This Day in History

[Gravdigr]

June 13

1514 - Henry Grace à Dieu, at over 1,000 tons the largest warship in the world at this time, built at the new Woolwich Dockyard in England, is dedicated.

1774 – Rhode Island becomes the first of Britain's North American colonies to ban the importation of slaves.

1777 – American Revolutionary War: Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette lands near Charleston, South Carolina, in order to help the Continental Congress to train its army.

1805 – Lewis and Clark Expedition: scouting ahead of the expedition, Meriwether Lewis and four companions sight the Great Falls of the Missouri River.

1893 – Grover Cleveland notices a rough spot in his mouth and on July 1 undergoes secret, successful surgery to remove a large, cancerous portion of his jaw; the operation was not revealed to the public until 1917, nine years after the president's death.

1917 – World War I: The deadliest German air raid on London during World War I is carried out by Gotha G bombers and results in 162 deaths, including 46 children, and 432 injuries.

1940 - The battleship USS North Carolina (BB-55), the most highly decorated American battleship of WWII (15 battle stars), is launched.

1944 – World War II: The Battle of Villers-Bocage - German tank ace Michael Wittmann ambushes elements of the British 7th Armoured Division, destroying up to fourteen tanks and fifteen personnel carriers, along with two anti-tank guns in a Tiger 1 tank.

1952 – Catalina affair: A Swedish Douglas DC-3 is shot down by a Soviet MiG-15 fighter.

1966 – The United States Supreme Court rules in Miranda v. Arizona that the police must inform suspects of their rights before questioning them.

1967 – U.S. President Lyndon B. 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 U.S. number one song.

1975 - Peter Frampton played the first of two nights at the Winterland Ballroom, San Francisco, California. Recordings from these two shows were used as part of his No.1 double album 'Frampton Comes Alive'. It became the best-selling album of 1976, selling over 6 million copies in the US and Frampton Comes Alive! was voted "Album of the year" in the 1976 Rolling Stone readers poll. It remained on the charts for 97 weeks.

1977 – Convicted Martin Luther King Jr. assassin James Earl Ray is recaptured after escaping from prison three days before.

1981 – At the Trooping the Colour ceremony in London, a teenager, Marcus Sarjeant, fires six blank shots at Queen Elizabeth II.

1983 – Pioneer 10 becomes the first man-made object to leave the central Solar System when it passes beyond the orbit of Neptune (the farthest planet from the Sun at the time).

1992 - Billy Ray Cyrus started a 17-week run at No.1 on the US album chart with 'Some Gave All'. His debut album featured the world-wide breakthrough song 'Achy Breaky Heart', which was originally recorded as 'Don't Tell My Heart' by The Marcy Brothers on their 1991 self-titled album.

1994 – A jury in Anchorage, Alaska, blames recklessness by Exxon and Captain Joseph Hazelwood for the Exxon Valdez disaster, allowing victims of the oil spill to seek $15 billion in damages.

2000 – Italy pardons Mehmet Ali Ağca, the Turkish gunman who tried to kill Pope John Paul II in 1981.

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

2010 – A capsule of the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa, containing particles of the asteroid 25143 Itokawa, returns to Earth.

2015 – A man opens fire at policemen outside the police headquarters in the Texas city of Dallas, while a bag containing a pipe bomb is also found. He was later shot dead by police.

Births

1786 – Winfield Scott; 1865 – W. B. Yeats; 1892 – Basil Rathbone; 1903 – Red Grange; 1913 – Ralph Edwards; 1918 – Ben Johnson; 1926 – Paul Lynde; 1943 – Malcolm McDowell; 1943 – Jim Guy Tucker; 1945 – Whitley Strieber; 1949 - Dennis Locorriere; 1951 – Richard Thomas ('John Boy Walton'), Stellan Skarsgård; 1953 – Tim Allen; 1959 – Lance Kinsey ("Police Academy"); 1962 – Ally Sheedy; 1968 – David Gray; 1969 – Laura Kightlinger; 1970 – Rivers Cuomo; 1973 – Tanner Foust; 1986 – Kat Dennings; 1986 – Ashley & Mary-Kate Olsen

Deaths

1231 – Anthony of Padua; 1979 – Darla Hood ("Our Gang"); 1986 – Benny Goodman; 1987 – Geraldine Page; 1993 – Deke Slayton; 2008 – Tim Russert; 2010 – Jimmy Dean; 2013 – David Deutsch; 2014 – Chuck Noll

[Gravdigr]

June 14

Today is Flag Day in the United States.

