Saturday, June 30, 2012

30th of June

It is the 181st day of the year, with only 184 days remaining until the end of the year.

1520 - Spanish conquistadors led by Hernan Cortes fight their way out of Tenochtitlan.

1794 - Native American forces under Blue Jacket attack Fort Recovery.

1805 - Congress organizes the Michigan Territory.

1859 - French acrobat Charles Blondin crosses Niagara Falls on a tightrope.

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

1882 - Charles J. Guiteau is hanged in Washington, D.C. for the assassination of President James Garfield.

1905 - Albert Einstein publishes the article On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies, in which he introduces special relativity.

1906 - Congress passes the Meat Inspection Act and Pure Food and Drug Act.

1921 - President Warren G. Harding appoints former President William Howard Taft Chief Justice of the U.S.

1953 - The first Chevrolet Corvette rolls of the assembly line in Flint, Michigan.

1960 - Congo gains its independence from Belgium.

1971 - Ohio ratifies the Twenty-sixth Amendment to the Constitution, reducing the voting age to 18, thereby putting the amendment into effect.

Friday, June 29, 2012

29th of June

It is the 180th day of the year, with only 185 days remaining.

1534 - Jacques Cartier is the first European to reach Prince Edward Island.

1889 - Hyde Park and several other Illinois townships vote to be annexed by Chicago, forming the largest United States city in area and second largest in population.

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

1995 - The Sampoong Department store collapses in the Seochu-gu district of Seoul, South Korea, killing 501 and injuring 937 people.

2006 - In Hamdan VS. Rumsfeld, the Supreme Court rules that President George W. Bush's plan to try Guantanamo Bay detainees in military tribunals violates U.S. and international law.

Thursday, June 28, 2012

28th of June

It is the 179th day of the year, with only 186 days remaining.

This date is the only date each year where both the month and day are different perfect numbers, June 6, being the only date where the month and day are the same perfect number.

1776 - Fort Moultrie is attacked during the Battle of Sullivan's Island, this event is commemorated in Carolina Day.

1776 - Thomas Hickey, Continental Army private and bodyguard to General George Washington, is hanged for mutiny and sedition.

1846 - The saxophone is patented by Adolphe Sax in Paris, France.

1865 - The Army of the Potomac is disbanded.

1894 - Labor Day becomes a US holiday.

1902 - Congress passes the Spooner Act, authorizing President Theodore Roosevelt to acquire rights from Colombia for the Panama Canal.

1914 - Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria and his wife Sophie are assassinated in Sarajevo by young Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip, the casus belli of World War I.

1919 = The Treaty of Versailles is signed in Paris, formally ending World War I, between Belgium, Britain, France, Italy, and the United States, and allies on the one side and Germany and Austria-Hungary on the other.

1942 - Nazi Germany started its strategic summer offensive against the Soviet Union codenamed Case Blue.

1948 - Boxer Dick Turpin beats Vince Hawkins at Villa Park in Birmingham to become the first black British boxing champion in the modern era.

1964 - Malcolm X forms the Organization of Afro-American Unity.

1989 - The 600th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo.  Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic delivers the Gazimestan speech at the site of the historic battle, which is later interpreted as foreshadowing the Yugolav Wars.

1994 - Members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult release sarin gas in Matsumoto, Japan, 7 persons are killed and 660 are injured.

1997 - Mike Tyson fights Evander Holyfield II, and Tyson is disqualified in the 3rd round for biting a piece of Holyfield's ear.

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

27th of June

It is the 178th day of the year, with only 187 days remaining until the end of the year.

1844 - Joseph Smith Jr., founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, and his brother, are murdered by a mob at the Carthage, Illinois jail.

1898 - The first solo circumnavigation of the globe is completed by Joshua Slocum from Briar Island, Nova Scotia.

1923 - Captain Lowell H. Smith and Lieutenant John P, Richter perform the first ever aerial refueling in a DH-4B biplane.

1941 - Romanian governmental forces, launch one of the most violent pogroms in the city of Iasi, resulting in the murder of at least 13,266 Jews.

1950 - The United States decides to send troops to fight in the Korean War.

1967 - The world's first ATM is installed in Enfield Town, England, United Kingdom.

1977 - France grants independence to Djibouti.

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

26th of June

It is the 177th day of the year, with only 188 days remaining until the new year.

1541 - Francisco Pizarro is assassinated in Lima, by the son of his former companion and later antagonist, Diego Almagro.  Almagro is later both caught and executed.

