June 17th



~900 – Died this day: Fulk the Venerable, Archbishop of Rheims; assassinated (b. circa 838).

~1025 – Died this day: Bolesław I the Brave, first king of Poland (b. 967).

~1462 – The Night Attack: A large scale skirmish was fought between the forces of Vlad III the Impaler of Wallachia and the army of Mehmed II of the Ottoman Empire. The conflict initially started with Vlad Ţepeş's refusal to pay tribute to the Sultan and intensified when Vlad Ţepeş invaded Bulgaria and impaled over 23,000 Turks and Bulgarians. Mehmed then raised a great army with the objective to conquer Wallachia and annex it to his empire. The 2 leaders fought a series of skirmishes, the most notable one being the Night Attack where Vlad Ţepeş attacked the Turkish camp in the night in an attempt to kill Mehmed. While Vlad's forces won a decisive victory that night, the assassination attempt failed and Mehmed marched to the Wallachian capital of Târgovişte. There he discovered another 20,000 impaled Turks and Bulgarians. Demoralised, the Sultan and his troops retreated.

~1497 – The Battle of Deptford Bridge took place at present day Deptford in southeast London, adjacent to the River Ravensbourne. It was the culminating event of the Cornish Rebellion. King Henry VII of England had mustered an army of some 25,000 while the Cornish opposing him (led by An Gof) lacked the supporting cavalry and artillery arms essential to the professional forces of the time. After carefully spreading rumours that he would attack on the following Monday June 19th, Henry moved against the Cornish at dawn on his "lucky day", Saturday. The Royal forces were divided into 3 "battles", 2 under Lords Oxford, Essex and Suffolk, to wheel round the right flank and rear of enemy while the 3rd waited in reserve. When the Cornish were duly surrounded, Lord Daubeney and the 3rd "battle" were ordered into frontal attack. Estimates of the Cornish dead in the ensuing one-sided battle range from 200 to 2000 and a general slaughter of the broken army was well under way when An Gof gave the order for surrender.

~1565 – The 13th Ashikaga shogun, Ashikaga Yoshiteru, was killed along with his small number of troops in a skirmish with the forces of Matsunaga Hisahide.

~1579 – During his circumnavigation of the globe (1577–1580), Sir Francis Drake claimed for Emgland a land he called Nova Albion, which is today's California. (Recent investigations have indicated that the landing actually occurred much farther north in central Oregon.)

~1631 – Mumtaz Mahal died during childbirth. Her husband, Mughal emperor Shah Jahan I, would spend more than 20 years building her mausoleum, the Taj Mahal.

~1673 – French explorers Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet reached the Mississippi River, near Prairie du Chienand, and went on to become the first Europeans making a detailed account of its course.

~1696 – Died this day: John III Sobieski, King of Poland (b. 1629)

~1733 – The city of Cúcuta, Colombia was founded by Juana Rangel de Cuéllar.

~1775 – The Battle of Bunker Hill took place. The fighting occurred mostly on and around Breed's Hill, during the Siege of Boston (early in the American Revolutionary War). The battle is named after the adjacent Bunker Hill, which was peripherally involved in the battle and was the original objective of both colonial and British troops. After 2 assaults on the colonial lines were repulsed with significant British casualties, the British finally captured the positions on the 3rd assault, after the defenders in the redoubt ran out of ammunition. The colonial forces then retreated to Cambridge over Bunker Hill. With the loss of nearly a third of the British forces the state of siege was not significantly altered. Meanwhile, colonial forces were able to retreat and regroup in good order having suffered few casualties.

~1839 – In the Kingdom of Hawaii, under threat of the French government seeking to protect the work of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, King Kamehameha III issued an Edict of Toleration allowing for the establishment of the Hawaii Catholic Church.

~1863 – The Battle of Aldie: During the Gettysburg Campaign, Union Brigadier General Judson Kilpatrick's brigade encountered Colonel Thomas T. Munford's Confederate troopers near the village of Aldie, resulting in 4 hours of stubborn fighting. Both sides made mounted assaults by regiments and squadrons. Kilpatrick's brigade was reinforced in the afternoon, and Munford finally withdrew toward Middleburg.

~1876 – The Battle of the Rosebud: 1,500 Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors led by Crazy Horse beat back a US Army force of similar size, led by General George Crook, at Rosebud Creek in Montana Territory.

~1877 – The Battle of White Bird Canyon: Warriors of the Nez Perce nation defeated the U.S. Cavalry at White Bird Canyon in the Idaho Territory in a battle provoked by the cavalry.

~1885 – The Statue of Liberty arrived in New York Harbor on board the French frigate Isère commanded by Lespinasse De Saune.

~1898 – With the Spanish-American War looming, Congress passed a bill authorizing establishment of the U.S. Navy Hospital Corps, signed into law by President William McKinley.

~1905 - The Royal Navy's King Edward VII class predreadnought battleship "HMS Hibernia" was launched at the Davenport Dockyard. In 1912 she became the first warship underway to launch an aircraft.

~1910 – The first flight of Aurel Vlaicu's A. Vlaicu nr.1 was made in Romania. It is generally considered to be the first aircraft specifically designed for military purposes.

~1916 - The first flight of the Royal Aircraft Factory R.E.8, a British 2 seat reconnaissance/bomber aircraft of the World War I. Intended as a replacement for the vulnerable B.E.2, the R.E.8 was much more difficult to fly and was regarded with great suspicion at first in the Royal Flying Corps. Although eventually it gave reasonably satisfactory service it was never an outstanding combat aircraft. In spite of this, the R.E.8 served as the standard British reconnaissance and artillery spotting aircraft from mid-1917 to the end of the war, serving alongside the much more popular Armstrong Whitworth F.K.8. Over 4,000 R.E.8s were eventually produced and they served in most theatres including Italy, Russia, Palestine and Mesopotamia, as well as the Western Front.

~1928 - Aviator Amelia Earhart set out on her quest to become the first woman to fly across the Atlantic, when she took off as a passenger aboard a Fokker F. VII named "Friendship". Wilmer Stutz was pilot and Lou Gordon the mechanic on the flight. The plane set down safely in Burry Port, Wales 20 hours and 40 minutes later.

~1930 – U.S. President Herbert Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act into law that raised U.S. tariffs on over 20,000 imported goods to record levels. The overall level tariffs under the Tariff Act of 1930 were the 2nd highest in US history, exceeded only (by a small margin) by the Tariff Act of 1828. In a prime example of the dangers surrounding protectionism, the ensuing retaliatory tariffs by U.S. trading partners reduced American exports and imports by more than half. (Hoover was a great social leader, but an economic idiot!)

~1932 – The Bonus Army: Thousands of World War I veterans amassed at the United States Capitol as the U.S. Senate considered a bill that would give them an early cash payment redemption of the service certificates issued to them in 1924.

~1933 – Union Station Massacre: in Kansas City, Missouri, 4 FBI agents and captured fugitive Frank Nash were allegedly gunned down by gangsters attempting to free Nash. (Later evidence has suggested that wild shotgunfire by law enforcement was responsible for at least 3 of the deaths.)

~1937 - While moored at Cartagena, the España class dreadnought battleship "Jaime I" of the Spanish Navy was wrecked by a massive accidental internal explosion and fire that resulted in the deaths and injuries of a large portion of her crew. She was soon refloated, but determined to be beyond repair.

~1939 – The last public guillotining in France, that of convicted murderer Eugen Weidmann, took place in Versailles outside the Saint-Pierre prison.

~1940 – Operation Ariel, which had gotten underway on June 14th, shifted into high gear as Allied troops stepped up their evacuation of France following Germany's takeover of Paris and most of the nation. Over 215,000 Allied soldiers were evacuated during Ariel.

~1940 – The British Cunard liner RMS Lancastria was sunk by Luftwaffe Junker Ju 88 bombers near Saint-Nazaire, France, resulting in the loss of an estimated 4,000 plus lives. She had been evacuating troops and civilians during Operation Ariel.

~1940 – The British Army's 11th Hussars attacked and seized Fort Capuzzo in Libya, Africa from Italian forces.

~1940 – The three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania fell under the occupation of the Soviet Union.

~1944 – Iceland declared its independence from Denmark and became a republic.

~1947 - The Yakovlev Yak-17 made its first flight. It was an early Soviet jet fighter. The trainer version, known as the Yak-17UTI, was the Soviet Air Arms most numerous and important early jet trainer. (3 out of 4 sources confirming this date.)

~1948 – United Airlines Flt. 624, a Douglas DC-6. crashed near Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania, killing all 43 people aboard.

~1953 – The East Germany Workers Uprising: in East Germany, the Soviet Union ordered a division of troops into East Berlin to quell a labor led rebellion.

~1958 – The Second Narrows Bridge, while in the process of being built to connect Vancouver and North Vancouver, British Columbia, collapsed into Burrard Inlet killing 18 of the ironworkers and injuring many others. A diver sent down to recover bodies drowned later. The span has since been renamed the Ironworkers Memorial Bridge.

~1958 – (Meanwhile, on the same day just a quarter mile from the collapsing Second Narrows Bridge): The Wooden Roller Coaster at Playland, located on the Pacific National Exhibition Grounds in Vancouver, opened. It is still in operation today and is the signature ride of Playland.

~1961 – The socialist New Democratic Party of Canada was founded with the merger of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) and the Canadian Labour Congress.

~1963 – The United States Supreme Court ruled 8 to 1 in Abington School District v. Schempp that school sponsored Bible reading and reciting of the Lord's Prayer in public schools in the United States was unconstitutional.

~1963 – A day after South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem announced the Joint Communique to end the Buddhist crisis, a riot involving around 2,000 people broke out.

~1972 – The Watergate scandal: 5 White House operatives were arrested for burglarizing the offices of the Democratic National Committee, in an attempt by some members of the Republican party to illegally wiretap the opposition.

~1987 – With the death of the last known bird of the species, Southern Florida's Dusky Seaside Sparrow became extinct.

~1991 – The South African Parliament repealed the Population Registration Act of 1950 which required racial classification of all South Africans at birth.

~1992 – A "Joint Understanding" agreement on arms reduction was signed by U.S. President George H. W. Bush and Russian President Boris Yeltsin. This would be later codified in START II.

~1994 – Following a low speed highway chase that turned into a televised media circus, O.J. Simpson was arrested for the murders of his wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman.

...

This post has been edited at member's request.Ron,

June 18th



~618 – Li Yuan became Emperor Gaozu of Tang, initiating almost 3 centuries of Tang Dynasty rule over China.

~1178 – 5 monks from Canterbury reported to the abbey's chronicler, Gervase, that shortly after sunset they saw "two horns of light" on the shaded part of the Moon. This was probably the Giordano Bruno crater being formed from an asteroid making a lunar impact on the far side of the Moon. It is believed that the current oscillations of the Moon's distance from the Earth (on the order of metres) are a result of this collision.

~1250 - Died this day: Queen Teresa of Portugal (b. 1178).

~1264 – The Parliament of Ireland met at Castledermot in County Kildare. It is the first definitively known meeting of this Irish legislature.

~1291 - Died this day: King Alfonso III of Aragon (b. 1265).

~1429 – French forces dealt a decisive defeat to the main English army under sir John Fastolf at the Battle of Patay. This turned the tide of the Hundred Years' War. Although the victory was credited to Joan of Arc, most of the fighting took place at the vanguard of the French army and the battle was over before the main body could arrive.

~1757 – The Battle of Kolín was fought between Prussian forces under Frederick the Great and an Austrian army under the command of Field Marshal Count Leopold Joseph von Daun in the Seven Years' War. There were more than 23,000 casualties in this Austrian victory.

~1767 – English sea captain Samuel Wallis and his men sighted Tahiti. He and his crew are believed to be the first Europeans to reach the island.

~1812 – The U.S. Congress declared war on Britain.

~1815 - The Battle of Waterloo was fought near Waterloo in present-day Belgium. An Imperial French army under the command of Emperor Napoleon was defeated by combined armies of the Seventh Coalition, an Anglo-Allied army under the command of the Duke of Wellington combined with a Prussian army under the command of Gebhard von Blücher. It was the culminating battle of the Waterloo Campaign and Napoleon's last. The defeat at Waterloo put an end to Napoleon's rule as Emperor of the French and marked the end of his Hundred Days' return from exile. There were more than 47,000 casualties in this, arguably the most famous battle of the 19th century.

~1858 – Charles Darwin received a paper from Alfred Russel Wallace that included nearly identical conclusions about evolution as Darwin's own, prompting Darwin to publish his theory.

~1859 – The first ascent of Aletschhorn, the second summit of the Bernese Alps, was made by Francis Fox Tuckett, J. J. Bennen, V. Tairraz and P. Bohren.

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

~1887 – The Reinsurance Treaty between Germany and Russia was signed. It was an attempt by German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck to continue to ally with Russia after the League of the Three Emperors had broken down in the aftermath of the 1885 Serbo-Bulgarian War.

~1900 – Empress Dowager Longyu of China ordered all foreigners to be killed, including foreign diplomats and their families. (Bit of a PMS day there, Dow?)

~1908 – Japanese immigration to Brazil began when 781 people arrived in Santos aboard the ship Kasato-Maru.

~1908 – The University of the Philippines was established through Act No. 1870 of the first Philippine Legislature, known as the "University Act".

~1928 - Died this day: Roald Amundsen, Norwegian explorer of the world's polar regions (b. 1872).

~1935 - The Ballantyne Pier Riot: A major clash erupted between city, provincial and federal (RCMP) police and longshoremen protesters on the waterfont dock in the East End of Vancouver, British Columbia. It lasted for about 3 hours and was the climax of a lockout of the longshoremen. Local political and business leaders alleged that the strike (lockout) protest was illegitimate, claiming it was part of an international Communist conspiracy to spark a Pacific coast Bolshevik revolution beginning on Vancouver's waterfront. No evidence of these claims has ever been forthcoming.

~1940 – British Prime Minister Winston Churchill gave his now legendary "Finest Hour" speech to the House of Commons:

"....However matters may go in France or with the French Government or with another French Government, we in this island and in the British Empire will never lose our sense of comradeship with the French people. If we are now called upon to endure what they have suffered we shall emulate their courage, and if final victory rewards our toils they shall share the gains, aye. And freedom shall be restored to all. We abate nothing of our just demands—Czechs, Poles, Norwegians, Dutch, Belgians, all who have joined their causes to our own shall be restored.

What General Weygand has called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilisation. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be freed and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands.

But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new dark age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, This was their finest hour."

~1940 – Also in London that day; Charles de Gaulle made the famous Appeal of June 18. This is generally accepted to be the origin of the French Resistance to the German occupation during World War II. De Gaulle spoke to the French people from London after the fall of France. He declared that the war for France was not yet over, and rallied the country in support of the Resistance.

~1942 - Born this day: Sir Paul McCartney, British singer, songwriter and musician (The Beatles - Wings), classical composer and social activist.

~1953 – The Republic of Egypt was declared and the monarchy abolished, with General Muhammad Naguib becoming the first President of the Republic.

~1953 – A United States Air Force Douglas C-124 Globemaster II crashed and burned near Tokyo, Japan killing 129.

~1967 - Jimi Hendrix burnt his guitar on stage at the Monterey Pop Festival. (And the reason for this was what, Jimi?)

~1972 – The Staines Disaster: British European Airways Flt. 548, a Hawker Siddeley Trident 1C airliner, stalled and crashed near the town of Staines less than 3 minutes after departing from London Heathrow. There were no survivors among the 118 aboard.

~1979 – SALT II: In Vienna an agreement to limit strategic launchers was reached and signed by the United States and the Soviet Union.

~1983 – Space Shuttle program: STS-7, Astronaut Sally Ride became the first American woman in space, aboard the shuttle Challenger.

~1983 – Mona Mahmudnizhad together with nine other Bahá'í women, was sentenced to death and hanged in Shiraz, Iran because of her Bahá'í Faith.

~1984 – A major clash between about 5,000 police and a similar number of miners took place at Orgreave, South Yorkshire, during the 1984-1985 UK miners' strike.

~1994 – The Loughinisland Massacre: Members of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) attacked a crowded bar with assault rifles, killing 6 civilians and wounding 5 others. The bar was targeted because those inside were believed to be Irish nationalists and/or Catholics.

~2001 – Protests occur in Manipur over the extension of the ceasefire between Naga insurgents and the government of India. (How dare they not kill each other!)

~2006 – The first Kazakh space satellite, KazSat was launched.

~2008 - The European Parliament passed legislation that allowed undocumented aliens to be held in detention centres for up to 18 months and banned from European Union territory for 5 years.

...

This post has been edited at member's request.Ron,

June 19th



~1027 – Died this day: Saint Romuald (b. 951).

~1179 – In Norway the Battle of Kalvskinnet was fought outside Nidaros. A force of Birkebeiners, led by future king Sverre Sigurdsson (Sverrir Sigurðarson) engaged and defeated the army of King Magnus Erlingsson, commanded by Earl Erling Skakke. Skakke was killed and the battle changed the tide of the civil wars.

~1269 – King Louis IX of France ordered all Jews found in public without an identifying yellow badge to be fined 10 livres of silver.

~1306 – The Earl of Pembroke's troops defeated Robert the Bruce's Scottish force in a surprise attack at the Battle of Methven. While the English incurred only ~600 casualties in total out of a force of just over 3000, more than 4000 of the 4500 Scots were killed.

