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.