1718 - Tsarevich Alexei Petrovich of Russia, Peter the Great's son, mysteriously dies after being sentenced to death by his father for plotting against him.

1917 - The first U.S. troops arrive in France to fight alongside Britain and France against Germany during World War I.

1918 - At the Battle for Belleau Wood - Allied forces under John J. Pershing and James Harbord defeat Imperial German Forces under Wilhelm, German Crown Prince.

1927 - The famous Cyclone roller coaster opens on Coney Island.

1936 - It is the initial flight of the Focke-Wulf Fw 61, the first practical helicopter.

1942 - It is the first flight of the American Grumman F6F Hellcat.

1960 - Madagascar gains its independence from France.

1974 - The Universal Product Code is scanned for the first time to sell a package of Wrigley's chewing gum at the Marsh Supermarket in Troy, Ohio.

Monday, June 25, 2012

25th of June

It is the 176th day of the year, with only 189 days remaining until the end of the year.

1788 - Virginia becomes the 10th state to ratify the Constitution.

1876 - Battle of the Little Bighorn, occurs.

1910 - Congress passes the Mann Act, which prohibits interstate transport of females for "immoral purposes," the ambiguous language would be used to selectively prosecute people for years to come.

1947 - The diary of Anne Frank is first published.

1948 - The Berlin airlift begins, by flying in and dropping much needed supplies to the residents of East Germany.

1949 - Long-Haired Hare, starring Bugs bunny, is released in theaters.

1960 - Two cryptographers working for the United States National Security Agency, left for vacation to Mexico, and from there defected to the Soviet Union.

1981 - Microsoft is restructured to become an incorporated business in its home state of Washington.

Sunday, June 24, 2012

24th of June

Today is the 175th day of the year, with only 190 days remaining until the end of the year.

109 - Roman Emperor Trajan inaugurates the Aqua Traiana, an aqueduct that channels water from Lake Bracciano, 25 miles north-west of Rome.

1314 - The Battle of Bannockburn concludes with a decisive victory by Scottish forces led by Robert the Bruce, though England did not recognize the Scottish independence until 14 years later, with the signing of the Treaty of Edinburgh-Northampton.

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.

1497 - John Cabot lands in North America at Newfoundland, leading the first European exploration of the region since the Vikings.

1916 - Mary Pickford becomes the first female film star to sign a million dollar contract.

1916 - The Battle of the Somme begins with a week-long artillery bombardment on the German Lines.

1938 - Pieces of a meteor, estimated to have weight 450 metric tons when it hit the Earth's atmosphere, land near Chicora, Pennsylvania.

1947 - Kenneth Arnold makes the first widely reported UFO sighting near Mount Rainier, Washington.

1957 - In Roth VS. United States, the Supreme Court rules that obscenity is not protected by the First Amendment.

1982 - Known as the Jakarta Incident, British Airways Flight 9 flies into a cloud of volcanic ash thrown up by the eruption of Mount Galunggung, resulting in the failure of all four engines.

1985 - STS-51-G Space Shuttle Discovery completes its mission, best remembered for having Sultan bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the first Arab and Muslim in space, as Payload Specialist.

Saturday, June 23, 2012

23rd of June

Today is the 174th day of the year, with only 191 days remaining.

1683 - William Penn signs a friendship treaty with the Leni Lenape Indians in Pennsylvania.

1757 - 3,000 British troops under Robert Clive defeat a 50,000 strong Indian army under Siraj Ud Daulah at the Battle of Plassey.

1810 - John Jacob Astor forms the Pacific Fur Company.

1865 - At Fort Towson, in the Oklahoma Territory, Confederate Brigadier General Stand Watie surrenders the last significant rebel army.

1894 - The International Olympic Committee is founded at the Sorbonne in Paris, at the initiative of Baron Pierre de Coubertin.

1914 - Pancho Villa takes Zacatecas from Victoriano Huerta in the Mexican Revolution.

1917 - In a game against the Washington Senators, Boston Red Sox pitcher Ernie Shore retires 26 batters in a row after replacing Babe Ruth, who had been ejected for punching the umpire.

1926 - The College Board administers the first SAT exam.

1942 - The first selections of gas chamber victims are made at Auschwitz.  Sadly, the take place on a train full of Jews from Paris.

1942 - Germany's latest fighter, the Focke-Wulf Fw 190, is captured intact when it mistakenly lands at RAF Pembrey in Wales.

1959 - Convicted Manhattan Project spy Klaus Fuchs is released after only nine years in prison and allowed to emigrate to Dresden, East Germany where he resumes a scientific career.