~1586 – English colonists left Roanoke Island, after failing to establish England's first permanent settlement in America.

~1692 - Died this day: Rebecca Nurse, accused American witch, hanged (b. 1621).

~1807 – In the Aegean Sea, Admiral Dmitry Senyavin destroyeds the Ottoman fleet in the Battle of Athos. As a result of the battle, the Ottoman Empire lost its combat capable fleet for more than a decade and signed an armistice with Russia on August 12th.

~1816 – The Battle of Seven Oaks was fought between the Métis of the North West Company and a group of Hudson's Bay Company men and settlers, near Winnipeg, Manitoba.

~1821 – The Battle of Dragashani was fought in Drăgăşani, Wallachia, between the Ottoman forces of Sultan Mahmud II and the Greek Filiki Etaireia insurgents. Although the Ottomans achieved victory that day it was only a prelude to the Greek War of Independence.

~1846 – The first officially recorded, organized baseball match was played under Alexander Joy Cartwright's rules on Hoboken, New Jersey's Elysian Fields with the New York Nine Baseball Club defeating the Knickerbockers 23-1. Cartwright umpired.

~1850 – Princess Louise of the Netherlands married Crown Prince Karl of Sweden-Norway. (Too bad for Louise, for as much as she loved him...the bed-hopping lowlife didn't love her.)

~1865 – Over 2 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, slaves in Galveston, Texas were finally informed of their freedom. The anniversary is still officially celebrated in Texas and 13 other contiguous states as Juneteenth.

~1867 – After being captured by the Republicans, Maximilian I of the Mexican Empire was executed by a firing squad in Querétaro, Querétaro.

~1875 – The Herzegovinian Rebellion: Catholics in the Gabela and Hrasno districts of lower Herzegovina, ignited by overtaxing, rebelled against the Ottoman authorities under the leadership of don Ivan Musić.

~1893 - In the trial of Lizzie Borden, for the axe murder of her parents, the defense rested and the case was put to the jury the following day.

~1902 - Died this day: King Albert of Saxony (b. 1828).

~1910 – The first Father's Day was celebrated in Spokane, Washington.

~1915 – The Pennsylvania-class battleship USS Arizona (BB-39) was launched from the Brooklyn Navy Yard in New York. She was the first US Navy ship to be named "Arizona". This was done specifically in honor of the 48th state's admission into the union, which had happened just the year before the battleship was authorized by Congress. The Arizona was commissioned in 1916 and served stateside during World War I. USS Arizona is most famously known for her sinking, with the loss of 1,177 lives, during the Japanese attack of Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941; the event that brought about US involvement in World War II. The ship was deemed unserviceable, however salvage operations removed several elements of the ship to be used for the war effort. The wreck continues to lie at the floor of Pearl Harbor where it is the site of a memorial to those who perished on that day. (My cousin is aboard that ship...I never met him, but I'm told he was a damned good man.)

~1918 - The highly effective Pfalz D.XII German fighter plane, built by Pfalz Flugzeugwerke, passed its type test and was approved to enter into service with the Luftstreitkräfte. The D.XII began reaching the Jagdstaffeln, primarily Bavarian units, in July of 1918 and was active until the end of World War I. Designed by Rudolph Gehringer as a successor to the Pfalz D.III, the D.XII was the last Pfalz aircraft to see widespread service.

~1934 – The Communications Act of 1934 established the United States' Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

~1937 - The Airspeed AS.10 Oxford made its first flight, over southern England. The aircraft was utilized as an excellent trainer by British Commonwealth aircrews for navigation, radio-operating, bombing and gunnery right through the Second World War. More than 4,400 Oxfords would eventually be built and several airworthy examples of this tough old bird still exist.

~1943 – The Beaumont Race Riots: Racial tension was already high when workers at the Pennsylvania shipyard in Beaumont, Texas learned that a white woman had accused a black man of raping her. The resulting race riots left hundreds injured.

~1944 – The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot: The 2 day long Battle of the Philippine Sea began. The largest aircraft carrier battle in history, it was fought between the navies of the United States and the Empire of Japan. While the US only lost 123 combat aircraft (80 of whose crews survived) in their lopsided victory, the engagement proved disastrous for the Imperial Japanese Navy, which lost 3 aircraft carriers and some 600 aircraft. One US airman stated to his crew chief about the waves of Japanese aircraft being swept from the sky, "This is nothing more than a turkey shoot"...the name stuck.

~1944 - During the opening phases of the Marianas battle, the Essex class carrier USS Bunker Hill was damaged when an enemy near miss scattered shrapnel fragments across the ship. 2 men were killed and more than 80 were wounded. Bunker Hill continued to fight, with her aircraft shooting down some of the 476 Japanese aircraft destroyed during the battle, and assisting in the sinking of a Japanese carrier. Bunker Hill received one of her 11 battle stars for her World War II service in this engagement. She also received the Presidential Unit Citation for all of her wartime action.

~1944 - During the Battle of the Philippine Sea, the Imperial Japanese Navy aircraft carrier Shōkaku, was struck by 3 (possibly 4) torpedoes from the submarine USS Cavalla. As Shōkaku had been in the process of refueling aircraft and was in an extremely vulnerable position, the torpedoes started fires that proved impossible to control. At 14:08 hrs. an aerial bomb exploded, detonating aviation fuel. Shōkaku sank quickly however 571 men were rescued.

~1950 - The first commercial drag races, "The Santa Ana Drags", began at Orange County Airport (now John Wayne Airport) in Santa Ana, California. Admission was 50 cents; or 75 cents if the ticket holder wanted to watch the mechanics work (the equivalency of today's pitt pass).

~1952 - The first flight of the Yakovlev Yak-25 Mandrake. Introduced into service in 1955, the swept wing, turbojet-powered interceptor aircraft and reconnaissance aircraft was used by the Soviet Union until its retirement in 1967. Of the 638 examples built, less than a dozen are known to still exist today.

~1953 – Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed for espionage at New York's Sing Sing Prison.

~1954 - The animated Bugs Bunny short "Devil May Hare" debuted in theaters, introducing The Tasmanian Devil.

~1961 – Kuwait was granted its independence from Britain.

~1964 – The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is approved by the United States Senate, after surviving an 83 day filibuster.

~1976 - King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden married Silvia Sommerlath.

~1978 - Born this day: Garfield, Jon Arbuckle's lazy, Monday hating, lasagna eating cat. (Yes I know the launch date was June 18th, but Garfield wasn't delivered to the newsstands until the next day.)

~1982 – In one of the first militant attacks by Hezbollah, David S. Dodge, president of the American University in Beirut, was kidnapped.

~1987 – The Basque separatist group ETA committed one of its most violent attacks, in which a bomb was detonated in the Hipercor shopping centre on Avinguda Meridiana, Barcelona Spain. The bombing killed 21 people and injured 45 others. To date this represents the deadliest attack in ETA's history.

~1990 – The current international law defending indigenous peoples, Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989, was ratified by Norway; the first country to do so.

~2006 – The prime ministers of Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Iceland participated in a ceremonial "laying of the first stone" at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Spitsbergen, Norway.

...

This post has been edited at member's request.Ron,

June 20th



~451 – At the Battle of Châlons, Roman and Visigoth forces led by Flavius Aetius stopped the army of Attila the Hun. After the inconclusive battle was fought, Attila withdrew from Gaul. He would return to rout the Romans the following year.

~451 - Died this day: Theodorid, King of the Visigoths; at the Battle of Châlons (b. circa 395).

~840 – Died this day: Louis the Pious, King of the Franks and Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire (b. 778).

~1605 – Died this day: Tsar Feodor II of Russia (b. 1589). (Yes, that D.O.B. is right...he was only 16.)

~1631 – The Sack of Baltimore: The village of Baltimore, West Cork, Ireland, was attacked and looted by Algerian pirates from the North African Barbary Coast. they were led by a Dutch captain turned pirate, Jan Janszoon van Haarlem.

~1652 – Tarhoncu Ahmet Paşa was appointed grand vezir of the Ottoman Empire. He attempted to forestall the prevalent decline and reform the Ottoman bureaucracy. Ahmet was the first grand vezir to present an annual budget in advance of the coming fiscal year. However, his reforms threatened the conservative forces in the Ottoman élite, who secured his execution on 21 March 1653 by spreading the false rumour (Read: Lied through their damned teeth) that he intended to depose the sultan.

~1756 – Following the capture of the old Fort William, a British garrison was (allegedly) imprisoned overnight in the Black Hole of Calcutta. Conditions were so cramped that 123 of the 146 prisoners held died from suffocation, heat exhaustion and crushing.

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

~1789 – The Tennis Court Oath: After finding the doors to their chamber were locked and guarded by soldiers, a pledge was signed by 576 out of the 577 members from the Third Estate during a meeting of the Estates-General in a tennis court. This group would go on to be known as the National Assembly.

~1791 – King Louis XVI of France and his immediate family began their unsuccessful attempt to escape Paris in the Flight to Varennes, during The French Revolution.

~1819 – The U.S. vessel SS Savannah, a hybrid sailing ship/sidewheel steamer, arrived at Liverpool. She was the first steam propelled vessel to cross the Atlantic, although most of the journey was made under sail. In spite of her historic voyage, Savannah was not a commercial success as a steamship and was converted back into a sailing ship shortly after returning from Europe.

~1837 - Died this day: King William IV of Britain (b. 1765).

~1837 – Queen Victoria ascended the throne of Britain upon the death of her uncle King William IV.

~1862 – Barbu Catargiu, the Prime Minister of Romania, was shot and killed at close range when leaving a Parliamentary meeting. The assassin was never apprehended, despite a monumentous effort on the part of the police force.

~1863 – American Civil War: Following the Wheeling Conventions (breaking away from Virginia), West Virginia was admitted as the 35th state of the Union during the Civil War.

~1877 – In Hamilton, Ontario Alexander Graham Bell installed the first commercial telephone service in the British Empire.

~1893 – Despite incriminating circumstances, Lizzie Borden was acquitted of the murders of her father and stepmother by a jury after only an hour and a half's deliberation.

~1908 - The Invincible class battlecruiser HMS Indomitable received her commission from the Royal Navy. She had an active career during World War I. She tried to (and very nearly succeeded) hunt down the German ships Goeben and Breslau in the Mediterranean when war broke out and later bombarded Turkish fortifications protecting the Dardanelles even before the British declared war on Turkey. She helped to sink the German armoured cruiser Blücher during the Battle of Dogger Bank in 1915 and towed the damaged British battlecruiser Lion to safety after the battle. She damaged the German battlecruisers Seydlitz and Derfflinger during the Battle of Jutland and watched her sister Invincible explode during the engagement.

~1919 – Over 150 people died during the Teatro Yaguez fire in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico. Although never proven, arson was suspected as the likely cause.

~1928 - The first flight of the Hawker Hart, a British 2 seater light-bomber of the Royal Air Force (RAF). the Hart had a prominent role during the RAF's inter-war period. It was designed by Sydney Camm and over 900 Harts of all types were built. It became the most widely used light-bomber of its time and the design would prove to be a successful one with a number of derivatives, including the Hawker Hind and Hector, being made. Though obsolete compared to Britain's opposition at the start of the Second World War, the Hart continued in service, mainly performing in the communications and training roles until 1943.

~1944 – The Battle of the Philippine Sea concluded with an inevitable U.S. naval victory. The once mighty Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter was by then obsolete when compared to the latest models of the Grumman F6F Hellcat and Chance Vought F4U Corsair being deployed by the Americans; the Zeros were swept from the skies by the opposing US Navy fighters. As well, by this stage of the war Japan had lost most of her most skilled fighter pilots and novices right out of flight school were going up against US airmen that had over 1,000 hours of combat experience in this lopsided naval air battle. Japanese naval airpower would never again be a formidible force, for the duration of the war.

~1944 – In the Continuation War, the 2nd of 2 wars fought between Finland and the Soviet Union during World War II, the Soviets demanded an unconditional surrender from Finland at the beginning of the partially successful Vyborg–Petrozavodsk Offensive. The Finnish government declined the demand.

~1947 - Died this day: Bugsy Siegel, American gangster and driving force behind the development of the Las Vegas casinos; from lead poisoning (b. 1906).

~1948 – Toast of the Town (later The Ed Sullivan Show) debuted on the CBS television network. Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis performed along with Broadway composers Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II previewing the score to their then new show South Pacific, which opened on Broadway in April of 1949.

~1950 - The Blackburn B-101 Beverley made its maiden flight. It was a British heavy transport aircraft, built by Blackburn and General Aircraft, that was flown by squadrons of the Royal Air Force Transport Command from 1955 until 1967. Her Bristol Centaurus engines with reverse-pitch propellers were a feature that gave the Beverly a short landing length and the ability to reverse under its own power. The takeoff run at full load was given as 790 yards, the landing run at full load, just 310 yards.

~1959 – The Escuminac Hurricane: A rare June hurricane struck Canada's Gulf of St. Lawrence sinking 22 fishing boats from the port of Escuminac, New Brunswick and drowning 35.

~1960 – The Mali Fedration (today's Mali and Senegal) gained its independence from France. (OK, they didn't gain it...they just took it and thumbed their noses at the French.)

~1963 – The "Hot Line", as it would come to be known, was established following an agreement by signing of the "Memorandum of Understanding Regarding the Establishment of a Direct Communications Line" in Geneva, Switzerland. This by representatives of the Soviet Union and the United States at the Eighteen-Nation Disarmament Committee, after the events of the Cuban Missile Crisis made it clear that reliable and direct communications between the 2 nuclear powers was a necessity.

~1966 - Canada sold 336 million bushels of wheat to Soviet Union in the first of what would prove to be ongoing annual sales that still take place with Russia.

~1973 – The Ezeiza Massacre occurred in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Snipers opened fire upon left wing Peronists who had gathered to acclaim Juan Perón's definitive return from an 18 year exile in Spain. At least 13 were killed and 365 others either wounded or injured.

~1977 - Oil began to flow through the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS).

~1979 – ABC News correspondent Bill Stewart was shot dead by a Nicaraguan soldier under the regime of Anastasio Somoza Debayle. The murder was caught on tape, sparking international outcry against the regime and ultimately led to its downfall a month later.

~1985 - In Rome, a bomb planted behind the starboard wing fuel panel of an Air India 747 was discovered by the refueler who was sent to add a 2,000 lb. fuel revision to the flight just before takeoff. The (timed) bomb was powerful enough to blow off the outer portion of the wing and would have resulted in the crash of the jumbo jet. No one ever claimed responsibility for the attempted bombing and no suspect(s) has/have ever been arrested in the case.

~1990 – Asteroid Eureka was discovered by the Palomar Observatory and turned out to be the first known Lagrangian asteroid of Mars.

~1991 – The German parliament voted to move the capital from Bonn back to Berlin.

~2001 - Pervez Musharraf became the president of Pakistan. (How do you spell T R O U B L E ?)

~2003 - Bounce premiered at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago.

~2005 - Chief US immigration judge Michael Creppy ruled that Ukrainian-born John Demjanjuk could be deported because he was a concentration camp guard during World War II.

~2009 - The Chilean ship "Polar Mist", which had sunk under mysterious (suspicious) circumstances 5 months earlier was located in the Magellan Straits off the coast of Argentina. It had over $18 million in gold bullion aboard when it went down.

...

This post has been edited at member's request.Ron,

June 21st



~223 – Died this day: Liu Bei, Emperor of Shu Han (b. 161).

~223 - Liu Shan adcended the throne as Emperor of Shu Han upon the death of his father Lui Bei.

~1208 – Died this day: Philip of Swabia, King of Germany and Duke of Swabia (b. 1177).

~1305 – Died this day: King Wenceslaus II of Bohemia and Poland (b. 1271).

~1305 – Wenceslaus III ascended the throne of Bohemia upon the death of his father King Wenceslaus II.

~1307 – Külüg Khan was enthroned as Khagan of the Mongols and Wuzong of the Yuan.

~1377 – Died this day: King Edward III of England (b. 1312).

~1377 – Richard II ascended the throne of England upon the death of his granfather King Edward III. He was 10 years old at the time.

~1582 – The Incident at Honnō-ji, the "forced suicide" of Japanese daimyo Oda Nobunaga at the hands of his samurai general Akechi Mitsuhide, occurred in the Kyoto temple of Honnō-ji. This was the final end in Nobunaga's quest to consolidate centralized power in Japan under his authority. (Forced suicede...sometimes known as murder.)

~1621 – The execution of 27 Czech noblemen on the Old Town Square in Prague took place as a consequence of the Battle of White Mountain.

~1734 – In Montreal (New France), a black slave known by the French name of Marie-Joseph Angélique was put to death, having been convicted of the arson that destroyed much of the city the previous April. She was tortured then hanged by the French authorities in a public ceremony that involved her disgrace and the amputation of a hand. (The French were such benevolent overseers.)

~1749 – Halifax, Nova Scotia, was founded below a glacial drumlin that would later be named Citadel Hill. The outpost was named in honour of George Montague-Dunk, 2nd Earl of Halifax, who was the President of the British Board of Trade. Halifax was ideal for a military base, with the vast Halifax Harbour, among the largest natural harbours in the world, which could be well protected with batteries at McNab's Island, the North West Arm, Point Pleasant, George's Island and York Redoubt. In its early years, Citadel Hill was used as a command and observation post, before changes in artillery which could range out into the harbour.