There are 200 days remaining in the year.

There are 193 days till Christmas.

1158 – Munich is founded by Henry the Lion on the banks of the river Isar.

1381 – Richard II of England meets leaders of Peasants' Revolt on Blackheath. The Tower of London is stormed by rebels who enter without resistance.

1775 – American Revolutionary War: the Continental Army is established by the Continental Congress, marking the birth of the United States Army.

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

1789 – Mutiny on the Bounty: HMS Bounty mutiny survivors including and 18 others reach Timor after a nearly 7,400 km (4,600 mi) journey in an open boat.

Whiskey distilled from maize is first produced by American clergyman the Rev Elijah Craig (may God bless and keep him). It is named Bourbon because Rev Craig lived in Bourbon County, Kentucky.

1846 – Bear Flag Revolt begins: Anglo settlers in Sonoma, California, start a rebellion against Mexico and proclaim the California Republic.

1900 – Hawaii becomes United States territory.

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

U.S. House of Representatives passes the Marihuana Tax Act.

1949 – Albert II, a rhesus monkey, rides a V-2 rocket to an altitude of 134 km (83 mi), thereby becoming the first monkey in space.

1951 – UNIVAC I is dedicated by the U.S. Census Bureau.

1959 – Disneyland Monorail System, the first daily operating monorail system in the Western Hemisphere, opens to the public in Anaheim, California.

1961 - Patsy Cline was seriously injured in a car accident. During her two month hospital stay, her song "I Fall to Pieces" gave the singer her first Country No.1 and also became a huge country-pop crossover hit.

1967 – Mariner program: Mariner 5 is launched towards Venus.

1970 - Derek and the Dominoes played their first gig when they appeared at London's Lyceum.

1982 – Falklands War: Argentine forces in the capital Stanley conditionally surrender to British forces.

1986 – The Mindbender accident happens at West Edmonton Mall. Three people died and one person was injured in the accident. This accident caused WEM to close the Mindbender for a few months for upgrades to it. Since 1986, the Mindbender has run accident free ever since.

Three fans die during an Ozzy Osbourne gig at Long Beach Arena, California after falling from a balcony.

1994 - Composer Henry Mancini dies aged 70.

2002 – Near-Earth asteroid 2002 MN misses the Earth by 75,000 miles (121,000 km), about one-third of the distance between the Earth and the Moon.

Births

1811 – Harriet Beecher Stowe; 1864 – Alois Alzheimer; 1909 – Burl Ives; 1916 – Dorothy McGuire; 1919 – Gene Barry; 1919 – Sam Wanamaker; 1928 – Ernesto 'Che' Guevara; 1931 – Marla Gibbs ('Florence' on "The Jeffersons"); 1931 – Junior Walker; 1932 – Joe Arpaio; 1945 – Rod Argent; 1946 – Donald Trump; 1952 – Pat Summitt; 1954 – Will Patton; 1956 – King Diamond, Fred Funk; 1958 – Eric Heiden; 1961 – Boy George; 1963 – Chris DeGarmo; 1966 – Traylor Howard; 1978 – Diablo Cody; 1982 – Lang Lang

Deaths

1801 – Benedict Arnold; 1825 – Pierre Charles L'Enfant; 1914 – Adlai Stevenson I; 1926 – Mary Cassatt; Jerome K. Jerome; 1936 – G. K. Chesterton; 1994 - Henry Mancini; 1997 – Richard Jaeckel; 2007 – Robin Olds; 2007 – Kurt Waldheim; 2009 – Bob Bogle (The Ventures)

[Gravdigr]

June 15

763 BC – Assyrians record a solar eclipse that is later used to fix the chronology of Mesopotamian history.

1215 – King John of England puts his seal to the Magna Carta.