1972 - President Richard Nixon and White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman, are taped talking about using the Central Intelligence Agency to obstruct the Federal Bureau of Investigation's investigation into the Watergate break-ins.

Friday, June 22, 2012

22nd of June

It is the 173rd day of the year, with only 192 days remaining.

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

1941 - Germany invades the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa.

1942 - Erwin Rommel is promoted to Field Marshal after the capture of Tobruk.

1944 - President Franklin Roosevelt signs into law the Servicemen's Readjustment Act, commonly known as the G.I. Bill.

1969 - The Cuyahoga River catches fire, triggering a crack-down on pollution in the river.

1990 - The famous Checkpoint Charlie is dismantled in Berlin.

Thursday, June 21, 2012

21st of June

It is the 172nd day of the year with only 193 days remaining until the end of the year.

On non-leap years, this day marks the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere and the winter solstice in the southern hemisphere.  It is the day of the year with the most hours of daylight in the northern hemisphere, and the least hours of daylight in the southern hemisphere.

1788 - New Hampshire ratifies the Constitution and is admitted as the 9th state in the United States.

1854 - The first Victoria Cross is awarded during the bombardment of Bomarsund in the Aland Islands.

1877 - The Molly Maguires, ten Irish immigrants convicted of murder, are hanged at the Schuylkill County and Carbon County, Pennsylvania prisons.

1900 - China formally declared war on the United States, Britain, Germany, France, and Japan, as an edict issued from the Dowager Empress Cixi.

1919 - Admiral Ludwig von Reuter scuttles the German fleet in Scapa Flow, Orkney.  The nine sailors killed are the last casualties of the War to End All Wars.

1948 - Columbia Records introduces the long-playing record album in a public demonstration at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York, New York.

1982 - John Hinckley is found not guilty by reason of insanity for the attempted assassination of U.S. President Ronald Reagan.

2004 - SpaceShipOne becomes the first privately funded spaceplane to achieve spaceflight.

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

20th of June

It is the 171st day of the year, with only 194 days remaining.

451 - At the Battle of Chalons, Flavius Aetius battles Attila the Hun.  After the battle, Attila retreats, causing the Romans to interpret it as victory.

1605 - After only 3-months as tsar, 16-year-old Feodor II of Russia is assassinated.

1840 - Samuel Morse receives the patent for the telegraph.

1863 - West Virginia is admitted as the 35th U.S. state.

1877 - Alexander Graham Bell installs the world's first commercial telephone service in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

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

1900 - The Imperial Chinese Army begins a 55-day siege of the Legation Quarter in Beijing, China.

1942 - Kazimierz Piechowski and three others, dressed as members of SS-Totenkopfverbande, steal an SS staff car and escape from the Auschwitz concentration camp.

1944 - The Battle of the Philippine Sea concludes with a decisive U.S. naval victory.  The lopsided naval air battle is also known as the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot.

1972 - An 18.5 minute gap appears in the tape recording of the conversation between President Richard Nixon and his advisers regarding the recent arrests of his operatives while breaking into the Watergate complex.

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

19th of June

Today is the 170th day of the year, with only 195 days remaining.

1269 - King Louis IX of France orders all Jews found in public without an identifying yellow badge to be fined ten livres of silver.

1586 - English colonists leave Roanoke Island, after failing to establish England's first permanent settlement in North America.

1846 - The first officially recorded, organized baseball match is played under Alexander Cartwright's rules on Hoboken, New Jersey's Elysian Fields with the New York Base Ball Club, defeating the Knickerbockers 23-1.  Cartwright was the umpire.

1862 - Congress prohibits slavery in United States territories, nullifying Dred Scott VS. Sandford.

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

1870 - After all the southern states are formally readmitted to the United States, the Confederate States of America ceases to exist.

1910 - The first Father's Day is celebrated in Spokane, Washington.

1953 - Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are executed at Sing Sing, in New York.

1961 - Kuwait declares its independence from the United Kingdom.

1978 - Garfield, holder of the Guinness World Record for the world's most widely syndicated comic strip, makes its debut.

Monday, June 18, 2012

18th of June

Today is the 169th day of the year, with only 196 days remaining until the new year.

1429 - French forces under the leadership of Joan of Arc defeat the main English army under Sir John Fastolf at the Battle of Patay.  This turns the tide of the Hundred Years' War.

1778 - British troops abandon Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

1812 - The U.S. Congress declares war on the United Kingdom.