~1768 – James Otis, Jr. offended the King and Parliament in a speech to the Massachusetts General Court. (And did Jimmy care that he had offended them? Short answer: NO.)

~1788 – New Hampshire was admitted as the 9th state of the Union.

~1798 – The British Army routed Irish rebels at the Battle of Vinegar Hill, a great number of local civilians were massacred by British troops as well. The battle marked a turning point in the Irish Rebellion of 1798 as it was the last attempt by the rebels to hold and defend ground against the British military.

~1813 – At the Battle of Vitoria an allied British, Portuguese and Spanish army under General the Marquess of Wellington broke the French army under Joseph Bonaparte and Marshal Jean-Baptiste Jourdan near Vitoria in Spain, leading to eventual victory in the Peninsular War.

~1824 – During the Greek War of Independence, the island of Psara in the Aegean Sea was invaded by Egyptian forces under the command of Ibrahim Pasha.

~1826 – The Maniots defeated Egyptian forces under Ibrahim Pasha in the Battle of Vergas.

~1864 – In the New Zealand Land Wars, the Tauranga Campaign ended. The campaign had started the previous January as a side show to the Invasion of the Waikato where British Imperial Troops, on behalf of the New Zealand Colonial Government, were fighting a confederation of Māori tribes known as the King Movement.

~1877 – The Molly Maguires: 10 Irish immigrants convicted of murder, were hanged at the Schuylkill County and Carbon County prisons in Pennsylvania.

~1895 – The Kiel Canal was officially opened. The 61 mile (98 kilometre) long canal in the German Bundesland Schleswig-Holstein links the North Sea at Brunsbüttel to the Baltic Sea at Kiel-Holtenau. An average of 250 nautical miles (460 kilometers) is saved by using the Kiel Canal instead of going around the Jutland Peninsula.

~1898 – The United States captured Guam from Spain. The US Navy sent a single cruiser, the USS Charleston, to capture the island of Guam, then under Spanish control. However, the Spanish garrison on the island had no knowledge of the war and no real defenses. They surrendered without resistance and the island passed into American control. The event was the only conflict of the Spanish-American War on Guam.

~1904 - HMS Swiftsure, the lead ship of her class of British predreadnought battleships, received her commission from the Royal Navy. Swiftsure saw much action in World War I, particularly in the Dardanelles Campaign and as a convoy escort in the Atlantic.

~1904 - The Swiftsure class predreadnought battleship HMS Triumph received her commission from the Royal Navy. Triumph would serve with great distinction in World War I until she was torpedoed and sunk by U-21 off the Dardanelles on May 25th, 1915.

~1913 - The Indefatigable class battlecruiser HMAS Australia received her commission as flagship of the fledgling Royal Australian Navy (RAN). Australia was the only capital ship ever to serve in the RAN. Although an active battlecruiser during World War I she saw no action against enemy warships.

~1915 – The U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in Guinn v. United States , striking down an Oklahoma law denying the right to vote to many (mostly black) citizens.

~1919 – In one of Canada's darker moments, during the Winnipeg General Strike, the Royal North West Mounted Police rode in on horseback charging into a crowd of strikers, beating them with clubs and firing weapons. The violent action resulted in many people injured, numerous arrests and the death of 2 strikers.

~1919 – German Admiral Ludwig von Reuter ordered the German fleet interned at Scapa Flow, Orkney to be scuttled. The 9 sailors killed werere the last casualties of World War I. (They weren't the last casualties by a bloody longshot...but it sounded romantic and melodramatic for the press of the day to say so.)

~1940 – The first successful west-to-east navigation of Northwest Passage began at Vancouver, British Columbia. Canadian RCMP officer Henry Larsen was in charge of sailing the passage from Vancouver to Halifax. More than once on this trip, it was unknown whether the St. Roch a Royal Canadian Mounted Police "ice-fortified" schooner would survive the ravages of the sea ice. At one point, Larsen wondered "if we had come this far only to be crushed like a nut on a shoal and then buried by the ice." The ship and all but one of her crew survived the winter on Boothia Peninsula. Each of the men on the trip was awarded a medal by Canada's sovereign, King George VI, in recognition of this notable feat of Arctic navigation.

~1942 – Tobruk was taken in a surprise attack by Rommel's "Afrika Korps". The city remained in Axis hands until 11 November 1942, when the Allies recaptured it after the Second Battle of El Alamein.

~1942 – In what became the only attack on a mainland American military installation during World War II, the Japanese submarine I-25, under the command of Tagami Meiji, surfaced near the mouth of the Columbia River, Oregon and fired 17 shells toward Fort Stevens. The only damage officially recorded was to a baseball field's backstop. The Fort Stevens gunners were refused permission to return fire, since it would have helped the Japanese locate their target more accurately. American aircraft on training flights spotted the submarine, which was subsequently attacked by a US bomber, but it escaped.

~1945 - The Battle of Okinawa ended when the Japanese held island fell to Allied forces after a protracted 82 day long battle. This was the last major battle of the Second World War.

~1957 – In Ottawa, Ellen Louks Fairclough was sworn in as Canada's first woman Cabinet Minister.

~1964 – In Mississippi 3 civil rights workers, Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Mickey Schwerner, were murdered in Neshoba County, Mississippi by members of the Ku Klux Klan.

~1965 - Folk rock band "The Byrds" release their highly influencial debut album Mr. Tambourine Man, on the Columbia Records label.

~1969 - Glen and Joan were married.

~1970 – Died this day: Sukarno, President of Indonesia (b. 1901). (No comment)

~1971 - The Saab 37 Viggen was introduced into service with the Swedish Air Force. The single-seat, fighter/attack aircraft was so modern in its design that it was manufactured for 20 years and saw frontline service until 2005. Several variants were eventually produced to perform the roles of all weather fighter/interceptor, ground attack and photo-reconnaissance. A 2 seat trainer was also produced.

~1973 – In handing down the decision in Miller v. California 413 US 15, the Supreme Court of the United States established the Miller Test for obscenity in U.S. law. The decision reiterated that obscenity was not protected by the First Amendment.

~1982 – At trial, a gunman was found not guilty by reason of insanity for the March 31st, 1981 attempted assassination of U.S. President Ronald Reagan.

~1982 - Born this day: William Prince of Wales, son to Charles, Prince of Wales and Princess, Diana, 2nd in the line of succession to the British throne.

~2000 – Section 28, outlawing the "promotion" of homosexuality in the United Kingdom, was repealed in Scotland with a 99 to 17 vote.

~2001 – A federal grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, indicted 13 Saudis and a Lebanese in the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 American servicemen, one Saudi and injured 372 others.

~2003 - "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix", the 5th book in J.K. Rowling's hugely popular Harry Potter series was released.

~2003 - Deputy Justice Fazel Ahmed Manawi of the Afghan Supreme Court announced that "Aftab" editor Sayed Madawi and his deputy Ali Payam Sestani would be tried for "libelling Islam". (Obviously freedom of speech wasn't very big with the government in Afghanistan...)

~2004 – SpaceShipOne became the first privately funded spaceplane to achieve spaceflight.

~2006 – Pluto's newly discovered moons were officially named Nix & Hydra.

~2009 - Italian Mafia fugitive Salvatore Miceli, an "on the run" since 2001 and listed as one of the country's 30 most dangerous men, was arrested in Venezuela.

~2009 - Iranian officials ordered the BBC's chief Iran correspondent to immediately leave the country after accusing the BBC of meddling in internal affairs. ("Meddling in internal affairs" - sometimes known as reporting the factual truth as opposed to the official government spin version.")

...

This post has been edited at member's request.Ron,

June 22nd



~217 BC – The Battle of Raphia was fought (near modern day Rafah) between the forces of Ptolemy IV Philopator, king of Egypt and Antiochus III the Great of the Seleucid kingdom during the Syrian Wars. It was one of the largest battles of the Hellenistic kingdoms of the Diadochi and was waged to determine the sovereignty of Coele Syria. The Egyptians completely routed the Seleucids in the engagement, inflicting over 10,000 casualties upon Antiochus' army and capturing most of their war elephants.

~168 BC – The Battle of Pydna: Roman forces under Lucius Aemilius Paullus completely destroyed the (much larger) army of Macedonia, killing and wounding well over half of them. They also captured Macedonian King Perseus, ending the Third Macedonian War.

~1276 – Died this day: Pope Innocent V (b. circa 1225).

~1593 – The Battle of Sisak was fought between the Ottoman forces of the Bosnian governor general (or Beylerbeyi) Hasan Pasha Predojević and forces of the Holy Roman Empire under the supreme command of the Styrian general Ruprecht von Eggenberg. The Croatian troops were led by the Ban of Croatia, Tamás Erdődy and some of the forces were from the Duchy of Carniola, led by Andreas von Auersperg The battle took place at Sisak, now central Croatia, at the confluence of the rivers Sava and Kupa and resulted in a crushing defeat for the Ottomans. The force of less than 6,000 Christians sustained fewer than 50 casualties while wiping out more than 20,000 of the 35,000 man strong Turkish army.

~1611 - English explorer Henry Hudson, his son and several others were set adrift in a small boat by mutineers, in what is now known as Hudson Bay. None of those abandoned were ever seen again and their fate still remains a mystery.

~1633 – The Holy Office in Rome forced Galileo Galilei to recant his view that the Sun, not the Earth, is the center of the Universe. (3 out of 5 sources confirming.)

~1783 – A poisonous cloud created by the eruption of the Laki volcano in Iceland reached Le Havre in France, it reached Great Britain the next day.

~1832 - J.I. Howe patented the pin machine.

~1854 – The Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada abolished feudalism and the seigneurial system in British North America.

~1848 – The beginning of the June Days Uprising provoked by the closure of the workshops in Paris. The workers revolt was harshly repressed by the army headed by general Cavaignac.

~1870 - U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant signed into law a bill creating the United States Department of Justice.

~1893 – The Royal Navy battleship HMS Camperdown accidentally rammed the British Mediterranean Fleet flagship HMS Victoria which sank taking 358 crew with her including the fleet's commander, Vice-Admiral Sir George Tryon.

~1894 - The predreadnought Centurion class battleship HMS Barfleur received her commission from the Royal Navy. Designed for long range patrolling of the United Kingdom's far flung empire she mainly saw service in the Mediterranean and Home Fleet. While in service at China Station Barfleur participated in ending the Boxer Rebellion. She was flagship of the Home Fleet from 1906 to 1907.

~1897 – British colonial officers Charles Walter Rand and Lt. Charles Egerton Ayerst were murdered in Pune, Maharashtra, India by 4 assassins, who were later caught. 3 of the killers were hanged and the 4th, a juvenile, was sentenced to 10 years' rigorous imprisonment. (Read: Turning big rocks into little rocks...)

~1898 – During the Spanish-American War, American forces under General William R. Shafter began landing at Daiquirí and Siboney, east of Santiago, to establish an American base of operations in Cuba.

~1907 – The London Underground's Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway opens. The CCE&HR was the last of the Underground Electric Railways Company of London Limited's (UERL) 3 tube railways to open and was advertised as the "Last Link".

~1909 - Construction began on the Cape Cod Canal, which would separate Cape Cod from mainland Massachusetts, United States.

~1909 - The team of Bert W. Scott and C. James Smith arrived first in Seattle, Washington driving a Model T Ford, to win the first transcontinental auto race and a $2,000 prize.

~1911 – At Westminster Abbey George V and Mary of Teck were crowned King and Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

~1915 - Austro-Hungarian forces occupied Lemberg on the Eastern Front as the Russian army retreated.

~1918 – The Hammond Circus Train Wreck occurred. It was one of the worst circus train wrecks in US history. 86 people died and another 127 were injured when a locomotive engineer fell asleep, running his train into the rear of another near Hammond, Indiana.

~1922 – The Herrin Massacre: 19 strikebreakers and 2 union miners were killed in Herrin, Illinois during mob action that lasted 2 days.

~1939 - The first U.S. water-ski tournament was held at Jones Beach, on Long Island, New York.

~1940 – France surrendered unconditionally to the conquering German forces. The armistice was signed inside the very same railway carriage in which the 1918 Armistice was signed (it was removed from a museum building by the Germans and placed on the precise spot where it was located in 1918). Hitler sat in the same chair in which Marshal Foch had sat when he faced the defeated German representatives. After listening to the reading of the preamble, Hitler, in a calculated gesture of disdain to the French delegates, left the carriage, leaving the negotiations to his OKW Chief, General Wilhelm Keitel.

~1941 – Operation Barbarossa: Nazi Germany began its invasion of the Soviet Union. Over 4.5 million troops of the Axis powers invaded the USSR along a 2,900 km (1,800 mi) front. In addition to the large number of troops, it also involved 600,000 motor vehicles and 750,000 horses. Barbarossa was the largest military offensive in history.

~1941 – The June Uprising in Lithuania began. A diverse segment of the Lithuanian population rose up against the controlling Soviet regime, declared renewed independence and formed a short lived Provisional Government. 2 of the major Lithuanian cities, Kaunas and Vilnius, fell into the hands of the rebels before the arrival of the Wehrmacht. However, within a week, the invading German Army took control of the whole of Lithuania.

~1942 - The King George V class battleship HMS Anson received her commission from the Royal Navy. Anson saw service in the Second World War, escorting 9 Russian convoys in the Arctic by December of 1943. Anson was later redeployed to the British Pacific Fleet, where she accepted the surrender of the Japanese forces occupying Hong Kong and landed a garrison there for protection after the war, 2 days before the official Japanese surrender aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Harbor. After the war, she was the flag ship for the 1st battle squadron of the British Pacific Fleet.

~1942 – Erwin Rommel was promoted to Field Marshal after the capture of Tobruk.

~1944 – Operation Bagration began. The Soviet Belorussian Strategic Offensive Operation would clear German forces from the Belorussian SSR and eastern Poland by August 19th. The operation was named after 18th–19th century Georgian Prince Pyotr Bagration, general of the Russian army who received a mortal wound at the Battle of Borodino.

~1944 – U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, commonly known as the G.I. Bill. By the time the original GI Bill ended in July of 1956, 7.8 million World War II veterans had participated in an education or training program and 2.4 million veterans had home loans backed by the Veterans' Administration (VA).

~1947 - The Martin XB-48 experimental medium jet bomber took to the air on its maiden flight. A marriage between World War II airframe technology and modern jet engine propulsion, the XB-48 was never able to live up to its expectations and further development wasn't possible given the design restraints of the base aircraft. It never saw production or active duty and only 2 prototypes were built before the project was cancelled in 1948.

~1957 – The Soviet Union launched the first R-12 Dvina theatre ballistic missile, from the Kapustin Yar.

~1961 - Died this day: Queen Maria of Yugoslavia (b. 1900).

~1962 – Air France Flt. 117, a Boeing 707-328, crashed into a forest on a hill at an altitude of about 4,000 feet (1,200 m) during bad weather. The crew were attempting to land at Point-à-Pitre in Guadeloupe. All 113 aboard were killed.

~1964 - The U.S. Supreme Court in Grove Press, Inc. v. Gerstein voted that Henry Miller’s book, "Tropic of Cancer", could not be banned.

~1969 – The Cuyahoga River caught fire. The 1969 Cuyahoga River fire helped spur an avalanche of water pollution control activities resulting in the Clean Water Act, Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, and the creation of the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (OEPA). As a result, large point sources of pollution on the Cuyahoga have received significant attention from the OEPA in recent decades.

~1969 – Died this day: The great Judy Garland, American singer and actress (b. 1922). (No, Dorothy, you're not in Kansas anymore...Rest In Peace.)

~1973 - After making extensive repairs to the space station, Skylab II mission astronauts splashed down safely in the Pacific after a (then) record 28 days in space.

~1976 – In Canada, the House of Commons abolished capital punishment.

~1978 – Charon, a satellite of Pluto, was discovered by American astronomer James Christy.

~1981 - John Lennon's murderer pled guilty to all charges against him.

~1984 – Virgin Atlantic Airways launched with its first flight from London, Gatwick to Newark, New Jersey.

~1992 - The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that hate crime laws that ban cross burning and similar expressions of racial bias violated free speech rights.

~1998 - The 75th National Marbles Tournament began in Wildwood, New Jersey.

~2002 – The Bou'in-Zahra Earthquake: An earthquake measuring 6.5 on the Richter scale struck a region of northwestern Iran killing at least 261 people and injuring 1,300 others. It eventually caused widespread public anger due to the slowness of the victims receiving aid and supplies.

~2003 – The largest hailstone ever recorded fell in Aurora, Nebraska. . The hailstone had a diameter of 7 inches (18 cm) and a circumference of 18.75 inches (47.6 cm). (Glad it didn't hit MY windshield...)

~2009 – The Washington Metro Train Collision: A subway train-on-train collision between 2 southbound Red Line Washington Metro trains occurred during the afternoon rush hour in Northeast Washington, D.C. A moving train collided with a train stopped ahead of it; the train operator and 8 passengers were killed, making this the deadliest crash in the history of the Washington Metro. Several survivors were trapped for hours, and approximately 80 were injured. A preliminary investigation found that after the June 17th replacement of a track circuit component, at what became the site of the collision, signals had not been reliably reporting when that stretch of track was occupied by a train.

