June 19
1910: The first Father’s Day was celebrated.
1934: The Federal Communications Commission was established.
1964: The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was approved after surviving an 83-day filibuster in the U.S. Senate.
1978: Garfield, holder of the Guinness World Record for the world’s most widely syndicated comic strip, made its debut.
1979: World Sauntering Day was first celebrated at Grand Hotel, Mackinac Island, Michigan.
June 20
1837: Queen Victoria succeeded to the British throne (she died in 1901).
1847: Samuel Morse received the patent for the telegraph.
1877: Alexander Graham Bell installed the world’s first commercial telephone service in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
1948: Toast of the Town, later The Ed Sullivan Show, made its television debut.
June 21
1948: Columbia Records introduced the long-playing record album in a public demonstration at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City.
1957: Born this day: actor Michael Bowen (Breaking Bad), and cartoonist Berke Breathed (Bloom County).
1963: Cardinal Giovanni Battista Montini was elected as Pope Paul VI.
1982: John Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity for the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan.
2004: SpaceShipOne became the first privately funded spaceplane to achieve spaceflight.
June 22
1906: The flag of Sweden was adopted.
1944: President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, commonly known as the G.I. Bill.
1949: Born this day: singer Alan Osmond (The Osmonds); actresses Meryl Streep and Lindsay Wagner
1990: Checkpoint Charlie at the Berlin Wall was dismantled in Berlin.
2009: Eastman Kodak Company announced that it would discontinue sales of Kodachrome Color Film, concluding its 74-year run as a photography icon.
June 23
1809: A rainfall full of live toads fell on Poitiers, France.
1810: John Jacob Astor formed the Pacific Fur Company.
1868: Christopher Latham Sholes received a patent for an invention he called the “Type-Writer.”
1960: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the first oral contraceptive pill in the world.
1975: Born this day: actor Jeffrey Carlson (All My Children), and Scottish singer-songwriter KT Tunstall.
2013: Nik Wallenda became the first person to successfully walk across the Grand Canyon on a tightrope.
2015: Several major retailers including Wal-Mart, Sears, and eBay, announced that they would stop selling merchandise decorated with Confederate flags and the flags themselves.
June 24
1374: The first recorded outbreak of St. John’s Dance, also known as the dancing plague, caused people in the streets of Aachen, Germany, to experience hallucinations and to jump and twitch uncontrollably until they collapsed from exhaustion.
1846: The saxophone was patented by Adolphe Sax in Paris, France.
1916: Mary Pickford became the first female film star to sign a $1 million contract.
1939: Siam was renamed Thailand.
1947: Kenneth Arnold made the first widely reported UFO sighting, near Mount Rainier, Washington. Born this day: musician Mick Fleetwood (Fleetwood Mac), and actor Peter Weller (RoboCop).
1957: In Roth v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that obscenity is not protected by the First Amendment.
June 25
1903: Born this day: author George Orwell (Animal Farm, 1984, died 1950), and actress Anne Revere (National Velvet, died 1990)
1944: The final page of the comic Krazy Kat was published, exactly two months after its author, George Herriman, died.
1947: The Diary of a Young Girl, better known as The Diary of Anne Frank, was published.
1949: Long-Haired Hare starring Bugs Bunny was released in theaters.
1963: Born this day: singer George Michael (Wham!) and actress Jackie Swanson (Cheers).
1981: Microsoft became an incorporated business in its home state of Washington.