June 6
1799: Patrick Henry (“Give me liberty or give me death”) died in Virginia at age 63.
1816: The first of several summer snowstorms hit the northeastern United States, bringing the “Year Without a Summer.”
1833: President Andrew Jackson became the first president to ride on a train.
1844: The Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) was founded in London, England.
1932: The Revenue Act of 1932 was enacted, creating the first gas tax in the United States, at a rate of 1 cent per U.S. gallon sold.
1933: The first drive-in theater opened, in Camden, N.J.
1944: Allied forces launched “Operation Overlord” also known as D-Day, the largest military invasion in history, against Nazi Germany.
June 7
1892: Benjamin Harrison became the first president of the United States to attend a baseball game.
1929: After three years of negotiations, the Lateran Treaty was ratified, bringing Vatican City into existence, surrounded by the city of Rome.
1940: The Norwegian government and royalty went into exile in London, after the invasion of Norway by Nazi Germany.
1942: Imperial Japanese soldiers began occupying the American Aleutian islands of Attu and Kiska off of Alaska.
1977: Five hundred million people watched the first day of the Silver Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II on television.
1982: Priscilla Presley opened Graceland to the public in Memphis, Tenn. The bathroom where Elvis Presley died five years earlier was kept off-limits.
1990: Universal Studios Florida opened in Orlando.
June 8
632: The prophet Mohammed died.
1789: James Madison introduced 12 proposed amendments to the U.S. Constitution in the House of Representatives. By 1791, 10 of them were ratified by the state legislatures and became the Bill of Rights.
1845: Andrew Jackson, seventh president, died at the Hermitage near Nashville, Tenn.
1906: President Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican, signed the Antiquities Act into law, authorizing the president to restrict the use of certain parcels of public land with historical or conservation value.
1912: Carl Laemmle incorporated Universal Pictures in Hollywood, Calif.
1982: President Ronald Reagan became the first American chief executive to address a joint session of the British Parliament.
2004: The first Transit of Venus in modern history took place. The previous one was in 1882.
June 9
1534: Jacques Cartier became the first European to discover the Saint Lawrence River.
1650: The Harvard Corporation was established. It was the first legal corporation in the Americas.
1732: James Oglethorpe was granted a royal charter for the colony of the future U.S. state of Georgia.
1924: In the second attempt to climb Mount Everest, George Mallory and Andrew Irvine disappeared, possibly having first made it to the top. (Mallory’s frozen, mummified remains were found on May 1, 1999.)
1934: Donald Duck made his debut in The Wise Little Hen.
June 10
1692: Bridget Bishop became the first person hanged during the Salem Witch Trials near Salem, Mass., for “certaine 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.
1962: A passenger train derailed near Missoula, killing one passenger and injuring 282.
2001: Pope John Paul II canonized Lebanon’s first female saint, Saint Rafqa.
June 11
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.
1955: Eighty-three spectators were killed and at least 100 injured after an Austin-Healey and a Mercedes-Benz collided at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the deadliest ever accident in motor sports.
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.
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.
1919: Sir Barton won the Belmont Stakes and became the first horse to win the Triple Crown.
1955: Eighty-three spectators were killed and at least 100 injured after an Austin-Healey and a Mercedes-Benz collided at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the deadliest ever accident in motor sports.
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.
1996: The Brotherhood of Klans was founded in Marion, Ohio, by Dale Fox, an old-school Southern Klansman who vowed to bring the Ku Klux Klan back to its original birthplace in Pulaski, Tenn. Fox’s group displayed the Confederate flag as its primary symbol of its hatred for non-whites, Jews and Catholics.
1998: Compaq Computer paid $9 billion for Digital Equipment Corporation in the largest high-tech acquisition.
2001: Timothy McVeigh was executed in federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind., for planning and executing the Oklahoma City bombing of April 19, 1995, that killed 168 people.
2002: Antonio Meucci (1808-1889) was acknowledged by U.S. Congress as the first inventor of the telephone.
June 12
1665: England installed a municipal government in the former Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam and renamed it New York City.
Grete Dollitz (died 2013).
1994: Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were murdered outside her home in Los Angeles, Calif. O.J. Simpson was later acquitted of the killings but was held liable in a wrongful death civil suit. (He remains imprisoned in Nevada for an unrelated crime.)