~2009 – Eastman Kodak Company announced that it would discontinue sales of Kodachrome Color Film, concluding its 74 year run as a photography icon.

...

This post has been edited at member's request.Ron,

June 23rd



~79 - Died this day: Vespasian, 9th Roman Emperor (b. 9).

~79 – Titus ascended the throne of Rome as the 10th Roman Emperor upon the death of his father, Vespian.

~1180 – The First Battle of Uji; Prince Mochihito, the Minamoto Clan's favored claimant to the Imperial Throne, and his entourage was chased by Taira forces to the Mii-dera, a temple just outside Kyoto. Due to the interference of a Mii-dera monk with Taira sympathies, the Minamoto army arrived too late to help defend the temple; the Prince was captured and killed shortly afterwards by the Taira warriors. This would prove to be the first engagement of the Genpei War in Japan.

~1305 – The Treaty of Athis-sur-Orge was signed between King Philip IV of France and Robert III of Flanders. The treaty was signed at Athis-sur-Orge the better part of a year after the Battle of Mons-en-Pévèle. Based on the terms of the treaty, the cities of Lille, Douai, and Béthune were allocated to the French crown. In return, Flanders was allowed to preserve its independence as a fief of the kingdom.

~1314 – The 2 day long Battle of Bannockburn, a significant Scottish victory in the Wars of Scottish Independence,began south of Sterling. Scottish forces under King Robert the Bruce engaged the English army led by King Edward II of England. It would be the decisive battle in the First War of Scottish Independence.

~1565 – Turgut Reis (Dragut), commander of the Ottoman navy, died 6 days after being struck by shrapnel during the Siege of Malta.

~1713 – The French residents of Acadia were given one year to declare allegiance to Britain or leave Nova Scotia (including present day New Brunswick).

~1757 – The Battle of Plassey was fought. A force of 3,000 British troops under Robert Clive defeated an Indian army 50,000 strong led by Siraj Ud Daulah at Plassey in West Bengal. This victory enabled the British East India Company to annex Bengal.

~1758 – During the Seven Years' War, a French army commanded by Louis de Bourbon was soundly defeated by a Prussian-Hanoverian force led by the Duke of Brunswick, which was only 2/3 their size, at the Battle of Krefeld in Germany.

~1760 – (Also) During the Seven Years' War, a Prussian force of 12,000 men under General Heinrich August de la Motte Fouqué fought an Austrian army of over 28,000 men under General von Loudon and suffered a crushing defeat (with its commander taken prisoner) at the Battle of Landeshut in Silesia.

~1780 – In New Jersey, the Battle of Springfield was fought in and around Springfield between a British force and American troops. This 2nd attempt by the British to attack General George Washington’s army at Morristown, New Jersey was halted just outside of Springfield.

~1794 – Empress Catherine II of Russia granted Jews permission to settle in Kiev. (Well then, rather decent of the old girl, wot?)

~1810 – In New York City, John Jacob Astor formed the Pacific Fur Company.

~1812 – Napoleon I of France gave the order for the Grande Armée to proceed into Russian Poland, beginning the disasterous invasion of Russia that would lead to his eventual downfall.

~1860 – The US Government Printing Office was created by Congress (Congressional Joint Resolution 25).

~1865 – At Fort Towson in the Choctaw Nation's area of the Indian Territory, Confederate, Brigadier General Stand Watie signed a ceasefire agreement with Union representatives for his command, the First Indian Brigade of the Army of the Trans-Mississippi, becoming the last Confederate general in the field to stand down.

~1868 – Christopher Latham Sholes and Samuel W. Soule received the patent for the (first commercially successful) Typewriter.

~1887 – The Rocky Mountains Park Act was enacted by the Parliament of Canada. It established Banff National Park, which was then known as "Rocky Mountains Park". (And wasn't THAT the start of something big!)

~1894 – The International Olympic Committee was created by Pierre de Coubertin and Demetrios Vikelas at the Sorbonne in Paris. Today its membership consists of the 205 National Olympic Committees. (And what a royal pain in the ass those damned pompous idiots are!)

~1904 - The first American motorboat race got underway on the Hudson River in New York.

~1917 – In a game against the Washington Senators, Boston Red Sox pitcher Ernie Shore retired 26 batters in a row after replacing Babe Ruth, who had been ejected for arguing with and punching the umpire. (Yeah...the Bambimo definitely had a hot temper...)

~1919 – During the Estonian Liberation War, the Battle of Wenden was fought near Cēsis (Wenden). It was the decisive battle of the war where, after heavy fighting, Estonian troops repelled attacks by German forces (who sought to re-assert Baltic/German control over the region) and went on full counter-attack. The Estonian victory was total and this day is celebrated annually as Victory Day in Estonia.

~1931 – Wiley Post and Harold Gatty took off from Roosevelt Field, Long Island aboard the Winnie Mae, a Lockheed Vega, in an attempt to set a new speed record for the fastest circumnavigation the world.

~1938 - Marine Studios (later Marineland) opened near St. Augustine, Florida with its main attraction as a bottlenose dolphin. Unexpectedly, over 20,000 tourists clogged Highway A1A to visit the new attraction.

~1940 – German leader Adolf Hitler surveyed the newly occupied city of Paris, France. This was the only time Hitler ever set foot in Paris.

~1942 – An example of Germany's most effective fighter plane at the time, a Focke-Wulf FW190, was captured intact when the pilot mistakenly landed at RAF Pembrey in Wales. (Now, I'm sorry but I'm kinda havin' a problem buying the idea that this guy didn't realize he was still over British soil. I think the part about not crossing over the English Channel before landing woulda been my first clue. And then there's all those Allied warplanes parked everywhere, the Union Jack flying on the flagpole and...)

~1946 – The Vancouver Island earthquake struck southwest British Columbia. Fortunately the extremely powerful 7.3 magnitude quake had its epicenter on Vancouver Island's Forbidden Plateau, a sparsely populated area on the central island and damage was relatively light. There were 2 deaths associated with the shaker.

~1947 – The United States Senate followed the United States House of Representatives in overriding U.S. President Harry Truman's veto of the Taft-Hartley Act.

~1952 - The U.S. Air Force bombed power plants along the Yalu River in Korea.

~1959 – Convicted Manhattan Project spy Klaus Fuchs was released after serving only 9 years and 4 months of his 14 year sentence at Wakefield Prison. He was allowed to emigrate to Dresden, East Germany where he resumed his scientific career.

~1961 – The Antarctic Treaty, which set aside Antarctica as a scientific preserve and banned military activity on the continent, came into force.

~1964 - The burned out car of 3 civil rights workers was found in rural Mississippi, prompting the FBI to begin a search. The men had been missing since June 21st and their bodies weren't found until August 4th.

~1967 – The Glassboro Summit Conference: On the campus of Glassboro State College in New Jersey, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson met with Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin at Hollybush Mansion (home of the college president) for a 3 day summit. Although Johnson and Kosygin failed to reach agreement on limiting anti-ballistic missile systems, the generally amicable atmosphere of the summit was referred to as the "Spirit of Glassboro".

~1968 – 74 people were killed and another 150 injured in a football stampede towards a closed exit inside a Buenos Aires stadium.

~1972 – U.S. President Richard M. Nixon and White House Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman were taped talking about using the Central Intelligence Agency to obstruct the FBI's investigation into the Watergate break ins. (Yup...think I woulda made sure the damned tape recorder was turned before THAT conversation if I'd been there.)

~1973 – A fire at a house in Hull, England which killed a 6 year old boy was passed off as an accident. It would later emerge as the first of 26 deaths by fire caused over the next 7 years by the same arsonist.

~1980 - Sanjay Gandhi, the younger son of former Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, died in plane crash near Safdarjung Airport in New Delhi. He was flying a new aircraft of the Delhi Flying club and, while performing a loop over his office, lost control and crashed. The only passenger in the plane, Captain Subhas Saxena, was also killed in the accident.

~1985 – A terrorist bomb aboard Air India Flt. 182 brought the Boeing 747 down into the sea off the coast of Ireland. All 329 aboard were killed. To date, there has only ever been one successful prosecution in the case.

~1989 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a law passed by the U.S. Congress banning all sexually oriented phone message services was unconstitutional.

~1989 - The Warner Bros. movie "Batman" was released nationwide.

~1992 - United States District Court Judge I. Leo Glasser sentenced John Gotti to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole after he was convicted on 13 counts of murder, conspiracy to commit murder, loansharking, racketeering, obstruction of justice, illegal gambling, and tax evasion.

~1995 Died this day: Dr. Jonas E. Salk, American medical researcher and virologist, best known for his discovery and development of the first safe and effective polio vaccine (b. 1914).

~1997 - Died this day: Betty Shabazz, widow of Malcolm X, from burns suffered in a fire set by her 12 year old grandson. (b. 1934).

~2004 - The U.S. proposed that North Korea agree to a series of nuclear disarmament measures over a 3 month period in exchange for economic benefits. (And we all know how well that one worked out...)

...

This post has been edited at member's request.Ron,

June 24th



~972 – The Battle of Cedynia was fought near the Oder River. An army led by Mieszko I of Poland defeated the forces of Odo I of Lusatia. This is the first documented victory of Polish forces.

~1128 – The Battle of São Mamede took place near Guimarães. It is considered the seminal event for the foundation of Portugal. Portuguese forces led by Afonso I of Portugal defeated an army of his mother Teresa of León, led by her lover Fernão Peres de Trava. Following São Mamede, the future king styled himself "Prince of Portugal". He would be called "King of Portugal" in 1139 and was recognised as such by all neighboring kingdoms no later than 1143.

~1204 - Philip II Augustus of France led his forces into Rouen and definitively annexed Normandy to the French Kingdom. The fall of Rouen meant the end of independent Normandy. He demolished the Norman castle and later replaced it with his own, the Château Bouvreuil, built on the site of the Gallo-Roman amphitheatre.

~1314 – During the First War of Scottish Independence, the 2 day Battle of Bannockburn concluded with a decisive victory of the Scottish forces led by Robert the Bruce. In s[ite of their crushing defeat, England did not recognise Scottish independence until 1328 with the signing of the Treaty of Edinburgh-Northampton.

~1340 – The decisive naval Battle of Sluys was fought as one of the opening conflicts of the Hundred Years' War. It is historically important in that it resulted in the destruction of most of France's fleet, making a French invasion of England impossible, ensuring that the remainder of the war would be fought mostly in France.

~1374 – A sudden outbreak of St. John's Dance causes people in the streets of Aachen, Germany, to experience hallucinations and begin to jump and twitch uncontrollably until they collapse from exhaustion. (I dunno...sounds like nothing more than bad drugs to me.)

~1398 – Died this day: Hongwu Emperor, founder of the Ming Dynasty of China (b. 1328).

~1497 – Giovanni Caboto (John Cabot) landed in North America at Newfoundland leading the first European exploration of the region since the Vikings.

~1497 – Michael An Gof and Thomas Flamank, who led the Cornish rebellion against taxes, were hanged/drawn and quartered at Tyburn and their heads displayed on pike staffs on London Bridge.

~1509 – Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon were anointed and crowned together as King and Queen of England by the Archbishop of Canterbury at a lavish ceremony in Westminster Abbey.

~1535 – The Anabaptist state, in the rebel held city of Münster, was conquered and disbanded. The rebel leaders were later executed.

~1604 – Samuel de Champlain discovered the mouth of the Saint John River, site of the Reversing Falls and the present day city of Saint John, New Brunswick.

~1717 - The Premier Grand Lodge of England, the first Masonic Grand Lodge in the world (now the United Grand Lodge of England), was founded in London, England.

~1793 – The first Republican constitution in France was adopted.

~1794 – Bowdoin College, a private liberal arts college located in the coastal New England town of Brunswick, Maine, was founded.

~1812 – Napoleon's Grande Armée crossed the Neman River beginning the French invasion of Russia.

~1813 – At the Battle of Beaver Dams, a combined British and Kahnawake Indian force defeated U.S Army troops who had attacked the outpost of Beaver Dams near Thorold, Ontario.

~1821 – The Battle of Carabobo was fought between independence fighters, led by Simón Bolívar, and the Royalist forces, led by Spanish Field Marshal Miguel de la Torre. Bolívar's decisive victory at Carabobo led to the independence of Venezuela.

~1844 - Charles Goodyear was granted patent #3,633 for vulcanized rubber.

~1859 – The Battle of Solferino was fought and resulted in the victory of the allied French Army under Napoleon III and Sardinian Army under Victor Emmanuel II (together known as the Franco-Sardinian Alliance) against the Austrian Army under Emperor Franz Joseph I. This was the last major battle in world history where all the involved armies were under the personal command of their monarchs. As many as 316,000 soldiers fought in this important battle, the largest since the Battle of Leipzig in 1813. There were about 160,000 Austrian troops and a combined total of 156,000 French and allied Piedmontese troops. After this battle, the Austrian Emperor refrained from further direct command of the army. The battle is especially notable for being witnessed by the Swiss Jean-Henri Dunant. Horrified by the suffering of wounded soldiers left on the battlefield, Dunant set about a process that led to the Geneva Conventions and the establishment of the International Red Cross.

~1861 - The gunboats USS Thomas Freeborn and USS Pawnee shelled Confederate installations at Mathias Point, Virginia, after having received sporadic shore fire from the batteries earlier.

~1866 – At the Battle of Custoza, fought near Verona, the Austrian Imperial army under the command of Archduke Albert of Habsburg defeated the Italian army led by Alfonso Ferrero la Marmora and Enrico Cialdini. This despite a strong numerical advantage enjoyed by the Italians.

~1894 – French President (and statesman) Marie Francois Sadi Carnot was assassinated after delivering a speech at a banquet in Lyon.

~1902 – King Edward VII of the United Kingdom developed appendicitis, delaying his coronation until August 9th.

~1910 - The Japanese army invaded Korea.

~1913 – Greece and Serbia annulled their alliance with Bulgaria. (Ya' just KNOW where this is leading to...)

~1916 – Mary Pickford became the first female film star to sign a million dollar contract.

~1916 – The Allies week long artillery bombardment of the German Line began, in the run up to the Battle of the Somme.

~1918 - The Martinsyde F4 Buzzard, developed as a powerful and fast biplane fighter for the Royal Air Force, made its maiden flight. The end of the First World War led to the abandonment of large scale production and fewer than 400 were eventually produced, with many exported. Of particular note was the Buzzard's high speed of 146+ m.p.h.. This made it one of the fastest aircraft developed during World War I.

~1922 – The American Professional Football Association formally changed its name to the National Football League.

~1932 – A bloodless revolution instigated by the People's Party ended the absolute power of King Prajadhipok of Siam.

~1938 – Pieces of a meteor landed near Chicora, Pennsylvania. I was estimated to have weighed 450 metric tons when it hit the Earth's atmosphere and exploded.

~1939 – Siam was renamed to Thailand by Plaek Pibulsonggram, the country's third prime minister.

~1945 – The Moscow Victory Parade took place in Red Square.

~1948 - The Berlin Blockade began when the Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies' railway and road access to the sectors of Berlin under Allied control. Their aim was to force the western powers to allow the Soviet zone to start supplying Berlin with food and fuel, thereby giving the Soviets practical control over the entire city.

~1949 – The first Television Western, Hopalong Cassidy, was aired on NBC starring William Boyd. (Mercifully, we've now progressed beyond that whitewashed version of Clarence E. Mulford's nortorious and dangerous gunfighting character that he created in 1904.)

~1957 – In Roth v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court redefined the Constitutional test for determining what constitutes obscene material unprotected by the First Amendment.

~1964 - The Federal Trade Commission announced that, beginning in 1965, cigarette manufactures would be required to include warnings on their packaging about the harmful effects of smoking.

~1968 - "Resurrection City", a shantytown constructed as part of the Poor People's March on Washington D.C., was closed down by authorities.

~1975 – Eastern Air Lines Flt. 66, a Boeing 727, crashed into the runway approach lights at New York's JFK Airport as it penetrated a thunderstorm which was astride the ILS localizer course line to the runway. 113 of the 115 people aboard died.

~1981 – In England, Near Kingston upon Hull, the Humber Bridge was opened to traffic. The bridge connected Yorkshire and Lincolnshire and was the world's longest single span suspension bridge at the time of its opening.

~1982 – "The Jakarta Incident": British Airways Flt. 9, a Boeing 747, flew into a cloud of volcanic ash thrown up by the eruption of Mount Galunggung, resulting in the failure of all 4 engines. After gliding out of the ash cloud 3 of the 4 engines were successfully restarted and the plane was able to land safely at Jakarta.

~1987 – Died this day: The great Jackie Gleason, American actor, comedian and musician (b. 1916).

~1993 – Yale computer science professor Dr. David Gelernter lost his sight in one eye, his hearing in one ear and part of his right hand after a mailbomb sent by the Unabomber exploded when he opened it.

~1994 – A United States Air Force B-52 aircraft crashed at Fairchild Air Force Base killing all 4 members of its crew. The crash was caused mostly by the hotdog attitude of the pilot who had a long record of breaching safety regulations.

~1997 - The U.S. Air Force released a report on the "Roswell Incident," suggesting the alien bodies witnesses reported seeing in 1947 were actually life sized dummies. (Oh well, HEY...that explains the whole damned incident then, doesn't it.)