1815 - The Battle of Waterloo results in the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte by the Duke of Wellington and Gebhard Leberecht von Blucher, forcing him to abdicate the throne of France for the second and last time.

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

1923 - Checker Taxi, puts its first taxi on the streets.

1928 - Aviator Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly in an aircraft across the Atlantic Ocean, she is a passenger, Wilmer Stultz is the pilot and Lou Gordon the mechanic.

1945 - William Joyce, Lord Haw-Haw, is charged with treason for his pro-German propaganda broadcasting during the Second World War.

1965 - The United States uses B-52 bombers to attack National Liberation Front guerrilla fighters in South Vietnam.

1983 - Astronaut Sally ride, becomes the first American woman in space on the STS-7 mission.

1996 - Ted Kaczynski, suspected of being the Unabomber, is indicted on ten criminal counts.

Sunday, June 17, 2012

17th of June

It is the 168th day of the year, with only 197 days remaining.

1462 - Vlad III the Impaler attempts to assassinate Mehmed II forcing him to retreat from Wallachia.

1631 - Mumtaz Mahal dies during childbirth.  Her husband, Mughal emperor Sha Jahan I, will spend the next 17 years building her mausoleum, the Taj Mahal.

1673 - French explorers Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet reach the Mississippi River and become the firs Europeans to make a detailed account of its course.

1775 - The Battle of Bunker Hill is fought during the War of American Independence.

1876 - 1,500 Sioux and Cheyenne led by Crazy Horse, beat back General George Crook's forces at Rosebud Creek in Montana Territory.

1885 - The Statue of Liberty arrives in New York Harbor, as a gift from France.

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

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

1932 - Around a thousand World War I veterans amass at the United States Capitol, as the U.S. Senate considers a bill that would give them benefits.

1939 - Eugen Weidmann, a convicted murderer, is the last public guillotining in France, outside the Saint-Pierre prison.

1944 - Iceland declares its independence from Denmark and becomes a republic.

1948 - A Douglas DC-6 carrying United Airlines Flight 624 crashes near Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania, killing all 43 people on board.

1960 - The Nez Perce tribe is awarded $4 million for 7 million acres of land undervalued at 4 cents/acre in the 1863 treaty.

1963 - The Supreme Court rules 8 to 1 in Abington School District VS. Schempp, against allowing the reciting of Bible verses and the Lord's Prayer in public schools.

1972 - Five White House operatives are 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.

1991 - The South African Parliament repeals the Population Registration Act which required racial classification of all South Africans at birth.

1994 - Following a televised low-speed highway chase in a white Ford Bronco, O.J. Simpson is arrested for the murders of his wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman.

Saturday, June 16, 2012

16th of June

It is the 167th day of the year, with only 198 days remaining.

363 - Emperor Julian marches back up the Tigris River and burns his fleet of supply ships.  During the withdrawal, Roman forces suffer several attacks from the Persians.

1858 - Abraham Lincoln delivers his House Divided speech in Springfield, Illinois.

1903 - The Ford Motor Company is incorporated.

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


Friday, June 15, 2012

15th of June

It is the 166th day of the year, with only 199 days remaining until the end of the year.

1667 - The first human blood transfusion is administered by Dr. Jean-Baptiste Denys.

1752 - Benjamin Franklin proves that lightning is electricity.

1775 - George Washington is appointed commander-in-chief of the Continental Army.

1785 - Jean-Francois Pilatre de Rozier and Pierre Roman, become the first-ever casualties of an air crash when their hot air balloon explodes during their attempt to cross the English Channel.

1836 - Arkansas is admitted as the 25th state of the Union.

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

1864 - Arlington National Cemetry is established when 200 acres around Arlington Mansion, formerly owned by Robert E. Lee, is officially set aside as a military cemetery by Secretary of War Edwin Stanton.

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

1888 - Crown Prince Wilhelm becomes Kaiser Wilhelm II, he will be the last Emperor of the German Empire.

1896 - The deadliest tsunami in Japan's history kills more than 22,000 people.

1916 - President Woodrow Wilson signs a bill incorporating the Boy Scouts of America, making them the only American youth organization with a federal charter.

1934 - The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is founded.

1954 - UEFA, the Union of European Football Associations, is formed in Basel, Switzerland.

1985 - Rembrandt's painting Danae, is attacked by a man who throws sulfuric acid on the canvas and cuts it twice with a knife.

Thursday, June 14, 2012

14th of June

Today is the165th day of the year, with only 200 days remaining.

