June 10
1692: Bridget Bishop became the first person hanged during the Salem Witch Trials near Salem, Mass., for “Certain Detestable Arts called Witchcraft & Sorceries.”
1854: The first class of United States Naval Academy students graduated.
1935: Alcoholics Anonymous was founded in Akron, Ohio, by Dr. Robert Smith and Bill Wilson.
1944: Fifteen-year-old Joe Nuxhall of the Cincinnati Reds baseball team became the youngest player ever in a major-league game.
1947: Saab produced its 2001: Pope John Paul II canonized Lebanon’s first female saint, Saint Rafqa.
2007: Novelty dance song “I’m a Gummy Bear” by German band Gummibär released.
2019: New DNA research on grapes shows one French wine Savagnin Blanc has been grown for 900 years in Jura published in “Nature Plants”.
June 11
1776: The Continental Congress appointed Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston to the Committee of Five to draft a declaration of independence.
1805: A fire consumed large portions of Detroit in the Michigan Territory.
1880: Jeannette Rankin, the first woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, was born in Missoula County, Montana.
1910: Born this day: Carmine Coppola, U.S. flute player and composer (The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, Apocalypse Now, died 1991), and Jacques Cousteau, French biologist, author, and inventor, co-developed the aqua-lung (died 1997).
1919: Sir Barton won the Belmont Stakes and became the first horse to win the Triple Crown.
1920: During the U.S. Republican National Convention in Chicago, U.S. Republican Party leaders gathered in a room at the Blackstone Hotel to come to a consensus on their candidate for the U.S. presidential election (Warren G. Harding), leading the Associated Press to first coin the political phrase “smoke-filled room.”
1935: Inventor Edwin Armstrong gave the first public demonstration of FM broadcasting in the United States at Alpine, New Jersey.
1944: USS Missouri (BB-63), the last battleship built by the U.S. Navy, and future site of the signing of the Japanese surrender, was commissioned.
1962: Frank Morris, John Anglin and Clarence Anglin become the only prisoners to escape from the federal prison on Alcatraz Island. No trace of them was ever found and they were presumed to have drowned.
1970: After being appointed on May 15, Anna Mae Hays and Elizabeth P. Hoisington officially received their ranks as U.S. Army generals, becoming the first females to do so.
1998: Compaq Computer paid $9 billion for Digital Equipment Corporation in the largest high-tech acquisition.
2002: Antonio Meucci (1808-1889) was acknowledged by U.S. Congress as the first inventor of the telephone.
2018: 72nd Tony Awards: “The Band’s Visit” best musical, “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” best play.
2019: “The New York Times” reveals an estimated 500,000 song titles, including masters of Chuck Berry, Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald, lost in 2008 warehouse fire on Universal backlot in Los Angeles.
June 12
1665: England installed a municipal government in the former Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam and renamed it New York City.
1924: Born this day: 41st President George H. W. Bush; and classical guitarist and radio host Grete Dollitz (died 2013).
1967: The United States Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia declared unconstitutional all U.S. state laws that prohibit interracial marriage.
1987: At the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, West Germany, President Ronald Reagan publicly challenged Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall.
2018: AT&T’s $85.4 billion takeover of Time Warner can go ahead according to US district court judge.
2019: Earliest evidence of humans smoking cannabis discovered in 2,500-year-old grave in Pamir Mountains, China, published in “Science Advances”.
June 13
1805: Scouting ahead of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, Meriwether Lewis and four companions sighted the Great Falls of the Missouri River.
producer (The Waltons).
1966: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Miranda v. Arizona that the police must inform suspects of their rights before questioning them.
1970: “The Long and Winding Road” became the Beatles’ last U.S. No. 1 song.
1983: Pioneer 10 became the first man-made object to leave the central Solar System when it passed beyond the orbit of Neptune, the farthest planet from the Sun at the time.
1994: A jury in Anchorage, Alaska, blamed recklessness by Exxon and Captain Joseph Hazelwood for the Exxon Valdez disaster, allowing victims of the oil spill to seek $15 billion in damages.
1996: The Montana Freemen surrendered after an 81-day standoff with FBI agents.