~2002 – The Igandu train disaster in Tanzania killed at least 281, injuring hundreds more, when a brake fialure caused a passenger train to roll downhill and collide with a parked freight train, To date this remains the deadliest train accident in African history.

~2002 - A painting from Monet's Waterlilies series sold for $20.2 million at auction.

~2007 – The Angora Fire starts near South Lake Tahoe, California as a result of an illegal campfire. The blaze burned 3,100 acres (12.5 km²), destroyed 242 residences, 67 commercial structures and damaged 35 other homes. At its peak, there were as many as 2,180 firefighters involved in battling the inferno. To date the person(s) responsible for starting the fire have not been identified. (And they go to bed every night praying to the Almighty that they never get caught...)

...

This post has been edited at member's request.Ron,

June 25th

0841 - Charles the Bald and Louis the German defeated Lothar at Fontenay.

1080 - At Brixen, a council of bishops declared Pope Gregory to be deposed and Archbishop Guibert as antipope Clement III.

1580 - The Book of Concord was first published. The book is a collection of doctrinal standards of the Lutheran Church.

1658 - Aurangzeb proclaimed himself emperor of the Moghuls in India.

1767 - Mexican Indians rioted as Jesuit priests were ordered home.

1788 - Virginia ratified the U.S. Constitution and became the 10th state of the United States.

1844 - John Tyler took Julia Gardiner as his bride, thus becoming the first U.S. President to marry while in office.

1864 - Union troops surrounding Petersburg, VA, began building a mine tunnel underneath the Confederate lines.

1867 - Lucien B. Smith patented the first barbed wire.

1868 - The U.S. Congress enacted legislation granting an eight-hour day to workers employed by the Federal government.

1868 - Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina were readmitted to the Union.

1870 - In Spain, Queen Isabella abdicated in favor of Alfonso XII.

1876 - Lt. Col. Custer and the U.S. 7th Cavalry were wiped out by Sioux and Cheyenne Indians at Little Big Horn in Montana. The event is known as "Custer's Last Stand."

1877 - In Philadelphia, PA, Alexander Graham Bell demonstated the telephone for Sir William Thomson (Baron Kelvin) and Emperor Pedro II of Brazil at the Centennial Exhibition.

1906 - Pittsburgh millionaire Harry Kendall Thaw, the son of coal and railroad baron William Thaw, shot and killed Stanford White. White, a prominent architect, had a tryst with Florence Evelyn Nesbit before she married Thaw. The shooting took place at the premeire of Mamzelle Champagne in New York.

1910 - The U.S. Congress authorized the use of postal savings stamps.

1917 - The first American fighting troops landed in France.

1920 - The Greeks took 8,000 Turkish prisoners in Smyrna.

1921 - Samuel Gompers was elected head of the AFL for the 40th time.

1938 - Gaelic scholar Douglas Hyde was inaugurated as the first president of the Irish Republic.

1941 - Finland declared war on the Soviet Union.

1946 - Ho Chi Minh traveled to France for talks on Vietnamese independence.

1948 - The Soviet Union tightened its blockade of Berlin by intercepting river barges heading for the city.

1950 - North Korea invaded South Korea initiating the Korean War.

1951 - In New York, the first regular commercial color TV transmissions were presented on CBS using the FCC-approved CBS Color System. The public did not own color TV's at the time.

1952 - John Christie, the British murderer of 10 Rillington Place, was sentenced to death for killing six women.

1959 - The Cuban government seized 2.35 million acres under a new agrarian reform law.

1959 - Eamon De Valera became president of Ireland at the age of 76.

1962 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the use of unofficial non-denominational prayer in public schools was unconstitutional.

1964 - U.S. President Lyndon Johnson ordered 200 naval personnel to Mississippi to assist in finding three missing civil rights workers.

1966 - "Dark Shadows" began running on ABC-TV.

1968 - Bobby Bonds (San Francisco Giants) hit a grand-slam home run in his first game with the Giants. He was the first player to debut with a grand-slam.

1970 - The U.S. Federal Communications Commission handed down a ruling (35 FR 7732), making it illegal for radio stations to put telephone calls on the air without the permission of the person being called.

1973 - Erskine Childers Jr. became president of Ireland after the retirement of Eamon De Valera.

1973 - White House Counsel John Dean admitted that U.S. President Nixon took part in the Watergate cover-up.

1975 - Mozambique became independent. Samora Machel was sworn in as president after 477 years of Portuguese rule.

1981 - The U.S. Supreme Court decided that male-only draft registration was constitutional.

1985 - ABC’s "Monday Night Football" began with a new line-up. The trio was Frank Gifford, Joe Namath and O.J. Simpson.

1985 - New York Yankees officials enacted the rule that mandated that the team’s bat boys were to wear protective helmets during all games.

1986 - The U.S. Congress approved $100 million in aid to the Contras fighting in Nicaragua.

1987 - Austrian President Kurt Waldheim visited Pope John Paul II at the Vatican. The meeting was controversial due to allegations that Waldheim had hidden his Nazi past.

1990 - The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the right of an individual, whose wishes are clearly made, to refuse life-sustaining medical treatment. "The right to die" decision was made in the Curzan vs. Missouri case.

1991 - The last Soviet troops left Czechoslovakia 23 years after the Warsaw Pact invasion.

1991 - The Yugoslav republics of Slovenia and Croatia declared their independence from Yugoslavia.

1993 - Kim Campbell took office as Canada's first woman prime minister. She assumed power upon the resignation of Brian Mulroney.

1996 - Outside the Khobar Towers near Dhahran, Saudi Arabia a truck bomb exploded. The bomb killed 19 Americans and injured over 500 Saudis and Americans.

1997 - The Russian space station Mir was hit by an unmanned cargo vessel. Much of the power supply was knocked out and the station's Spektr module was severely damaged.

1997 - U.S. air pollution standards were significantly tightened by U.S. President Clinton.

1998 - The U.S. Supreme Court rejected the line-item veto thereby striking down presidential power to cancel specific items in tax and spending legislation.

1998 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that those infected with HIV are protected by the Americans With Disabilities Act.

1998 - Microsoft's "Windows 98" was released to the public.

1999 - Germany's parliament approved a national Holocaust memorial to be built in Berlin.

2000 - U.S. and British researchers announced that they had completed a rough draft of a map of the genetic makeup of human beings. The project was 10 years old at the time of the announcement.

2000 - A Florida judge approved a class-action lawsuit to be filed against American Online (AOL) on behalf of hourly subscribers who were forced to view "pop-up" advertisements.


Birthdays....

Rosie O'Neill 1874
Henry "Hap" Arnold 1886
George Abbott 1887
Lord Louis Mountbatten (Burma) 1900
Anne Revere 1903
George Orwell 1903
Peter Lind Hayes 1915
Johnny Smith 1922
Dorothy Gilman 1923
Sidney Lumet 1924
June Lockhart 1925
Eddie Floyd (Falcons) 1935
Barbara Montgomery 1939
Clint Warwick (The Moody Blues) 1940
Willis Reed 1942
Carly Simon 1945
Ian McDonald (Foreigner) 1946
Allen Lanier (Blue Oyster Cult) 1946
Jimmy Walker 1947
Michael Lembeck 1948
Phyllis George 1949
Tim Finn (Split Enz) 1952
David Paich (Toto) 1954
George Michael 1963
Dikembe Mutombo 1966
Richie Rich 1967
Candyman 1968
Sean Kelly (Sixpence None the Richer) 1971
Carlos Delgado 1972
Mario Calire (Wallflowers) 1974
Albert Costa 1975
Linda Cardellini 1975

June 26th


1096 - Peter the Hermit's crusaders forced their way across Sava, Hungary.

1243 - The Seljuk Turkish army in Asia Minor was wiped out by the Mongols.

1483 - Richard III usurped himself to the English throne.

1541 - Francisco Pizarro, the Spanish Conqueror of Peru, was murdered by his former followers.

1794 - The French defeated an Austrian army at the Battle of Fleurus.

1804 - The Lewis and Clark Expedition reached the mouth of the Kansas River after completing a westward trek of nearly 400 river miles.

1819 - The bicycle was patented by W.K. Clarkson, Jr.

1870 - The first section of the boardwalk in Atlantic City, NJ, was opened to the public.

1894 - The American Railway Union called a general strike in sympathy with Pullman workers.

1900 - The United States announced that it would send troops to fight against the Boxer rebellion in China.

1900 - A commission that included Dr. Walter Reed began the fight against the deadly disease yellow fever.

1907 - Russia's nobility demanded drastic measures to be taken against revolutionaries.

1908 - Shah Muhammad Ali's forces squelched the reform elements of Parliament in Persia.

1917 - General John "Black Jack" Pershing arrived in France with the American Expeditionary Force.

1925 - Charlie Chaplin's comedy, "The Gold Rush," premiered in Hollywood.

1926 - A memorial to the first U.S. troops in France was unveiled at St. Nazaire.

1924 - After eight years of occupation, American troops left the Dominican Republic.

1942 - The Grumman F6F Hellcat fighter was flown for the first time.

1945 - The U.N. Charter was signed by 50 nations in San Francisco, CA.

1948 - The Berlin Airlift began as the U.S., Britain and France started ferrying supplies to the isolated western sector of Berlin.

1951 - The Soviet Union proposed a cease-fire in the Korean War.

1959 - CBS journalist Edward R. Murrow interviewed Lee Remick. It was his 500th and final guest on "Person to Person."

1959 - U.S. President Eisenhower joined Britain's Queen Elizabeth II in ceremonies officially opening the St. Lawrence Seaway.

1961 - A Kuwaiti vote opposed Iraq's annexation plans.

1963 - U.S. President John Kennedy announced "Ich bin ein Berliner" (I am a Berliner) at the Berlin Wall.

1971 - The U.S. Justice Department issued a warrant for Daniel Ellsberg, accusing him of giving away the Pentagon Papers.

1975 - Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency due to "deep and widespread conspiracy."

1976 - The CN (Canadian National) Tower in Toronto, Canada, opened.

1979 - Muhammad Ali, at 37 years old, announced that he was retiring as world heavyweight boxing champion.

1981 - In Mountain Home, Idaho, Virginia Campbell took her coupons and rebates and bought $26,460 worth of groceries. She only paid 67 cents after all the discounts.

1985 - Wilbur Snapp was ejected after playing "Three Blind Mice" during a baseball game. The incident followed a call made by umpire Keith O'Connor.

1987 - The movie "Dragnet" opened in the U.S.

1996 - The U.S. Supreme Court ordered the Virginia Military Institute to admit women or forgo state support.

1997 - The U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Communications Decency Act of 1996 that made it illegal to distribute indecent material on the Internet.

1997 - The U.S. Supreme Court upheld state laws that allow for a ban on doctor-assisted suicides.

1998 - The U.S. and Peru open school to train commandos to patrol Peru's rivers for drug traffickers.

1998 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that employers are always potentially liable for supervisor's sexual misconduct toward an employee.

2000 - The Human Genome Project and Celera Genomics Corp. jointly announced that they had created a working draft of the human genome.

2000 - Indonesia's President Abdurrahman Wahid declared a state of emergency in the Moluccas due to the escalation of fighting between Christians and Muslims.

2001 - Ray Bourque (Colorado Avalanche) announced his retirement just 17 days after winning his first Stanley Cup. Bouque retired after 22 years and held the NHL record for highest-scoring defenseman and playing in 19 consecutive All-Star games.

2002 - David Hasseloff checked into The Betty Ford Center for treatment of alcoholism.

2002 - WorldCom Inc. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.


Birthdays

Abner Doubleday 1819
Sidney Howard 1891
Pearl S. Buck 1892
William P. Lear 1902
Peter Lorre 1904
Col. Tom Parker 1909
Roy Plunkett 1910
Richard Maltby 1914
Babe Didrikson Zaharias 1914
Charlotte Zolotow 1915
Eleanor Parker 1922
Frances Rafferty 1922
Dave Grusin 1934
Billy Davis ( The 5th Dimension) 1940
Larry Taylor (Canned Heat) 1942
Pamela Bellwood 1943
Georgie Fame (Clive Powell) 1943
Mick Jones (Clash, Big Audio Dynomite) 1955
Chris Isaak 1956
Patty Smyth 1957
Greg LeMond 1961
Terri Nunn (Berlin) 1961
Harriet Wheeler (The Sundays) 1963
Colin Greenwood (Radiohead) 1969
Chris O'Donnell 1970
Jason Schwartzman 1980
Kaitlin Cullum 1986

June 27th

0363 - The death of Roman Emperor Julian brought an end to the Pagan Revival.

1693 - "The Ladies' Mercury" was published by John Dunton in London. It was the first women's magazine and contained a "question and answer" column that became known as a "problem page."

1743 - King George II of England defeated the French at Dettingen, Bavaria, in the War of the Austrian Succession.

1787 - Edward Gibbon completed "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." It was published the following May.

1801 - British forces defeated the French and took control of Cairo, Egypt.

1844 - Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum were killed by mob in Carthage, IL.

1847 - New York and Boston were linked by telegraph wires.

1871 - The yen became the new form of currency in Japan.

1885 - Chichester Bell and Charles S. Tainter applied for a patent for the gramophone. It was granted on May 4, 1886.

1893 - The New York stock market crashed. By the end of the year 600 banks and 74 railroads had gone out of business.

1905 - The battleship Potemkin succumbed to a mutiny on the Black Sea.

1918 - Two German pilots were saved by parachutes for the first time.

1923 - Yugoslav Premier Nikola Pachitch was wounded by Serb attackers in Belgrade.

1924 - Democrats offered Mrs. Leroy Springs for vice presidential nomination. She was the first woman considered for the job.

1927 - The U.S. Marines adopted the English bulldog as their mascot.

1929 - Scientists at Bell Laboratories in New York revealed a system for transmitting television pictures.

1931 - Igor Sikorsky filed U.S. Patent 1,994,488, which marked the breakthrough in helicopter technology.

1940 - Robert Pershing Wadlow was measured by Dr. Cyril MacBryde and Dr. C. M. Charles. They recorded his height at 8' 11.1." He was only 22 at the time of his death on July 15, 1940.

1942 - The FBI announced the capture of eight Nazi saboteurs who had been put ashore from a submarine on New York's Long Island.

1944 - During World War II, American forces completed their capture of the French port of Cherbourg from the German army.

1949 - "Captain Video and His Video Rangers" premiered on the Dumont Television Network.

1950 - Two days after North Korea invaded South Korea, U.S. President Truman ordered the Air Force and Navy into the Korean conflict. The United Nations Security Council had asked for member nations to help South Korea repel an invasion from the North.

1954 - The world's first atomic power station opened at Obninsk, near Moscow.

1955 - The first "Wide Wide World" was broadcast on NBC-TV.

1955 - The state of Illinois enacted the first automobile seat belt legislation.

1957 - More than 500 people were killed when Hurricane Audrey hit the coastal area of Louisiana and Texas.

1958 - NBC's "Matinee Theatre" was seen for the final time.

1959 - The play, "West Side Story," with music by Leonard Bernstein, closed after 734 performances on Broadway.

1961 - Arthur Michael Ramsey was enthroned as the 100th Archbishop of Canterbury.

1964 - Ernest Borgnine and Ethel Merman were married. It only lasted 38 days.

1967 - The world's first cash dispenser was installed at Barclays Bank in Enfield, England. The device was invented by John Sheppard-Barron. The machine operated on a voucher system and the maximum withdrawal was $28.

1967 - Two hundred people were arrested during a race riot in Buffalo, NY.

1969 - Patrons at the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City's Greenwich Village, clashed with police. This incident is considered to be the birth of the homosexual rights movement.

1972 - Bobby Hull signed a 10-year hockey contract for $2,500,000. He became a player and coach of the Winnipeg Jets of the World Hockey Association.

1973 - Former White House counsel John W. Dean told the Senate Watergate Committee about an "enemies list" that was kept by the Nixon White House.

1973 - Nixon vetoed a Senate ban on bombing Cambodia.

1976 - Palestinian extremists hijacked an Air France plane in Greece. There were 246 passengers and 12 crew onboard. The plane eventually was taken to Entebbe, Uganda where Israeli commandos stormed it on July 4. The raid resulted in the deaths of seven pasengers.

1980 - U.S. President Carter signed legislation reviving draft registration.

1984 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that individual colleges could make their own TV package deals.

1984 - The Federal Communications Commission moved to deregulate U.S. commercial TV by lifting most programming requirements and ending day-part restrictions on advertising.

1985 - Officials decertified Route 66.

1985 - The U.S. House of Representatives voted to limit the use of combat troops in Nicaragua.

1986 - The World Court ruled that the U.S. had broken international law by aiding Nicaraguan rebels.

1991 - Associate Justice Thurgood Marshall resigned from the U.S. Supreme Court. He had been appointed in 1967 by President Lyndon Johnson.

1992 - The body of kidnapped Exxon executive Sidney J. Reso was found buried in a makeshift grave in a state park in New Jersey. Arthur and Irene Seale were later convicted and sentenced to prison for the crime.

1995 - Qatar's Crown Prince Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani ousted his father in a bloodless palace coup.

1995 - Actor Hugh Grant was arrested in Los Angeles for engaging in "lewd behavior" with a prostitute in a rented BMW.