1219 – Northern Crusades: Danish victory at the Battle of Lyndanisse (modern-day Tallinn) establishes the Danish Duchy of Estonia. According to legend, this battle also marks the first use of the Dannebrog, the world's oldest national flag still in use, as the national flag of Denmark.

1300 – The city of Bilbao, Spain is founded.

1648 – Margaret Jones is hanged in Boston for witchcraft in the first such execution for the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

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

1752 – Benjamin Franklin proves that lightning is electricity (traditional date, the exact date is unknown).

1775 – American Revolutionary War: George Washington is appointed commander-in-chief of the Continental Army.

1816 – At the Villa Diodati in the village of Cologny, Switzerland, Lord Byron reads Fantasmagoriana to his four house guests — Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, Claire Clairmont, and John Polidori — and challenges each guest to write a ghost story, which culminates in Mary Shelley writing the novel Frankenstein, John Polidori writing the short story The Vampyre, and Byron writing an unfinished vampire novel Fragment of a Novel and the poem Darkness.

1836 – Arkansas is admitted as the 25th U.S. state.

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

1864 – Arlington National Cemetery is established when 200 acres (0.81 km2) around Arlington Mansion (formerly owned by Confederate General Robert E. Lee) are officially set aside as a military cemetery by U.S. Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton.

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

1878 – Eadweard Muybridge takes a series of photographs to prove that all four feet of a horse leave the ground when it runs; the study becomes the basis of motion pictures.

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

1904 – A fire aboard the steamboat SS General Slocum in New York City's East River kills 1,000 people.

1916 – U.S. 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 U.S. Great Smoky Mountains National Park is founded.

1944 – World War II: Battle of Saipan: The United States invade Japanese-occupied Saipan.

1970 – Charles Manson goes on trial for the Sharon Tate murders.

1991 – In the Philippines, Mount Pinatubo erupts in the second largest volcanic eruption of the 20th Century. In the end, over 800 people die.

1992 – The United States Supreme Court rules 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.

1996 – The Troubles: The Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) detonates a powerful truck bomb in the middle of Manchester, England, devastating the city centre and injuring 200 people.

Births

1330 – Edward, the Black Prince; 1908 – Sam Giancana; 1914 – Yuri Andropov; 1917 – Lash LaRue; 1930 – Victor Lundin (Star Trek's first Klingon); 1932 – Mario Cuomo; 1937 – Waylon Jennings; 1941 – Harry Nilsson; 1943 – Johnny Hallyday, Xaviera Hollander; 1946 – Noddy Holder; 1947 – John Hoagland; 1948 – Mike Holmgren; 1949 – Dusty Baker, Russell Hitchcock, Jim Varney (Ernest); 1951 – Steve Walsh; 1954 – Jim Belushi; 1955 – Julie Hagerty; 1957 – Brad Gillis; 1958 – Wade Boggs; 1963 – Helen Hunt; 1964 – Courteney Cox; 1969 – Ice Cube; 1972 – Andy Pettitte; 1973 – Neil Patrick Harris; 1980 – Mary Carey; 1984 – Tim Lincecum

Deaths

1849 – James K. Polk; 1968 – Wes Montgomery; 1989 – Victor French; 1991 – Happy Chandler; 1996 – Ella Fitzgerald; 2003 – Hume Cronyn; 2014 – Casey Kasem; 2015 – Kirk Kerkorian; 2015 – Mighty Sam McClain

[Gravdigr]

June 16

Today is Bloomsday in Dublin, Ireland.

1487 – Battle of Stoke Field, the final engagement of the Wars of the Roses.

1774 – Foundation of Harrodsburg, Kentucky.

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

1883 – The Victoria Hall theatre panic in Sunderland, England kills 183 children.

1884 – The first purpose-built roller coaster, LaMarcus Adna Thompson's "Switchback Railway", opens in New York's Coney Island amusement park.

1903 – The Ford Motor Company is incorporated.

1904 – Irish author James Joyce begins a relationship with Nora Barnacle and subsequently uses the date to set the actions for his novel Ulysses; this date is now traditionally called "Bloomsday".

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

A 772 gram stony meteorite strikes the earth near Kilbourn, Wisconsin (now Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin)damaging a barn.

1944 – At age 14, George Junius Stinney, Jr. becomes the youngest person executed in the United States in the 20th century.

