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.