1648 - Margaret Jones is hanged in Boston for witchcraft in the first such execution in the Massachusetts colony.

1775 - The Continental Army is established by the Continental Congress, marking the birth of the US Army.

1777 - The Stars and Stripes is adopted by Congress as the Flag of the United States.

1789 - HMS Bounty mutiny survivors including Captain William Bligh and 18 others reach Timor after a nearly 4,000 mile journey in an open boat.

1789 - Whiskey distilled from maize is first produced by American clergyman the Reverend Elijah Craig.  It is aptly named Bourbon because he lived in Bourbon County, Kentucky.

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

1900 - Hawaii becomes a United States territory.

1937 - Pennsylvania becomes the first and only state of the United States to celebrate Flag Day officially as a state holiday.

1940 - A group of 728 Polish political prisoners from Tarnow become the first residents of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

1954 - President Dwight Eisenhower signs a bill into law that places the words "under God" into the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance.

1994 - A riot occurs after the New York Rangers win the Stanley Cup for Vancouver, causing an estimated C$ 1.1 million, thus forcing 200 arrests and injuries.  One person is left with permanent brain damage.

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

13th of June

Today is the 164th day of the year, with only 201 days remaining until the new year.

1777 - Marquis de Lafayette lands near Charleston, South Carolina, in order to help the Continental Congress to train its army.

1805 - Scouting ahead of the expedition, Meriwether Lewis and four companions sight the Great Falls of the Missouri River.

1893 - Grover Cleveland undergoes secret, successful surgery to remove a large, cancerous portion of his jaw.  The operation is not revealed until nine years after his death.

1917 - The deadliest German air rad on London during the First World War, is carried out by Gotha G bombers and results in 162 deaths, including 46 children, and 432 injuries.

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

1934 - Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini meet in Venice, Italy.  Mussolini later describes the German dictator as "a silly little monkey."

1955 - Mir Mine, the first diamond mine in the USSR is discovered.

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

1970 - "The Long and Winding Road" becomes the Beatles' last number 1 song.

1977 - Convicted Martin Luther King Jr. assassin James Earl Ray, is recaptured after escaping from prison three days earlier.

1997 - A jury sentenced Timothy McVeigh to death for his part in the Oklahoma City bombing, two years earlier.

2005 - A jury in Santa Maria, California acquits pop singer Michael Jackson of molesting 13-year-old Gavin Arvizo at Neverland Ranch.

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

12th of June

It is the 163rd day of the year, with only 202 days remaining until the end of the year.

1665 - England installs a municipal government in New York City, the former Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam.

1775 - British General Thomas Gage declares martial law in Massachusetts.  The British offer a pardon to all colonists who lay down their arms.  Samuel Adams and John Hancock, if captured, were to be hanged.

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

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

1978 - David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam in New York City, is sentenced to 365 years in prison for six killings.

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

1994 - Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman are murdered outside her home in Los Angeles, California.  O.J. Simpson is later acquitted of the killings, but is held liable in wrongful death civil suit.

Monday, June 11, 2012

11th of June

It is the 162nd day of the year, with only 203 days remaining until the new year.

173 - The Roman army in Moravia is encircled by the Quadi, who have broken the peace treaty of two years prior.  In a violent thunderstorm emperor Marcus Aurelius defeats and subdues them in the so-called miracle of the rain.

631 - Emperor Taizong of Tang, the Emperor of China, sends envoys to the Xueyantuo bearing gold and silk in order to seek the release of enslaved Chinese prisoners captured during the transition from Sui to Tang from the northern frontier.  This embassy succeeded in freeing 80,000 Chinese men and women who were then returned to China.

1770 - Captain James cook runs aground on the Great Barrier Reef.

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

1919 - Sir Barton wins the Belmont Stakes, and becomes the first racehorse to win the Triple Crown.

1944 - USS Missouri (BB-63) the last battleship built by the United States Navy and future site of the signing of the Japanese Instrument of Surrender, is commissioned.

1962 - Frank Morris, John Anglin, and Clarence Anglin allegedly become the only prisoners to escape from Alcatraz Island.

1963 - Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc burns himself with gasoline in a busy Saigon intersection to protest the lack of religious freedom in South Vietnam.

1964 - World War II veteran Walter Seifert, runs amok in an elementary school in Cologne, Germany.  He kills at least 8 children and 2 teachers, seriously injuring several more, with a home-made flamethrower and a lance.

