MILESFORTIS

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.