June 5
1956: Elvis Presley introduced his new single, “Hound Dog,” on The Milton Berle Show, scandalizing the audience with his suggestive hip movements.
1976: The Teton Dam in southeast Idaho collapsed. Thousands of homes and businesses were destroyed in Sugar City, Salem, Hibbard and Rexburg, Idaho.
2012: The governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, became the first U.S. governor to survive a recall election. The last transit of Venus of the 21st century began.
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.”
1844: The Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) was founded by Sir George Williams 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 Pennsauken, N.J.
1944: Allied forces launched “Operation Overlord” also known as D-Day, the largest military invasion in history, against Nazi Germany.
June 7
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
1887: Herman Hollerith applied for U.S. patent #395,791 for the ‘Art of Applying Statistics,’ his punched-card calculator.
1912: Carl Laemmle incorporated Universal Pictures in Hollywood, Calif.
1949: George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four was published.
1953: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that restaurants in Washington, D.C., cannot refuse to serve black patrons.
1959: The USS Barbero and the United States Postal Service attempted the delivery of mail via Missile Mail. (It never caught on.)
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.
1934: Donald Duck made his debut in The Wise Little Hen.
1973: The race horse Secretariat won the Triple Crown.
June 10
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.
1949: Saab produced its first automobile.
1977: The Apple II, one of the first personal computers, went on sale.
2001: Pope John Paul II canonized Lebanon’s first female saint, Saint Rafqa.
June 11
1880: Jeannette Rankin, the first woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, was born in Missoula County, Montana.
1935: Inventor Edwin Armstrong gave the first public demonstration of FM broadcasting in the United States at Alpine, New Jersey.
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.
2002: Antonio Meucci (1808-1889) was acknowledged by U.S. Congress as the first inventor of the telephone.