24 for the distance, Secretariat with jockey Ron Turcotte aboard secures the U.S. Triple Crown, the first horse to do so since 1948.

1978 – The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints opens its priesthood to “all worthy men”, ending a 148 year old policy of excluding black men.

1999 – President Clinton, previously frustrated with Serbian intransigence and changing the rules of engagement to include the political leadership, news media and the intellectual underpinning of his enemy’s war effort -accidentally filing suit under the ‘Law of Unintended Consequences’ – causes the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (at the time, Serbia and Montenegro) to end military operations in Kosovo and sign a peace treaty with NATO.

June 8

452 – Attila leads a Hun army in the invasion of Italy from the north.

632 – Muhammad dies in Medina.

793 – Vikings raid the abbey at Lindisfarne in Northumbria, commonly accepted as the beginning of Norse activity in the British Isles.

1191 – King Richard the Lion Heart arrives in Acre, beginning his part of the 3rd Crusade.

1776 – American forces commanded by Gen. John Sullivan suffer heavy losses after defeat by British defenders of Trois-Rivières in Quebec.

1789 – Virginia Representative James Madison introduces 12 proposed amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
THE Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution

1845 – Andrew Jackson dies at his home, the Hermitage in Nashville, Tennessee

1861 – Tennessee secedes from the Union.

1862 –Confederate forces under General Stonewall Jackson save the Army of Northern Virginia from a Union assault on the James Peninsula led by General George B. McClellan.

1874 – Cochise dies at the Chihuahua Reservation in the southeast corner of Arizona.

1887 – Herman Hollerith applies for US patent #395,781 for the ‘Art of Compiling Statistics’, which was his punch card calculator.

1906 – President Theodore Roosevelt signs the Antiquities Act into law, authorizing the President to restrict the use of certain parcels of public land with historical or conservation value.

1912 – Carl Laemmle incorporates Universal Pictures.

1949 – George Orwell’s book Nineteen Eighty-Four is published in London. It was not supposed to be an instruction manual.

1953 – An F5 force tornado hits Beecher, Michigan, killing 116 people, injuring 844 more, and destroying 340 homes.

1966 – An F-104 Starfighter collides with XB-70 Valkyrie prototype no. 2, destroying both aircraft near Edwards Air Force Base. Test pilots Joseph A. Walker, and Carl Cross are both killed.
An F5 force strikes Topeka, Kansas, killing 16 people and causing over $100 million in damages.

1967 – During the Six-Day War, the USS Liberty, sailing in international water in the Mediterranean, is attacked by Israeli fighter jets and torpedo boats, killing 34 sailors and wounding 171 more.

1968 – James Earl Ray is arrested in London.

1995 – U.S. Air Force pilot Captain Scott O’Grady is rescued by U.S. Marines in Bosnia after his F-16 fighter is shot down.

2001 – Mamoru Takuma kills 8 people and wounds 15 more in a mass stabbing at an elementary school in Ikeda Japan.

2008 – Tomohiro Katō kills 7 people and wounds 10 more in a mass stabbing at a shopping area in Tokyo.

2009 – American journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling, of CurrentTV are found guilty of illegally entering North Korea in March and sentenced to 12 years imprisonment, but are pardoned 2 months later and return to the U.S.

June 7

1098 – During the First Crusade, Saracen forces return and besiege the city of Antioch taken 5 days earlier by Crusader forces.

1099 – During the First Crusade, Crusader forces besiege Jerusalem, held by the Saracens.

1494 – Spain and Portugal sign the Treaty of Tordesillas which divides the New World between the two countries.

1776 – Richard Henry Lee presents the “Lee Resolution” to the Continental Congress calling for the colonies’ independence from Great Britain. “That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States.” The motion is seconded by John Adams and will lead to the United States Declaration of Independence.

1862 – The United States and the United Kingdom agree in the Lyons–Seward Treaty to suppress the African slave trade.

1899 – American Temperance crusader Carrie Nation begins her campaign of vandalizing alcohol serving establishments by destroying the inventory in a saloon in Kiowa, Kansas.

1906 – The Cunard Line’s RMS Lusitania is launched from the John Brown Shipyard in Glasgow, Scotland.

1942 – The Battle of Midway ends in American victory, the turning point in the war in the Pacific against Japan.

1965 – The Supreme Court decision in Griswold v. Connecticut, prohibits the states from criminalizing the use of contraception by married couples.

1967 – During the Six-Day War, Israeli soldiers enter Jerusalem.

1971 – ATF officers raid the home of Ken Ballew for illegal possession of hand grenades, which were later determined to be inert, smoke and practice grenades which are perfectly legal to possess.

1981 – The Israeli Air Force attacks and destroys Iraq’s Osiraq nuclear reactor at the Al Tuwaitha Nuclear Center near Baghdad.

1982 – Priscilla Presley opens Graceland to the public. The tour includes a large storage building containing concert gear and the interior of the house.

1991 – Mount Pinatubo erupts on Luzon island in the Philippines.