1970 - After being appointed almost one month earlier, Anna Mae Hays and Elizabeth P. Hoisington, officially receive their ranks as U.S. Army Generals, becoming the first females to do so.

1998 - Compaq Computer pays $9 billion for Digital Equipment Corporation in the largest high-tech acquisition.

2001 - Timothy McVeigh is executed for his role in the Oklahoma City bombing.

2002 - Congress recognizes Antonio Meucci as the first inventor of the telephone.

Sunday, June 10, 2012

10th of June

It is the 161s day of the year, with only 204 days remaining.

1190 - During the Third Crusade, Frederick I Barbarossa, drowns in the river Saleph while leading an army to the holy land.

1692 0 Bridget Bishop is hanged at Gallows Hill near Salem, Massachusetts, for "certaine Detestable Arts called Witchcraft & Sorceries."

1786 - A landslide dam on the Dadu River created by an earthquake ten days earlier collapses, killing 100,000 people in the Sichuan province of China.

1829 - The first famous Boat Race between the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge takes place.

1854 - The first class of the United States Naval Academy graduate.

1861 - At the Battle of Big Bethel, Confederate troops under John B. Magruder defeat a much larger Union force led by General Ebenezer W. Pierce.

1944 - 642 men, women, and children are killed in the Oradour-sur-Glane Massacre in France.

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

1947 - Saab produces its first automobile.

1967 - Israel and Syria agree to a cease-fire, ending the Six-Day War.

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

1977 - Apple ships its first Apple II personal computer.

1997 - Before fleeing his northern stronghold, Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot orders the killing of his defense chief Son Sen and 11 of Sen's family members.

Saturday, June 9, 2012

9th of June

It is the 160th day of the year, with only 205 days remaining.

68 - Roman Emperor Nero commits suicide, after quoting Homer's Iliad.

1732 - James Oglethorpe is granted a royal charter for the colony of the future state of Georgia.

1856 - 500 Mormons leave Iowa City, Iowa and head west, carrying all their possessions in two-wheeled handcarts.

1900 - Birsa Munda, an important figure in the Indian independence movement, dies in British prison under mysterious circumstances.

1930 - Chicago Tribute reporter Jake Lingle, is killed during rush hour at the Illinois Central train station by Leo Vincent Brothers.  It is allegedly over a $100,000 gambling debt owed to Al Capone.

1934 - Donald Duck makes his debut in The Wise Little Hen.

1959 - The USS George Washington is launched.  It is the first submarine to carry ballistic missiles.

1968 - President Lyndon Johnson declares a national day of mourning following the assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy.

1973 - American racing horse, Secretariat wins the Triple Crown.

Friday, June 8, 2012

8th of June

Today is the 159th day of the year, with only 206 days remaining.

793 - Vikings raid the abbey at Lindisfarne in Northumbria, commonly accepted as the beginning of the Scandinavian invasion of England.

1191 - Richard I of England, arrives in Acre, thus beginning his crusade.

1783 - The volcano Laki, in Iceland, begins and eighth-month eruption which kills over 9,000 people and starts a seven-year famine.

1856 - A group of 194 Pitcaim Islanders, descendants of the mutineers of the HMS Bounty, arrive at Norfolk Island commencing its third settlement.

1861 - Tennessee secedes from the Union.

1887 - Herman Hollerith applies for US patent #395,791 for the "Art of Applying Statistics," his punched card calculator.

1912 - Carl Leaemmle decides to incroporate Universal Pictures.

1949 - Celebrities Helen Keller, Dorothy Parker, Danny Kaye, Fredric March, John Garfield, Paul Muni, and Edward G. Robinson are named in an FBI report as Communist Party members.

1949 - George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four is published.

1972 - Associated Press photographer Nick Ut takes his Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of a naked 9-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phuc running down a road after being burned by napalm.

Thursday, June 7, 2012

7th of June

It is the 158th day of the year, with only 207 days remaining.

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

1692 - In Port Royal, Jamiaca, is hit by a catastrophic earthquake in just three minutes, 1,600 people are killing and 3,000 are seriously injured.

1832 - Asian cholera reaches Quebec, brought by Irish immigrants, and kills about 6,000 people in Lower Canada.

1892 - Benjamin Harrison becomes the first President of the United States to attend a baseball game.

1892 - Homer Plessy is arrested for refusing to leave his seat in the "whites-only" car of a train, he would lost the resulting court case, Plessy VS. Ferguson.

1893 - Mohandas Gandhi's first act of civil disobedience.