1998 - An English woman was impregnated with her dead husband's sperm after two-year legal battle over her right to the sperm.

1998 - In a live joint news conference in China U.S. President Clinton and President Jiang Zemin offered an uncensored airing of differences on human rights, freedom, trade and Tibet.

2002 - In the U.S., the Securities and Exchange Commission required companies with annual sales of more than $1.2 billion to submit sworn statements backing up the accuracy of their financial reports.


Birthdays

Louis XII (France) 1462
Charles XII (Sweden) 1682
Charles Stewart Parnell 1846
Mildred J. Hill 1859
Paul Laurence Dunbar 1872
Helen Keller 1880
John McIntire (actor) 1907
Audrey Christie 1911
Willie Mosconi 1913
Ben Homer 1917
I.A.L. Diamond 1920
Elmo Hope 1923
Rosalie Allen 1924
Jerome ‘Doc’ Pomus 1925
Bob "Captain Kangaroo" Keeshan 1927
H. Ross Perot 1930
Charles Bronfman 1931
Anna Moffo 1934
Shirley Anne Field 1938
Sandra Smith 1940
Frank Mills 1942
Bruce Johnston (The Beach Boys) 1944
Norma Kamili 1945
Julia Duffy 1951
Isabelle Adjani 1955
Lorrie Morgan 1959
Brian Dillinger 1960
Tobey Maguire 1975
Leigh Nash (Sixpence None the Richer) 1976
Madylin Sweeten 1991

June 28th



1098 - Forces of the First Crusade defeated the army of Kerbogha of Mosul.

1243 - Innocent IV became Pope.

1389 - Ottoman forces crushed the armies of Christian Europe in Kosovo, opening the way for the Ottoman conquest of Southeastern Europe.

1519 - Charles V was elected emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.

1635 - Guadeloupe became a French colony.

1651 - "The Battle of Beresteczko", between Poles and Ukrainians, began. It was the largest battle of the 17th century.

1859 - The first dog show was held in Newcastle-on-Tyne, England.

1880 - Ned Kelly, the Australian bushranger, was captured at Glenrowan.

1887 - Minot, North Dakota was incorporated as a city.

1894 - Labor Day became an official US holiday.

1895 - El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua formed the Central American Union.

1914 - Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria and his wife Sophia were killed by a Serbian nationalist, this was used by Germany as justification for starting World War I.

1919 - The Treaty of Versailles was signed, ending World War I with Germany.

1936 - The Japanese puppet state of Mengjiang was formed in northern China.

1938 - A 450 metric tonne (500 ton) meteorite struck the earth in a empty field near Chicora, Pennsylvania.

1940 - Romania ceded Bessarabia (current-day Moldova) to the Soviet Union.

1950 - Seoul was captured by troops from North Korea.

1956 - Anti-communist demonstrations took place in Poznan. (June of Poznan).

1960 - US-owned oil refineries in Cuba were confiscated and nationalised by the Castro regime.

1964 - Malcom X formed "The Organization of Afro-American Unity".

1967 - Israel annexed East Jerusalem.

1969 - The "Stonewall riots" in New York city marked the beginning of the modern gay rights era.

1978 - The United States Supreme Court, in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (438 US 265 1978), barred quota systems in college admissions but affirmed the constitutionality of programs giving advantage to minorities.

1988 - Four workers were asphyxiated at a metal-plating plant in Auburn, Indiana. It was the worst "confined-space industrial accident" in U.S. history. A fifth victim died two days later.

1990 - Paperback Software, a company founded by Adam Osborne, was found guilty by a U.S. court of copyright violation for copying the appearance and menu system of Lotus 1-2-3 in its competing spreadsheet program.

1997 - Boxer (and world class idiot) Mike Tyson was disqualified from his WBA title re-match after for biting off part of the ear of his opponent, Evander Holyfield.

2004 - Estonia, Lithuania and Slovenia joined the ERM II.

2004 - Sovereign power was handed to the interim government of Iraq by the Coalition Provisional Authority, ending the U.S.-led rule of that nation.

2005 - Canada's lower house paved the way for same-sex marriage to be legalized there, and make it the third country to do so.


Born this day:

1476 - Pope Paul IV (d. 1559)

1490 - Albert of Mainz, bishop and elector of Mainz (d. 1545)

1491 - Henry VIII, king of England (d. 1547)

1577 - Peter Paul Rubens, German painter (d. 1640)

1703 - John Wesley, English founder of Methodism (d. 1791)

1712 - Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Swiss philosopher (d. 1778)

1806 - Napoleon Coste, French guitarist and composer (d. 1883)

1807 - Anton Philipp Reclam, German publisher (d. 1895)

1831 - Joseph Joachim, Austrian violinist (d. 1907)

1867 - Luigi Pirandello, Italian dramatist and narrator, recipient of the Nobel Prize in literature (d. 1936)

1902 - Richard Rodgers, composer (d. 1979)

1906 - Maria Goeppert-Mayer, physicist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in physics (d. 1972)

1913 - Franz Antel, Austrian filmmaker

1914 - Lester Flatt, bluegrass musician (d. 1979)

1921 - P. V. Narasimha Rao, Prime Minister of India 1991 - 1996

1926 - Mel Brooks, filmmaker

1932 - Pat Morita, actor

1943 - Klaus von Klitzing, physicist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in physics

1946 - Gilda Radner, actress (d. 1989)

1947 - Mark Helprin, American writer

1972 - Drew Jenkins, Government Contractor, Gardener, Frustrated Writer (Yada yada yada...!)


Died this day:

767 - Pope Paul I

1598 - Abraham Ortelius, cartographer (b. 1527)

1836 - James Madison, president of the US (b. 1751)

1914 - Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria (assassination) (b. 1863)

1914 - Countess Sophie Chotek, wife of Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria (assassination) (b. 1868)

1960 - Jake Swirbul, co-founder of Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation

1965 - Red Nichols, jazz musician (b. 1905)

1975 - Rod Serling, scriptwriter, host of The Twilight Zone (b. 1924)

1980 - José Iturbi, musician, conductor (b. 1895)

1981 - Terry Fox, cancer activist, cross-Canada marathon runner (b. 1958)

1989 - Joris Ivens, filmmaker (b. 1898)

1992 - Mikhail Tal, chess player (b. 1936)

2001 - Mortimer Adler, philosopher (b. 1902)

2001 - Jim Ellis, co-creator of Usenet

2004 - Anthony Buckeridge, author (b. 1912)

June 29th



1613 - The Globe Theatre burnt to the ground.

1749 - The new Governor, Charles de la Ralière Des Herbiers, arrived at Isle Royale (Cape Breton Island).

1786 - Alexander Macdonnell and more than five hundred Catholic highlanders left Scotland to settle in Glengarry County, Ontario.

1850 - Coal was discovered in the colony of Vancouver Island.

1863 - George Custer was appointed as a U.S. Union brigadier-general, a rank he would hold until the end of the Civil War.

1864 - Ninety-nine people were killed in Canada's worst railway disaster near St-Hilaire.

1880 - France annexed Tahiti.

1891 - The National Forest Service was organized.

1891 - The street railway in Ottawa commenced operation.

1895 - Doukhobors burnt their weapons as a protest against conscription by the Tsarist Russian government.

1905 - Moonlight Graham made his only major league baseball appearance, in a game between the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Superbas.

1914 - Jina Guseva attempted to assassinate Grigori Rasputin at his home town in Siberia.

1922 - France granted 1 suare kilometre at Vimy Ridge "freely, and for all time, to the Government of Canada, the free use of the land exempt from all taxes".

1925 - Canada House opened in London.

1927 - The first test of Wallace Turnbull's variable-pitch propeller took place, it was a complete success.

1933 - Italian boxer Primo Carnera knocked out American Jack Sharkey to become the heavyweight champion of the world.

1937 - Joseph-Armand Bombardier received a patent for the sprocket and track traction system used in snow vehicles.

1945 - Carpathian Ruthenia was annexed by the Soviet Union.

1976 - The Seychelles gained independence from Great Britain.

1986 - Argentina won the 1986 FIFA World Cup.

1995 - The Space Shuttle Atlantis docked with the Russian Mir space station for the first time.

1995 - The Sampoong Department Store collapsed in the Seocho-gu district of Seoul, killing 501 and injuring 937.


Born this day:

1397 - John II of Aragon (d. 1479)

1596 - Emperor Go-Mizunoo of Japan (d. 1680)

1746 - Joachim Heinrich Campe, pedagogue (d. 1818)

1798 - Giacomo Leopardi, Italian poet (d. 1837)

1858 - George Goethals, American army engineer (d. 1928)

1861 - Dr. William Mayo, American surgeon and founder of the Mayo Clinic

1868 - George Ellery Hale, astronomer (d. 1938)

1880 - Ludwig Beck, general (d. 1944)

1890 - Hendrikje van Andel-Schipper, world's oldest woman

1900 - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, French pilot and writer (d. 1944)

1903 - Alan Blumlein, electronics engineer (d. 1942)

1908 - Leroy Anderson, American composer (d. 1975)

1910 - Frank Loesser, composer (d. 1969)

1911 - Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands (d. 2004)

1911 - Bernard Herrmann, composer (d. 1975)

1914 - Rafael Kubelik, Czech conductor (d. 1996)

1920 - Ray Harryhausen, film maker

1921 - Reinhard Mohn, publisher

1922 - Vasko Popa, Yugoslav poet (d. 1991)

1941 - Kwame Ture, (born "Stokeley Carmichael"), civil rights activist

1943 - Little Eva, singer (d. 2003)

1956 - Pedro Santana Lopes, Portuguese former prime minister (2004-05)

1963 - Anne-Sophie Mutter, violinist

1971 - Matthew Good, rock musician and social activist

1972 - Samantha Smith, U.S. social activist, actress (d. 1985)


Died this day:

67 - St. Peter, apostle (traditional) (crucified)

1252 - King Abel of Denmark (b. 1218)

1315 - Ramon Llull, philosopher (b. 1235)

1620 - John Aerts, Flemish sculptor

1725 - Arai Hakuseki, Japanese Confucianist, poet, politician, and writer (b. 1657)

1861 - Elizabeth Barrett Browning, poet (b. 1806)

1895 - Thomas Henry Huxley, scientist (b. 1825)

1933 - Fatty Arbuckle, actor (b. 1887)

1940 - Paul Klee, Swiss artist (b. 1879)

1941 - Ignacy Jan Paderewski, Polish pianist and composer (b. 1860)

1967 - Jayne Mansfield, actress (car wreck) (b. 1933)

1969 - Moise Thsombe, Premier of Congo

1992 - Mohammed Boudiaf, Algerian president (assassinated)

1994 - Kurt Eichhorn, conductor (b. 1908)

1994 - Ray Crane, trumpeter

1995 - Lana Turner, actress (b. 1921)

1999 - Allan Carr, film producer, writer

2002 - Rosemary Clooney, actress, singer extraordinaire (b. 1928)

2002 - Ole-Johan Dahl, computer scientist (b. 1931)

2003 - Katharine Hepburn, actress (b. 1907)

June 30th



1651 - "The Battle of Beresteczko" ended with a Polish victory.

1805 - The U.S. Congress organized Michigan Territory.

1864 - U.S. President Abraham Lincoln granted Yosemite Valley to California for "public use, resort and recreation."

1905 - Albert Einstein published the article "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies", where he introduced special relativity.

1908 - The "Tunguska Impact Event" occurred in Siberia.

1934 - "The Night of the Long Knives", Adolf Hitler's violent purge of his political rivals in Germany, took place.

1936 - "Gone with the Wind", by Margaret Mitchell, was published.

1956 - A TWA Super Constellation and a United Airlines DC-7 collided above the Grand Canyon in Arizona, killing 128.

1960 - The Congo gained its independence from Belgium.

1971 - The crew of the Soviet Soyuz 11 spacecraft were killed when their air supply escaped through a faulty valve.

1971 - The 26th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, lowering the voting age to 18, was ratified as Ohio became the 38th state to approve it.

1990 - East and West Germany merged their economies.

1997 - China resumed sovereignty over the city-state of Hong Kong, ending 156 years of British colonial rule.

2002 - Brazil defeated Germany 2-0 in Yokohama, Japan, to earn a record fifth title in the 17th Football World Cup.

2005 - Spain legalized same-sex marriages.


Born this day:

1470 - King Charles VIII of France (d. 1498)

1685 - John Gay, English writer (d. 1732)

1685 - Dominikus Zimmermann, master builder (d. 1766)

1775 - Paul de Barras, politician (d. 1829)

1789 - Horace Vernet, painter and graphic artist (d. 1863)

1807 - Friedrich Theodor von Vischer, narrator, lyricist, and philosopher (d. 1887)

1817 - Joseph Dalton Hooker, botanist (d. 1911)

1843 - Ernest Mason Satow, author (d. 1929)

1893 - Walter Ulbricht, politician (d. 1973)

1899 - Harry Shields, jazz musician (d. 1971)

1911 - Czesław Miłosz, Polish poet, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature (d. 2004)

1944 - Raymond Moody, parapsychologist

1958 - Esa-Pekka Salonen, Finnish conductor and composer


Died this day:

1607 - Caesar Baronius, Italian cardinal and historian (b. 1538)

1961 - Lee DeForest, American inventor

1971 - Viktor Patsayev, Georgi Dobrovolski, and Vladislav Volkov, the cosmonauts of Soyuz 11

1974 - Vannevar Bush, engineer and politician (b. 1890)

1984 - Lillian Hellman, playwright (b. 1905)

1993 - George "Spanky" McFarland, child actor of "Our Gang" fame (b. 1928)

1995 - Gale Gordon, actor "Mr. Mooney" (b. 1906)

1995 - Georgi Beregovoi, cosmonaut (b. 1921)

2001 - Chet Atkins, musician, master of country and western guitar (b. 1924)

2003 - Buddy Hackett, American comic (b. 1924)

2003 - Robert McCloskey, children's book writer and illustrator (b. 1915)

July 1st



1097 - At "The Battle of Dorylaeum" the Crusaders, under Bohemond of Taranto, defeated a Turkish army under Qilich Arslan I.

1690 - During the Williamite War, "The Battle of the Boyne" took place (Julian calendar).

1782 - American privateers attacked Lunenburg, Nova Scotia.

1858 - The joint reading of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace's papers on evolution to the Linnean Society was made.

1862 - The Russian State Library was founded.

1863 - American Civil War: In Pennsylvania "The Battle of Gettysburg" began.

1867 - The British North America Act took effect as the constitution of Canada, creating the Canadian Confederation; John A. Macdonald was sworn in as the first Prime Minister.

1870 - The United States Department of Justice formally came into existence.

1873 - Prince Edward Island joined the Canadian Confederation.

1878 - Canada joined the Universal Postal Union.

1881 - The world's first international telephone call was made between St. Stephen, New Brunswick in Canada, and Calais, Maine in the US.

1881 - General Order 70, the culmination of the Cardwell-Childers reforms of the British Army's organisation, came into effect.

1885 - The United States terminated its reciprocity and fishery agreement with Canada.

1890 - Canada and Bermuda were linked by telegraph cable.

1904 - The games of the III Olympiad opened in Saint Louis, Missouri.

1916 - On the first day of "The Battle of the Somme" some 20,000 soldiers of the British Army were killed, and 40,000 wounded.

1931 - The Official opening of Milan Central Station.

1923 - The Canadian Parliament (in its infinite wisdom) suspended all Chinese immigration.

1935 - Regina, Saskatchewan police and Royal Canadian Mounted Police ambushed strikers/protesters participating in the "On-to-Ottawa-Trek".

1947 - The Australian real estate franchise L. J. Hooker listed on the Australian Stock Exchange.

1948 - The official opening date of New York International Airport (now known as John F. Kennedy International Airport) at Idlewild.

1957 - "The International Geophysical Year" began. It lasted until December 31, 1958.

1958 - The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation linked television broadcasting across Canada via microwave.

1958 - Flooding of the St. Lawrence Seaway began.

1960 - Somalia gained its independence.

1962 - Rwanda and Burundi gained their independence.

1963 - ZIP Codes were introduced for all United States mail.

1963 - The British Government admitted that former diplomat Kim Philby had worked as a Soviet agent.

1963 - U.S President John F. Kennedy arrived in Rome.

1966 - The first colour television transmission in Canada originated in Toronto.

1967 - The European Community was formally created out of a merger with the Common Market, the European Coal and Steel Community, and the European Atomic Energy Commission.

1968 - The CIA's Phoenix Program was officially established.

1968 - The "Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty" was signed by about sixty countries in Geneva, Switzerland.

1968 - Formal separation of the United Auto Workers with the AFL-CIO took place.

1969 - The rock group "The Band" released their influential debut "Music From Big Pink".

1972 - Andreas Baader, Jan-Carl Raspe and Holger Meins of "The Red Army Faction" were captured in Frankfurt after a shootout with police.

1979 - Sony introduced the Walkman.

1983 - A North Korean "Ilyushin Il-62M" jet en route to Conakry Airport in Guinea crashed into the Fouta Djall Mountains in Guinea-Bissau, killing all 23 people on board.

1986 - In an interview with Playboy magazine, science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke came out as a bisexual. (Yeah, that and $1.25 will get you a stale coffee down at the gas bar.)

1987 - Excavation began on "The Chunnel" between Great Britain and France.