2000 – The United Nations defines the Blue Line as the border between Israel and Lebanon.

June 5

1837 – The city of Houston is incorporated by the Republic of Texas.

1850 – Pat Garrett is born in Chambers County, Alabama

1851 – Harriet Beecher Stowe’s serial, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, or Life Among the Lowly, starts a 10 month run in the National Era newspaper.

1864 – Union forces under General David Hunter defeat a Confederate army at Piedmont, Virginia, taking nearly 1,000 prisoners.

1893 – The trial of Lizzie Borden for the murder of her father and step-mother begins in New Bedford, Massachusetts.

1916 – Louis Brandeis is sworn in as a Justice of the United States Supreme Court, the first American Jew to hold such a position.

1917 –Under the Selective Service Act of 1917, conscription begins in the United States as “Army registration day”.

1944 – More than 1,000 British bombers drop 5,000 tons of bombs on German gun batteries on the Normandy coast in preparation for D-Day.

1945 – The Allied Control Council, the military occupation governing body of Germany, formally takes power.

1946 – A fire in the La Salle Hotel in Chicago kills 61 people.

1947 – In a speech at Harvard University, Secretary of State George Marshall calls for economic aid to post war Europe, called the ‘Marshall Plan’.

1967 – The Six Day War begins as Israel launches surprise strikes against Egyptian airfields in response to the mobilization of Egyptian forces on the Israeli border.

1968 – Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy is assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan in Los Angeles, California.

1976 – The earthen dam on the Teton river in Idaho collapses, killing 11 people in the small towns downstream as a result of the flooding.

1981 – A report by the Centers for Disease Control includes 5 people in Los Angeles, California, having a rare form of pneumonia seen only in patients with weakened immune systems, the first recognized cases of AIDS.

1998 – A strike that ends up lasting 7 weeks begins at the General Motors parts factory in Flint, Michigan.

2001 – Tropical Storm Allison makes landfall on the Texas coastline and dumps large amounts of rain over Houston, causing $5.5 billion in damage, the second costliest tropical storm in U.S. history.

2004 – Ronald Reagan, 40th President of the United States dies at his home in Los Angeles

2017 – Montenegro becomes the 29th member of NATO.

June 4

1738 – George William Frederick of the United Kingdom, later King George III of England, is born in London.

1792 – Captain George Vancouver claims Puget Sound for the Kingdom of Great Britain.

1783 – The Montgolfier brothers publicly demonstrate their Montgolfière, a hot air balloon.

1812 – Following Louisiana’s admittance as a U.S. state, the Louisiana Territory is renamed the Missouri Territory.

1825 – While on tour of the nation during the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Revolutionary War, the Marquis de La Fayette gives a speech about the war at the Courthouse Square in Buffalo, New York. Later in honor of his service, the city renames the square after him.

1855 – U.S. Army Major Henry C. Wayne departs New York aboard the USS Supply sailing to North Africa to procure camels to establish the U.S. Camel Corps.

1862 – Confederate troops evacuate Fort Pillow on the Mississippi River, leaving the way clear for Union troops to take Memphis, Tennessee.

1876 – The Transcontinental Express train arrives in San Francisco, via the  Transcontinental Railroad, 83 hours and 39 minutes after leaving New York City.

1896 – Henry Ford completes the Ford Quadricycle, his first gasoline-powered automobile, and gives it a successful test run.

1919 – Congress passes the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees suffrage to women, and sends it to the States for ratification.

1939 – The MS St. Louis, a ship carrying 963 Jewish refugees, is denied permission to land in Florida. With no other nations allowing it to land, the ship is forced to return to Europe with more than 200 of its passengers later dying in Nazi concentration camps.

1940 –  The Allied evacuation at Dunkirk having been completed, French rearguard forces surrender to the Germans.

1942 – The Battle of Midway begins with Imperial Japanese Navy forces under the command of Admiral Chūichi Nagumo launching airstrikes on the island.

1944 – A hunter killer group of the U.S. Navy captures the German submarine U-505: The first time a U.S. Navy vessel had captured an enemy vessel at sea since the 19th century.
The United States Fifth Army captures Rome, although much of the German Fourteenth Army is able to withdraw to the north.

1961 – At the Vienna summit, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev sparks the Berlin Crisis by threatening to sign a separate peace treaty with East Germany and ending American, British and French access to East Berlin.

1977 – JVC introduces the VHS videotape at the Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago. It will eventually prevail against Sony’s Betamax system.

1986 – Jonathan Pollard pleads guilty to espionage for selling top secret United States military intelligence to Israel. Sentenced to Life imprisonment, he is released on parole in 2015.

1997 – NASA’s Mars Pathfinder probe, which is carrying the Sojourner rover, lands on the Chryse Planitia region Mars.

1998 – Terry Nichols is sentenced to life in prison for his role in the Oklahoma City bombing of the Murrah Federal Building

2010 – The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches on its maiden flight from Cape Canaveral Launch Complex 40.