1917 - Allied ammonal mines underneath German trenches at Messines Ridge are detonated, killing 10,000 German troops at the Battle of Messines.

1938 - The Douglas DC-4E aircraft, makes its first test flight.

1944 - At Abbey Ardennes members of the SS Division Hitlerjugend massacre 23 Canadian prisoners of war.

1965 - The Supreme Court hands down its decision in Griswold VS. Connecticut, effectively legalizing the use of contraception by married couples.

1975 - Sony introduces the Betamax videocasette recorder for sale to the public.

1982 - Priscilla Presely opens Graceland to the public, the bathroom where Elvis died five years earlier is off-limits.

2006 - Abu Masab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, is killed in an airstrike by the United States Air Force.

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

6th of June

It is the 157th day of the year, with only 208 days remaining until the end of the year.

1813 - A British force of 700 under John Vincent defeats an American force two times it size under William Winder and John Chandler at the Battle of Stoney Creek during the War of 1812.

1833 - President Andrew Jackson becomes the first President to ride on a train.

1882 - More than 100,000 inhabitants of Bombay are killed as a cylcone in the Arabian Sea pushes huge waves into the harbor.

1933 - The first drive-in theater opens, in Camden, New Jersey.

1934 - President Franklin Roosevelt signs the Securities Act of 1933 into law, establishing the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

1944 - The Battle of Normandy begins.  D-Day, codenamed Operation Overlord, commences with the landing of 155,000 Allied troops on the beaches of Normandy in France.  The soldiers quickly break through the Atlantic Wall and push inland in the largest amphibious operation in history.

1946 - The National Basketball Association is created, with eleven original teams.

1984 - Tetris, one of the best-selling video games of all-time, is released.

1985 - The grave of Wolfgang Gerhard is exhumed in Embu, Brazil.  The remains found are later proven to be those of Josef Mengele, Aushwitz's "Angel of Death."  Mengele is thought to have drowned while swimming in February of 1979.

2002 - A near-Earth asteroid estimated at 10 meters diameter explodes over the Mediterranean Sea between Greece and Libya.  The resulting explosion is estimated to have a force of 26 kilotons, slightly more powerful than the Nagasaki atomic bomb.

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

5th of June

It is the 156th day of the year, with only 209 days remaining until the end of the year.

70 - Titus and his Roman legions breach the middle wall of Jerusalem during the siege of the city.

1837 - Houston, Texas is incorporated by the Republic of Texas.

1851 - Harriet Beecher Stowe's anti-slavery serial, Uncle Tom's Cabin starts a ten-month run in the National Era abolitionist newspaper.

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

1917 - Concription begins in the United States, as "Army registration day."

1944 - More than 1000 British bombers drop 5,000 tons of bombs on German gun batteries on the Normandy coast in preparation for D-Day.

1947 - In a speech at Harvard University, Secretary of State George C. Marshall, calls for economic aid to war-torn Europe.

1956 - Elvis Presley introduces his new single, "Hound Dog," on The Milton Berle Show, scandalizing the audience with his suggestive hip movements.

1967 - The Israeli air force launches simultaneous pre-emptive attacks on the air forces of Egypt and Syria.

1968 - U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy is shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California by Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan.

1977 - The Apple II, one of the first personal computers, goes on sale.

1981 - The Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that five people in Los Angeles, California have a rare for of pneumonia seen only in patients with weakened immune systems, in what turns out to be the first recognized cases of AIDS.

1989 - The Unknown Rebel halts the progress of a column of advancing tanks for over half an hour after the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.

Monday, June 4, 2012

4th of June

It is the 155th day of the year, with only 210 days remaining until the end of the year.

1876 - An express train called the Transcontinental Express arrives in San Francisco, California, via the First Transcontinental Railroad only 83 hours and 39 minutes after leaving New York City.

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

1912 - Massachusetts becomes the first state of the United States to set a minimum wage.

1939 - The MS St. Louis, a ship carrying 963 Jewish refugees, is denied permission to land in Florida, after already being turned away from Cuba.  It is forced to return to Europe, more than 200 of its passengers later die in Nazi concentration camps.

1940 - British forces complete evacuation of 300,000 troops from Dunkirk in France.  To rally the morale of the country, Winston Churchill delivers his famous "We shall fight on the beaches" speech.

1944 - A hunter-killer group of the United States Navy captures the German submarine U-505, the first time a U.S. navy vessel had captured an enemy vessel at sea since the 19th century.

1973 - A patent for the ATM is granted to Donald Wetzel, Tom Barnes, and George Chastain.