1988 - Bologna, Italy: Quartetto Cetra's last concert after more than a forty year musical career.

1990 - East Germany accepted the Deutsche Mark as its currency, thus uniting the economies of East and West Germany. (Ya! Das mooch bayter den der crap weeze vust yousingst before!)

1991 - The Warsaw Pact was officially dissolved.

1997 - Great Britain handed over sovereignty of Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China.

1999 - At the first meeting of the Scottish Parliament in nearly three centuries, Winnie Ewing opened with the famous words, "The Scottish Parliament, adjourned on the 25th day of March in the year 1707, is hereby reconvened."

2000 - Vermont's civil unions law went into effect.

2002 - A Bashkirian Airlines Tupolev TU-154 and a DHL (German cargo) Boeing 757 collided in mid-air over southern Germany, killing 71.

2003 - 500,000 people took part in a march in Hong Kong to protest, amongst other things, the government's handling of the plans to implement a new anti-subversion law required under Article 23 of Hong Kong's Basic Law.

2004 - 530,000 people took part in a march in Hong Kong to urge for faster pace of democratisation and universal suffrage, according to Article 45 and Article 68 of Hong Kong's Basic Law.

2004 - The Saturn Orbit Insertion of Cassini-Huygens began at 01:12 UT and ended at 02:48 UT.

2005 - Microsoft announced plans to end official support of Windows 2000.

2005 - Britain took over the Presidency of "The Council of the European Union".


Born this day:

1646 - Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, German mathematician and philosopher (d. 1716)

1804 - George Sand (Amantine Aurore Lucile Dupin), writer (d. 1876)

1863 - William Stairs, Victorian era explorer (d. 1892)

1869 - William Strunk Jr., grammarian (d. 1946)
1872 - Louis Blériot, French aviation pioneer (d. 1936)

1899 - Charles Laughton, Academy Award-winning actor (d. 1962)

1899 - Thomas A. Dorsey, father of gospel music (d. 1993)

1902 - William Wyler, three-time Academy Award-winning director (d. 1981)

1903 - Amy Johnson, aviator (d. 1941)

1906 - Estée Lauder, cosmetics pioneer (d. 2004)

1912 - David R. Brower, environmentalist (d. 2000)

1916 - Olivia de Havilland, actress

1917 - Rolf Rodenstock, industrialist (d. 1977)

1921 - Seretse Khama, first president of Botswana

1929 - Hans Werner Henze, German composer

1934 - Sydney Pollack, film director, producer, actor

1934 - Jamie Farr, actor, "Cpl. Klinger"

1941 - Twyla Tharp, choreographer

1941 - Alfred G. Gilman, scientist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

1942 - Andraé Crouch, singer, conductor, actor

1945 - Deborah Harry, singer, musician, (Blondie)

1961 - Kalpana Chawla, astronaut and engineer (d. 2003)

1961 - Diana, Princess of Wales, (d. 1997)

1961 - Carl Lewis, American athletics legend, nine-time Olympic gold medalist

1961 - Michelle Wright, singer/guitarist, songwriter, drummer

1965 - Harald Zwart, Norwegian film director


Died this day:

868 - Ali al-Hadi, Shia Imam (b. 828)

1109 - Alfonso VI of Castile

1277 - Baibars, Mameluk sultan of Egypt

1566 - Nostradamus, French astrologer (b. 1503)

1708 - Emperor Tekle Haymanot I of Ethiopia (assassinated)

1782 - Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (b. 1730)

1784 - Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, German composer (b. 1710)

1819 - Jemima Wilkinson, preacher

1894 - Allan Pinkerton, American private detective

1896 - Harriet Beecher Stowe, American author

1925 - Erik Satie, French composer

1944 - Tanya Savicheva, Russian diarist

1950 - Eliel Saarinen, Finnish architect, father of Eero Saarinen (b. 1873)

1961 - Louis-Ferdinand Céline, French writer (b. 1894)

1964 - Pierre Monteux, French conductor (b. 1875)

1974 - Juan Domingo Perón, President of Argentina (b. 1895)

1981 - Carlos de Oliveira, Portuguese writer (b. 1921)

1983 - R. Buckminster Fuller, American architect and philosopher

1984 - Moshe Feldenkrais, Ukrainian-born educator

1995 - Wolfman Jack, radio personality, actor, social activist (b. 1939)

1996 - William T. Cahill, Governor of New Jersey

1997 - Robert Mitchum, actor

1999 - Edward Dmytryk, director

1999 - Forrest Mars Sr., American candy magnate

2000 - Walter Matthau, actor

2003 - Herbie Mann, jazz flutist

2004 - Marlon Brando, American actor

July 2nd



1578 - Martin Frobisher first sighted Baffin Island in the Arctic Ocean.

1613 - The first English expedition against Acadia left from Massachusetts. It was led by Samuel Argall.

1644 - "The Battle of Marston Moor" in the English Civil War took place.

1679 - The first Europeans, led by Daniel Greysolon de Du Luth, arrived in Minnesota and saw the headwaters of the Mississippi.

1776 - The Continental Congress adopted a resolution severing ties with Great Britain, though a formal Declaration of Independence was not adopted until July 4.

1777 - Vermont became the first state to abolish slavery.

1808 - Simon Fraser reached the Pacific Ocean (Georgia Strait) at present day Richmond BC.

1819 - "The Factory Act" was passed in Britain, creating restrictions on child labor.

1839 - Twenty miles off the coast of Cuba, 53 rebelling African slaves led by Joseph Cinque took over the slave ship "Amistad".

1850 - The self-contained gas mask was patented by Benjamin J. Lane.

1853 - The Russian Army invaded Turkey, sparking the Crimean War.

1863 - The second day of "The Battle of Gettysburg".

1881 - U.S. President James Garfield was shot. He eventually died from infection on September 19.

1890 - The U.S. Congress passed "The Sherman Anti-Trust Act".

1900 - The first Zeppelin flight took place on Lake Constance near Friedrichshafen, Germany.

1917 - 48 died in riots incited by unequal pay in East St. Louis, Illinois. Lower-paid black laborers clashed with whites.

1937 - Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared over the Pacific Ocean while attempting to make the first round-the-world flight at the equator.

1947 - An object, most commomnly suspected of being an alien spacecraft, crashed near Roswell, New Mexico. To this day the United States Air Force claims it was only a weather balloon.

1950 - Henri Queuille became Prime Minister of France.

1964 - U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed "The Civil Rights Act" into law.

1973 - James R. Schlesinger was sworn in as the 12th United States Secretary of Defense.

1976 - North and South Vietnam, divided since
1954, reunited to form the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

1979 - The first U.S. coin to honor a woman, the Susan B. Anthony dollar, was introduced.

1982 - Larry Walters used 45 helium balloons and a lawnchair to propel himself to 16,000 feet. (See? There IS one born every minute!)

1985 - Andrei Gromyko is appointed the chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union.

2000 - Vicente Fox Quesada was elected the first President of México from an opposition party, the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) after more than 70 years of continuous rule from the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI).

2002 - Steve Fossett became the first person to fly solo around the world nonstop in a balloon.


Born this day:

419 - Valentinian III, Roman Emperor (d. 455)

1262 - Arthur II, Duke of Brittany (d. 1312)

1489 - Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury (d. 1556)

1644 - Abraham a Santa Clara, court vicar (d. 1709)

1714 - Christoph Willibald Gluck, German composer (d. 1787)

1724 - Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, German poet (d. 1803)

1821 - Sir Charles Tupper, sixth Prime Minister of Canada (d. 1915)

1862 - William Henry Bragg, English physicist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in physics (d. 1942)

1865 - Lily Braun, German writer (d. 1916)

1877 - Hermann Hesse, German writer, recipient of the Nobel Prize in literature (d. 1962)

1884 - Alfons Maria Jakob, German neurologist (d. 1931)

1903 - King Olav V of Norway (d. 1991)

1903 - Sir Alec Douglas-Home, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (d. 1995)

1906 - Hans Bethe, Nobel Prize-winning German-born nuclear physicist

1908 - Thurgood Marshall, U. S. Supreme Court justice (d. 1993)

1916 - Ken Curtis, American actor and singer, "Festus" (d. 1991)

1916 - Hans-Ulrich Rudel, highly decorated German pilot during World War II (d. 1982).

1923 - Wisława Szymborska, Polish poet, recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature

1925 - Patrice Lumumba, Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (d. 1961)

1925 - Medgar Evers, American civil rights activist (d. 1963)

1927 - Ruth Berghaus, choreographer and film director (d. 1996)

1929 - Imelda Marcos, former First Lady of the Philippines

1930 - Carlos Menem, President of Argentina

1932 - Dave Thomas, Of "Wendy's" fame, American fast food entrepreneur (d. 2002)

1937 - Richard Petty, American race car driver

1939 - John H. Sununu, former U.S. Secretary of State

1942 - Vicente Fox, President of Mexico

1946 - Richard Axel, Nobel Prize-winning American scientist

1947 - Larry David, American television producer

1958 - Thomas Bickerton, American Methodist bishop

1971 - Evelyn Lau, Canadian author

1974 - Matthew Reilly, Australian author

1981 - Alex Koroknay-Palicz, American youth rights activist


Died this day:

862 - St. Swithun, Bishop of Winchester

1298 - Adolf of Nassau-Weilburg

1778 - Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Swiss philosopher (b. 1712)

1833 - Gervasio Antonio de Posadas, Argentine leader

1932 - King Manuel II of Portugal (b. 1889)

1937 - Amelia Earhart, American aviator (disappeared) (b. 1897)

1961 - Ernest Hemingway, American author, recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature (suicide) (b. 1899)

1966 - Jan Brzechwa, Polish poet (b. 1900)

1972 - Joseph Fielding Smith, president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (b. 1876)

1973 - Betty Grable, American actress (b. 1916)

1977 - Vladimir Nabokov, Russian-born writer (b. 1899)

1989 - Andrei Gromyko, Soviet foreign minister (b. 1909)

1997 - James Stewart, American actor (b. 1908)

1999 - Mario Puzo, American author (b. 1920)

2004 - Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen, Portuguese writer and poet (b. 1919)

July 3rd



323 - At "The Battle of Adrianople" Constantine the Great's army soundly defeated the forces of Licinius, who then fled to Byzantium.

533 - At "The Battle of the Tenth Milestone" the army of Byzantine general Belisarius defeated the Vandals near Carthage.

987 - Hugh Capet was crowned King of France, the first of the Capetian dynasty which ruled France till the French Revolution in 1792.

1250 - Louis IX of France was captured by Baibars' Mamluk army at "The Battle of Fariskur" while he was in Egypt conducting the Seventh Crusade; he later had to ransom himself.

1608 - Quebec City was founded by Samuel de Champlain.

1754 - George Washington surrendered Fort Necessity to French forces during the French and Indian War. He was allowed to retain his colors and march out of the fort with full honors the following day.

1844 - The last pair of "Great Auks" in the world were killed.

1863 - The final and bloodiest day of "The Battle of Gettysburg", and the fall of besieged Vicksburg to the army of U.S. General Grant.

1866 - The Austro-Prussian War was decided at "The Battle of Königgratz", resulting in Prussia taking over as the prominent German nation from Austria.

1886 - The New York Tribune became the first newspaper to use a linotype machine, eliminating typesetting by hand.

1890 - Idaho was admitted as the 43rd U.S. state.

1938 - The world record for a steam railway locomotive was set in England, by the "Mallard", which reached a speed of 203 km/h (126 mph).

1964 - President Lyndon B. Johnson signed "The Civil Rights Act of 1964", which prohibited segregation in public places.

1969 - Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones drowned in his swimming pool. The band played a concert at Hyde Park two days later in his honor.

1970 - A British chartered jetliner crashed near Barcelona, Spain killing 112.

1971 - Singer Jim Morrison of "The Doors" was found dead of a heart attack in his bathtub.

1976 - Israeli commandos rescued 105 hostages at Entebbe Airport, Uganda.

1988 - United States Navy warship "USS Vincennes" shoots down Iran Air Flight 655 over the Persian Gulf, killing all 290 people aboard.

2001 - A Vladivostokavia Tupolev TU-154 jetliner crashed on approach to landing at Irkutsk, Russia killing 145.

2004 - The official opening of Bangkok's subway system took place.


Born this day:

1423 - King Louis XI of France (d. 1483)

1728 - Robert Adam, Scottish architect (d. 1792)

1738 - John Singleton Copley, American painter (d. 1815)

1854 - Leos Janacek, Czech composer (d. 1928)

1870 - Richard Bedford Bennett, eleventh Prime Minister of Canada (d. 1947)

1875 - Ferdinand Sauerbruch, German surgeon (d. 1951)

1883 - Franz Kafka, Austrian writer (d. 1924)

1893 - Mississippi John Hurt, American musician (d. 1966)

1908 - M. F. K. Fisher, American writer (d. 1992)

1909 - Stavros Spiros Niarchos, shipping magnate (d. 1996)

1913 - Dorothy Kilgallen, American newspaper columnist, and television personality (d. 1965)

1927 - Ken Russell, English director

1928 - Günter Bruno Fuchs, writer (d. 1977)

1934 - Manfred Bieler, writer

1935 - Harrison Schmitt, astronaut

1937 - Tom Stoppard, Czech-born playwright

1946 - Leszek Miller, Prime Minister of Poland

1947 - Dave Barry, American writer

1957 - Laura Branigan, American singer (d. 2004)

1964 - Joanne Harris, English author


Died this day:

1904 - Theodor Herzl, Austrian Zionist (b. 1860)

1914 - Joseph Chamberlain, British politician

1918 - Sultan Mehmed V of the Ottoman Empire

1933 - Hipólito Yrigoyen, President of Argentina

1935 - André Citroën, French automobile pioneer

1979 - Louis Durey, French composer

1986 - Rudy Vallee, singer

1989 - Jim Backus, producer, director, actor (Mr. Magoo and Thurston J. Howell III)

1998 - Danielle Bunten Berry, software developer

2001 - Mordecai Richler, author

2003 - Gaetano Alibrandi, papal diplomat

2004 - Andrian Nikolayev, cosmonaut

2005 - Alberto Lattuada, Italian film director

2005 - Gaylord Nelson, former U.S. senator who founded Earth Day

July 4th



993 - Saint Ulrich of Augsburg was canonized.

1054 - A supernova was observed by the Chinese and Amerindians near the star ζ Tauri. For several months it remained bright enough to be seen during the day. Its remnants formed the Crab Nebula.

1187 - Saladin defeated Guy of Lusignan, King of Jerusalem, at "The Battle of Hattin".

1636 - The city of Providence, Rhode Island was formed.

1712 - 12 slaves were executed in New York for starting an uprising that killed 9 whites.

1776 - American Revolutionary War: The Continental Congress approved a Declaration of Independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain forming the United States of America.

1802 - At West Point, New York the United States Military Academy opened.

1803 - The Louisiana Purchase was announced to the American people.

1810 - Napoleon's army occupied Amsterdam.

1817 - At Rome, New York, construction on the Erie Canal began.

1826 - The Fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, upon which John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, two of America's Founding Fathers, died. (Luther Martin, another Founding Father would die a few days later, on July 8, 1826.)

1827 - Slavery was abolished in New York State.

1837 - Grand Junction Railway, world's first long-distance railway, opened between Birmingham and Liverpool.

1838 - The Iowa Territory was organized.

1840 - The Cunard Line's 700 ton wooden paddle steamer "HMRMS Britannia" departed from Liverpool bound for Halifax, Nova Scotia on the first transatlantic passenger cruise.

1845 - Near Concord, Massachusetts, Henry David Thoreau embarked on a two-year experiment in simple living at Walden Pond.

1855 - In Brooklyn, New York, the first edition of Walt Whitman's book of poems titled "Leaves of Grass" was published.

1859 - During the Franco-Piedmontese War "The Battle of Magenta" began.

1862 - Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) went on a boating picnic with Alice Liddell, who asked to be entertained with a story. The ensuing story grew into "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and its sequels.

1863 - American Civil War: At "The Battle of Vicksburg" Ulysses S. Grant's Union Army captured the Confederate city Vicksburg, Mississippi after the town surrendered. The siege had lasted 47 days.

1865 - "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" was published.

1881 - In Alabama, the Tuskegee Institute opened.

1894 - The short-lived Republic of Hawaii was proclaimed by Sanford B. Dole.

1910 - In a heavyweight boxing match, black boxer Jack Johnson totally destroyed white boxer Jim Jeffries before finally knocking him out. The incident sparked race riots across the United States.

1918 - Ottoman sultan Mehmed VI ascended to the throne.

1918 - The Bolsheviks murder Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and his family (Julian calendar date).

1927 - The initial flight of the Lockheed "Vega" was made.

1934 - Joe Louis won his first professional boxing match.

1934 - Leo Szilard patented the chain-reaction design for the atomic bomb.

1939 - Lou Gehrig, recently diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, tells a crowd at Yankee Stadium that he considered himself "The luckiest man on the face of the earth" as he announces his retirement from major league baseball.

1941 - A mass murder of Polish scientists and writers was committed by the Nazis in the captured Polish city of Lwów.

1946 - After 381 years of colonial rule, the Philippines was granted full independence by the United States.

1950 - The first broadcast by "Radio Free Europe" was made.