2000: Italy pardoned Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish gunman who tried to assassinate Pope John Paul II in 1981.
2018: Raccoon climbs 23 story office building in St Paul, Minnesota, becoming an internet sensation.
2019: NBA Finals: Toronto Raptors beat defending champion Golden State Warriors, 114-110 to win franchise’s first Championship; last game at Oracle Arena, Oakland; Kawhi Leonard MVP.
June 14
1775: The Continental Army was established by the Continental Congress, marking the birth of the United States Army.
1777: The Stars and Stripes was adopted by Congress as the flag of the United States.
1937: Pennsylvania became the first (and only) state to celebrate Flag Day officially as a state holiday.
1946: Born this day: TV personality and GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump; and singer Janet Lennon (The Lennon Sisters).
1954: U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a bill into law that placed the words “under God” into the Pledge of Allegiance.
1959: Disneyland Monorail System, the first daily operating monorail system in the Western Hemisphere, opened to the public in Anaheim, California.
1967: The People’s Republic of China tested its first hydrogen bomb.
2009: 63rd NBA Championship: Los Angeles Lakers beat Orlando Magic, 4 games to 1.
2015: “Jurassic World”, 1st film to make $500 million worldwide in its opening weekend.
June 15
1502: Christopher Columbus landed on the island of Martinique on his fourth voyage.
1667: The first human blood transfusion was administered in Paris by Dr. Jean-Baptiste Denys.
1752: Benjamin Franklin flew a kite in a thunderstorm, proving that lightning is electricity.
1804: New Hampshire approved the 12th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratifying the document.
1836: Arkansas was admitted as the 25th U.S. state.
1844: Charles Goodyear received a patent for vulcanization, a process to strengthen rubber.
1846: The Oregon Treaty established the 49th parallel as the border between the United States and Canada, from the Rocky Mountains to the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
1849: James Knox Polk, 11th president, died in Nashville, Tenn.
1864: Arlington National Cemetery was established when 200 acres around Arlington Mansion (formerly owned by Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee) were officially set aside as a military cemetery by U.S. Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton.
1877: Henry Ossian Flipper became the first African American cadet to graduate from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
1878: Eadweard Muybridge took a series of photographs in Palo Alto, Calif., to prove that all four feet of a horse leave the ground when it runs. The study became the basis of motion pictures.
1916: U.S. President Woodrow Wilson signed a bill incorporating the Boy Scouts of America, making it the only American youth organization with a federal charter.
1992: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Álvarez-Machaín that it is permissible for the United States to forcibly extradite suspects in foreign countries and bring them to the USA for trial, without approval from those other countries.
2012: Nik Wallenda, 33, became the first person to successfully walk a tightrope over Niagara Falls.
2016: The Bramble Cay melomys, a rodent that lived only on a small, 10-acre, sand-covered island in the Great Barrier Reef between Australia and Papua New Guinea, went extinct due to rising sea levels, becoming the first species to die out as a direct result of global warming.
2018: Physicist Stephen Hawking‘s ashes are interred in Westminster Abbey, London, between the remains of Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin.
2019: Baseball jersey belonging to Babe Ruth becomes most expensive sports memorabilia when it sells for $5.64 million at an auction in New York.
June 16
1816: Lord Byron read Fantasmagoriana to his four house guests at the Villa Diodati—Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, Claire Clairmont, and John Polidori—and challenged each guest to write a ghost story, which culminated in Mary Shelley writing the novel Frankenstein.
1911: IBM was founded as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company in Endicott, New York. A stony meteorite weighing 1.7 pounds struck the Earth near Kilbourn, Wis., damaging a barn.
1981: President Ronald Reagan awarded the Congressional Gold Medal to Ken Taylor, Canada’s former ambassador to Iran, for helping six Americans escape from Iran during the hostage crisis of 1979-81. Taylor was the first foreign citizen bestowed the honor.
2010: Bhutan became the first country to institute a total ban on tobacco.
2016: Philadelphia is the first US city to pass a tax on sweetened drinks.
2017: Amazon announces it is buying Whole Foods for $13.7 billion.