1974 - During Ten Cent Beer Night, inebriated Cleveland Indians fans start a riot, causing the game to be forfeited to the Texas Rangers.

1986 - Jonathan Pollard pleads guilty to espionage for selling top secret United States military intelligence to Israel.

1998 - Terry Nichols is sentenced to life in prison for his role in the Oklahoma City bombing.

Sunday, June 3, 2012

3rd of June

Today is the 154th day of the year, with only 211 days remaining.

350 - Roman usurper Nepotianus, of the Constantinian dynasty, proclaims himself Roman Emperor, entering Rome at the head of a group of gladiators.

1539 - Hernando de Soto claims Florida for Spain.

1839 - In Humen, China, Lin Tse-hsu, destroys 1.2 million kilograms of opium confiscated from British merchants.  This provides Britain with a casus belli to open hostilities, resulting in the First Opium War.

1864 - At the Battle of Cold Harbor, Union forces attack Confederate troops in Hanover County, Virginia.

1888 - The poem "Casey at the Bat," by Ernest Lawrence Thayer, is published in the San Francisco Examiner.

1916 - The National Defense Act is signed into law, increasing the size of the United States National Guard by 450,000 men.

1932 - Lou Gehrig and teammate Tony Lazzeri hit four home runs in one game, and hit for the natural cycle, respectively.  These two feats are both less common than a perfect game, which has occurred 21 times in one hundred-twenty years.

1943 - In Los Angeles, California, white U.S. Navy sailors and Marines clash with Latino youths in the Zoot Suit Riots.

1979 - A blowout at the Ixtoc I oil well in the southern Gulf of Mexico causes at least 3,000,000 barrels of oil to be spilled into the waters, the second-worst accidental oil spill ever recorded.

Saturday, June 2, 2012

2nd of June

It is the 153rd day of the year, with only 212 days remaining until the new year.

455 - Vandals enter the city of Rome, and plunder for almost two weeks, taking anything and everything.

1692 - Bridget Bishop is the first person to go on trial in the Salem with trials in Massachusetts.  Found guilty, she is hanged eight days later.

1763 - At what is now Mackinaw City, Michigan, Chippewas capture For Michilimackinac by diverting the garrison's attention with a game of lacrosse, then chasing a ball into the fort.

1774 - The Quartering Act is enacted, allowing a governor in colonial America to house British soldiers in uninhabited houses, outhouses, barns, or other buildings if suitable quarters are not provided.

1835 - P.T. Barnum and his circus star their first tour of the United States.

1896 - Guglielmo Marconi applies for a patent for his newest invention, the radio.

1924 - President Calvin Coolidge signs the Indian Citizenship Act into law, granting citizenship to all Native Americans born within the territorial limits of the United States.

1995 - United States Air Force Captain Scott O'Grady's F-16, is shot down over Bosnia while patrolling the NATO no-fly zone.

1997 - In Denver, Colorado, Timothy McVeigh is convicted of 15 counts of murder and conspiracy for his role in the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

2004 - Ken Jennings, begins his 74-game winning streak on the syndicated game show Jeopardy!

Friday, June 1, 2012

1st of June

It is the 152nd day of the year, with only 213 days remaining until the new year.

1495 - Friar John Cor records the first known batch of scotch whisky.

1660 - Mary Dyer is hanged for defying a law banning Quakers from the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

1779 - Benedict Arnold, a general in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, is court-martialed for malfeasance.

1792 - Kentucky is admitted as the 15th state of the United States.

1796 - Tennessee is admitted as the 16th state of the Union.

1861 - Battle of Fairfax Court House, is the first land battle of the Civil War after Fort Sumter, with the first Confederate combat casualty.

1890 - The United States Census Bureau begins using Herman Hollerith's tabulating machine to count census returns.

1916 - Louis Brandeis becomes the first Jew appointed to the United States Supreme Court.

1918 - At the Battle for Belleau Wood, Allied forces under John J. Pershing and Jams Harbord engage Imperial German Forces under Wilhelm, German Crown Prince.

1943 - British Overseas Airways Corporation Flight 777 is shot down over the Bay of Biscay by German Junkers Ju 88s, killing actor Leslie Howard and leading to speculation the downing was an attempt to kill British Prime Minister Churchill.

1974 - In the journal Emergency Medicine, the Heimlich maneuver for rescuing choking victims, is published.

1988 - The Cable News Network, CNN, begins broadcasting.

2009 - General Motors files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.  It is the fourth largest United States bankruptcy in history.