1959 - With the admission of Alaska as the 49th U.S. state earlier in the year, the short lived "49-Star Flag" of the United States debuted in Philadelphia.

1960 - Due to the post-Independence Day admission of Hawaii as the 50th U.S. state on August 21, 1959, the "50-Star Flag" of the United States made its debut in Philadelphia almost ten and a half months later.

1966 - President Lyndon B. Johnson signed "The Freedom of Information Act" into United States law. The act came into effect the next year.

1976 - Israeli commandos raided Entebbe airport in Uganda, rescuing most of the passengers and crew of an Air France jetliner seized by pro-Palestinian hijackers.

1976 - The United States celebrated its bicentennial.

1984 - NASCAR driver "King Richard" Petty won his 200th career victory at the Firecracker 400 race in Daytona, Florida, in front of a record crowd that included NASCAR's first presidential patron, Ronald Reagan.

1987 - In France, former Gestapo chief Klaus Barbie (aka the "Butcher of Lyon") was convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to life imprisonment.

1993 - (soccer) The Argentine national football team won the "Copa América 1993" championship game 2-1 against Jorge Campos' Mexico national football team in Guayaquil.

1997 - NASA's Pathfinder space probe landed on the surface of Mars.

1998 - Lin "Spit" Newborn and Daniel Shersty were murdered by neonazis in the desert just outside Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.

2002 - Three people were shot at the "El Al" check-in booth at Los Angeles International Airport. The gunman was shot and killed by a security officer.

2002 - A Prestige Airlines cargo "Boeing 707" crashed just short of the runway in Bangui, Central African Republic killing 25.

2004 - The cornerstone of "The Freedom Tower" was laid on the site of the World Trade Center in New York City. This was largely a symbolic event as actual construction did not start for several weeks.

2005-The "Deep Impact" (space mission) collider scored a direct hit on the comet Tempel 1.


Born this day:

1330 - Ashikaga Yoshiakira, Ashikaga shogun (d. 1367)

1546 - Murat III, Ottoman Emperor (d. 1595)

1799 - Joseph François Oscar Bernadotte, French general and King Oscar I of Sweden and Norway (d. 1859)

1804 - Nathaniel Hawthorne, American writer (d. 1864)

1807 - Giuseppe Garibaldi, Italian patriot (d. 1882)

1826 - Stephen Foster, American songwriter (d. 1864)

1845 - Thomas Barnardo, Irish founder of homes for underprivileged children (d. 1905)

1854 - Victor Babe, Romanian bacteriologist (d. 1926)

1847 - James Anthony Bailey, American circus impresario (d. 1906)

1872 - Calvin Coolidge, 30th President of the United States (d. 1933)

1878 - George M. Cohan, American singer, dancer, composer, actor, and writer (d. 1942)

1883 - Rube Goldberg, American cartoonist (d. 1970)

1902 - George Murphy, American dancer, actor, and Senator from California (d. 1992)

1905 - Irving Johnson, author, adventurer, sail training pioneer (d. 1991)

1911 - Mitch Miller, American bandleader and television personality

1918 - Ann Landers, American advice columnist (d. 2002)

1918 - Abigail Van Buren, American advice columnist and twin sister to Ann Landers

1921 - Tibor Varga, violinist and conductor

1923 - Rudolf Friedrich, member of the Swiss Federal Council

1930 - George Steinbrenner, owner of the New York Yankees

1943 - Konrad "Conny" Bauer, German jazz trombonist

1946 - Ron Kovic, American peace activist

1951 - Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, American politician

1961 - Richard Garriott, English video game designer


Died this:

965 - Pope Benedict V

1187 - Raynald of Chatillon, (executed)

1623 - William Byrd, English composer

1821 - Richard Cosway, English artist (b. 1742)

1826 - John Adams 2nd President of the United States (b. 1735)

1826 - Thomas Jefferson, 3rd President of the United States (b. 1743)

1831 - James Monroe, 5th President of the United States (b. 1758)

1838 - Colonel José Antonio Vidaurre, Chilean revolutionary (shot)

1848 - François-René de Chateaubriand, French writer and diplomat (b. 1768)

1850 - William Kirby, English entomologist (b. 1759)

1857 - William L. Marcy, American statesman (b. 1786)

1882 - Joseph Brackett, Shaker religious leader and composer (b. 1797)

1891 - Hannibal Hamlin, U.S. Vice President (b. 1809)

1901 - Johannes Schmidt, German linguist (b. 1843)

1902 - Swami Vivekananda, Indian spiritual leader (b. 1863)

1910 - Giovanni Schiaparelli, Italian astronomer (b. 1835)

1926 - Pier Giorgio Frassati, Italian mountaineer (b. 1901)

1931 - Buddie Petit, American jazz musician

1934 - Maria Skłodowska-Curie, Polish-born scientist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in chemistry and physics (b. 1867)

1970 - Barnett Newman, American artist (b. 1905)

1971 - August Derleth, American writer and editor (b. 1909)

1975 - Georgette Heyer, English author (b. 1902)

1976 - Antoni Słonimski, Polish poet and writer (b. 1895)

1986 - Oscar Zariski, Russian mathematician (b. 1899)

1991 - Dr. Victor Chang, Australian physician (murdered) (b. 1936)

1995 - Eva Gabor, Hungarian-born actress (b. 1919)

1997 - Charles Kuralt, American television reporter (b. 1934)

2002 - Benjamin O. Davis Jr., American general (b. 1912)

2003 - Barry White, American singer and record producer (b. 1944)

2004 - Jean-Marie Auberson, Swiss conductor (b. 1920)

Now that Groupee seems to FINALLY have their damned act back to gether again...I can hopefully get this up on the boards.

July 5th



1610 - John Guy set sail from Bristol with 39 other colonists for Newfoundland.

1687 - Isaac Newton's "Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica" was published.

1803 - "The Convention of Artlenburg" led to the French occupation of Hanover, which had been ruled by the British king.

1811 - Venezuela was the first South American country to declare its independence from Spain.

1813 - War of 1812: Three weeks of British raids on Fort Schlosser, Black Rock and Plattsburgh, New York began.

1814 - War of 1812: At "The Battle of Chippewa" American Major General Jacob Brown's forces defeated those British General Phineas Riall at Chippewa, Ontario.

1830 - France invaded Algeria.

1865 - William Booth founded the Christian Mission. It was later renamed to the Salvation Army.

1865 - The world's first maximum speed law was enacted in England.

1884 - Germany took possession of Cameroon.

1934 - "Bloody Thursday" - Police opened fire on striking longshoremen in San Francisco.

1937 - The highest recorded temperature in Canada, happens at Yellow Grass, Saskatchewan: 113 °F (45 C).

1940 - World War II: Great Britain and the puppet government of Vichy France broke off diplomatic relations.

1941 - World War II: German troops reached the Dniepr River.

1943 - World War II: "The Battle of Kursk", the largest tank battle in history, and a turning point in the war began.

1943 - World War II: An Allied invasion fleet sailed for Sicily (Operation Husky, July 10, 1943).

1945 - World War II: The liberation of the Philippines was declared.

1946 - The bikini was introduced. (Truly one of the greatest days in history!)

1948 - "The British National Health Service Act" was enacted.

1950 - Korean War: "Task Force Smith", the first clash between American and North Korean forces occurred.

1950 - Zionism: The Knesset passed the "Law of Return" which granted all Jews the right to immigrate to Israel.

1951 - William Shockley invented the junction transistor.

1954 - Elvis Presley had his first commercial recording session. He sang "That's All Right (Mama)" and "Blue Moon of Kentucky".

1954 - The BBC broadcast its first television news bulletin.

1958 - the first ascent of Gasherbrum I, 11th highest peak on the earth.

1962 - Algeria became independent from France.

1970 - An Air Canada DC-8 crashed near Toronto International Airport killing 108 people. (Good Lord, has it really been 35 years?)

1971 - Right to vote: the Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution, lowering the voting age from 21 to 18 years, was formally certified by President Richard Nixon.

1975 - Arthur Ashe became the first black man to win the Wimbledon singles title.

1975 - Cape Verde gained its independence from Portugal.

1989 - Iran-Contra Affair: Oliver North was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Gerhard A. Gesell to a three-year suspended prison term, two years probation, $150,000 in fines and 1,200 hours community service.

1994 - The United States announced it would refuse further unrestricted immigration from Haiti.

1998 - Japan launched a probe to Mars, and joined the United States and Russia as a space exploring nation.

2003 - Taiwan was the last territory to be removed from the WHO's list of SARS affected areas.

2004 - First Indonesian presidential election, by the nation.

2004 - Éric Gagné's consecutive baseball saves streak came to an end at 84 games.


Born this day:
1794 - Sylvester Graham, American inventor of Graham cracker (d. 1851)

1810 - Phineas Taylor "P. T." Barnum, American circus owner (d. 1891)

1853 - Cecil Rhodes, South African politician (d. 1902)

1865 - Hans Ziemann, physician (d. 1939)

1880 - Jan Kubelík, Czech violinist (d. 1940)

1886 - Willem Drees, Prime Minister of the Netherlands (d. 1988)

1888 - Herbert Spencer Gasser, American psychologist and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

1889 - Jean Cocteau, French writer (d. 1963)

1890 - Frederick Lewis Allen, American social historian (d. 1954)

1891 - John Howard Northrop, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1987)

1902 - Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., U.S. diplomat (d. 1985)

1904 - Harold Acton, writer and dilettante (d. 1994)

1911 - Georges Pompidou, President of France (d. 1974)

1918 - George Rochberg, American classical composer (d. 2005)

1924 - Janos Starker, Hungarian cellist

1941 - Barbara Frischmuth, writer

1958 - Bill Watterson, American cartoonist

1996 - Dolly the sheep, first cloned mammal (d. 2003)


Died this day:

1681 - Feodor Aleksejevitch, Tsar of Russia

1833 - Nicéphore Niépce, French inventor

1904 - Abai Kunanbaiuli, Kazakh poet

1908 - Jonas Lie, Norwegian author

1920 - Max Klinger, artist

1945 - John Curtin, fourteenth Prime Minister of Australia

1948 - Georges Bernanos, French writer (b. 1888)

1957 - Charles Sherwood Noble, inventor

1966 - George de Hevesy, Hungarian chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1885)

1969 - Walter Gropius, German architect (b. 1883)

1975 - Otto Skorzeny, German commando who rescued Benito Mussolini

1983 - Harry James, musician

1991 - Howard Nemerov, poet (b. 1920)

2001 - Hannelore Kohl, wife of Chancellor of Germany Helmut Kohl

2002 - Ted Williams, Baseball Hall of Famer (b. 1918)

2004 - Rodger Ward, auto racer (b. 1921)

July 6th



1253 - Mindaugas was crowned king of Lithuania.

1483 - Richard III was crowned king of England.

1484 - Portuguese sea captain Diogo Cão found the mouth of the Congo River.

1560 - "The Treaty of Edinburgh" was signed by Scotland and England.

1573 - Córdoba, Argentina was founded by Jerónimo Luis de Cabrera.

1609 - Bohemia was granted freedom of religion.

1630 - Thirty-Years War: 4,000 Swedish troops under Gustavus Adolphus landed in Germany.

1777 - American Revolutionary War: At "The Battle of Ticonderoga" a bombardment by British artillery under General John Burgoyne forced an American retreat from Fort Ticonderoga, New York.

1785 - The dollar was unanimously chosen as the monetary unit for the United States. It was the first time a nation had adopted a decimal currency system.


1799 - Ranjit Singh's 25,000 men started their march towards Lahore. Babu Varghese, Kerala, India.

1801 - At "The Battle of Algeciras" the French navy defeated the British Royal Navy for the last time in history.

1854 - In Jackson, Michigan, the first convention of the U.S. Republican Party was held.

1885 - Louis Pasteur successfully tested his vaccine against rabies. The patient was one Joseph Meister, a young boy who was bitten by a rabid dog.

1887 - David Kalakaua, monarch of the Kingdom of Hawaii, was forced at gunpoint, by the Americans, to sign "The Bayonet Constitution" giving Americans more power in Hawaii while stripping Hawaiian citizens of their rights.

1892 - Dadabhai Naoroji was elected as first Indian Member of Parliament in Britain.

1905 - Alfred Deakin became Prime Minister of Australia for the second time.

1908 - Robert Peary's Arctic expedition set sail. He later succeeded in reaching the North Pole.

1917 - World War I: Arabian troops led by Lawrence of Arabia and Auda ibu Tayi captured Aqaba from the Turks during the Arab Revolt.

1919 - The British dirigible R-34 landed in New York, completing the first crossing of the Atlantic by an airship.

1923 - "The Treaty of Union" was signed by Russia, Transcaucasia, Ukraine and Belarus, establishing the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

1928 - The world's largest known hailstones fell in Potter, Nebraska.

1933 - The first Major League Baseball All-Star Game was played in Chicago's Comiskey Park. The American League defeated the National League, 4 to 2.

1939 - Holocaust: The last remaining Jewish enterprises in Germany were closed.

1944 - The Hartford Circus Fire, one of America's worst fire disasters, killed 168 people and injured over 700 in Hartford, Connecticut.

1957 - Althea Gibson won the Wimbledon championships, becoming the first black athlete to do so.

1957 - John Lennon and Paul McCartney first met.

1964 - The first Beatles film, "A Hard Day's Night", premiered.

1964 - Malawi declares its independence from Britain.

1966 - Malawi became a republic.

1967 - Biafran War: Nigerian forces invaded Biafra, on the opening day of the war.

1974 - The radio program "A Prairie Home Companion" made its first live broadcast.

1975 - The Comoros declared independence from France.

1988 - The "Piper Alpha" drilling platform in the North Sea was destroyed by explosions and fires, killing 167 oil workers.

1988 - Carlos Salinas won the controversial Mexican presidential election.

2003 - The Corsicans rejected a referendum for increased autonomy from France by a very thin majority: 50.98 percent against, and 49.02 percent for.

2004 - In an "exclusive", The New York Post erroneously reported that Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry had selected Missouri Congressman Dick Gephardt as his running mate.

2005 - The International Olympic Committee announced that London had won the bid to host the XXX Olympiad Summer Olympic Games in 2012. (That damned Afenton was behind this I tell you!)


Born this day:

1632 - Albert Schap, composer

1766 - Alexander Wilson, Scottish-born poet, ornithologist, naturalist, and painter (d. 1813)

1785 - William Jackson Hooker, English botanist (d. 1865)

1796 - Tsar Nicholas I of Russia (d. 1855)

1818 - Adolf Anderssen (d. 1879)

1838 - Vatroslav Jagic, Croatian scholar (d. 1923)

1859 - Verner von Heidenstam, Swedish writer (d. 1940)

1884 - Harold Vanderbilt, businessman

1887 - Walter Flex, writer (d. 1917)

1898 - Hanns Eisler, German composer (d. 1962)

1907 - Frida Kahlo, Mexican painter (d. 1954)

1915 - LaVerne Andrews, singer (the Andrews Sisters)

1918 - Sebastian Cabot, English actor (d. 1977)

1919 - Ernst Haefliger, Swiss tenor

1921 - Nancy Reagan, actress and First Lady of the United States

1923 - Wojciech Jaruzelski, President of Poland

1925 - Merv Griffin, American game show developer and television show host

1925 - Bill Haley, American singer (Bill Haley and the Comets) (d. 1981)

1927 - Janet Leigh, American actress (d. 2004)

1927 - Dolores Claman, musician and composer

1927 - Pat Paulsen, American comedian and Presidential candidate (d. 1997)

1935 - Tenzin Gyatso, fourteenth Dalai Lama

1936 - Dave Allen, Irish comedian (d. 2005)

1937 - Vladimir Ashkenazy, Russian pianist and conductor

1946 - George W. Bush, 43rd President of the United States


Died this day:

1189 - Henry II of England (b. 1133)

1249 - Alexander II of Scotland (b. 1198)

1415 - Jan Hus, Bohemian reformer (burned at the stake)

1476 - Regiomantus, German astronomer and mathematician (b. 1436)

1533 - Ludovico Ariosto, Italian poet (b. 1474)

1535 - Sir Thomas More, English writer and philosopher (executed) (b. 1478)

1553 - King Edward VI of England (b. 1537)

1583 - Edmund Grindal, Archbishop of Canterbury

1762 - Tsar Peter III of Russia (murdered) (b. 1728)

1893 - Guy de Maupassant, French author (b. 1850)

1916 - Odilon Redon, French painter (b. 1840)

1932 - Kenneth Grahame, English children's author (b. 1859)

1960 - Aneurin Bevan, British politician (b. 1897)

1962 - William Faulkner, American novelist (b. 1897)

1971 - Louis Armstrong, American jazz icon and acclaimed all time master of the trumpet (b. 1901)

1973 - Otto Klemperer, German conductor (b. 1885)

1989 - János Kádár, Hungarian politician (b. 1912)

1998 - Roy Rogers, American cowboy actor and singer (b. 1911)

1999 - Joaquin Rodrigo, Spanish composer (b. 1901)

2002 - John Frankenheimer, American film director (b. 1930)

2003 - Buddy Ebsen, actor, dancer, "Uncle Jed" (b. 1908)

2004 - Thomas Klestil, President of Austria (b. 1932)

2005 - L. Patrick Gray III, former FBI head. (b. 1916)