1955 – In a futile effort to topple Argentine President Juan Perón, rogue aircraft pilots of the Argentine Navy drop several bombs upon an unarmed crowd demonstrating in favor of Perón in Buenos Aires, killing 364 and injuring at least 800.

1961 – Rudolf Nureyev defects from the Soviet Union.

1963 – Soviet Space Program: Vostok 6 Mission: Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova becomes the first woman in space.

1965 - Bob Dylan recorded 'Like A Rolling Stone' at Columbia Recording Studios in New York City, in the sessions for the forthcoming 'Highway 61 Revisited' album.

1967 – The Monterey Pop Festival begins.

1977 – Oracle Corporation is incorporated in Redwood Shores, California, as Software Development Laboratories (SDL) by Larry Ellison, Bob Miner and Ed Oates.

1980 - The Blues Brothers film starring John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd premiered in Chicago.

1981 – U.S. President Ronald Reagan awards 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; he is the first foreign citizen bestowed the honor.

1982 - Donnie Van Zant of .38 Special was arrested on stage in Tulsa, Oklahoma, (a dry town) for drinking alcohol in a public place.

1994, Kristen Pfaff, bass player with Hole was found dead in her bathtub due to a heroin overdose, aged 26.

2010 – Bhutan becomes the first country to institute a total ban on tobacco.

2012 – The United States Air Force's robotic Boeing X-37B spaceplane returns to Earth after a classified 469-day orbital mission.

2013 - Black Sabbath established a new UK chart record for the longest gap between No.1 albums when their new release, 13 debuted at the top of the charts, 42 years and 8 months after their second album Paranoid reached No.1.

Births

1821 – Old Tom Morris; 1829 – Geronimo; 1890 – Stan Laurel; 1907 – Jack Albertson; 1917 – Katharine Graham (publisher The Washington Post); 1934 – Eileen Atkins; 1937 – Erich Segal (wrote "Love Story"); 1938 – Joyce Carol Oates, Charles B. Pierce (directed "The Town That Dreaded Sundown"(original), "The Legend of Boggy Creek", wrote "Sudden Impact"); 1939 – Billy "Crash" Craddock; 1941 – Lamont Dozier; 1942 – Eddie Levert; 1943 – Joan Van Ark; 1951 – Roberto 'Hands of Stone' Durán; 1952 – Gino Vannelli; 1955 – Laurie Metcalf; 1957 – Ian Buchanan; 1959 – The Ultimate Warrior; 1962 – Wally Joyner, Femi Kuti; 1968 - Gravdigr; 1969 – MC Ren; 1970 – Phil Mickelson; 1971 – Tupac Shakur; 1972 – John Cho ('Harold' of Harold & Kumar); 1973 – Eddie Cibrian; 1978 – Daniel Brühl

Deaths

1881 – Marie Laveau (voodoo priestess); 1930 – Ezra Fitch (Abercrombie & Fitch); 1930 – Elmer Ambrose Sperry (co-invented the gyrocompass, namesake of the subtender USS Sperry (AS-12), with Peter Hewitt to develop the Hewitt-Sperry Automatic Airplane, one of the first successful precursors of the UAV); 1939 – Chick Webb; 1958 – Imre Nagy; 1959 – George Reeves; 1970 – Brian Piccolo; 1977 – Wernher von Braun; 1979 – Nicholas Ray; 1982 – James Honeyman-Scott; 1999 – Screaming Lord Sutch; 2014 – Tony Gwynn

[Gravdigr]

June 17

1462 – Vlad The Impaler attempts to assassinate Mehmed II (The Night Attack) forcing him to retreat from Wallachia.

1579 – Sir Francis Drake claims a land he calls Nova Albion (modern California) for England.

1631 – Mumtaz Mahal dies during childbirth. Her husband, Mughal emperor Shah Jahan I, spends the next 17 years building her mausoleum, the Taj Mahal.

1775 – American Revolutionary War: Colonists inflict heavy casualties on British forces while losing the Battle of Bunker Hill.

1876 – American Indian Wars: Battle of the Rosebud: One thousand five hundred Sioux and Cheyenne led by Crazy Horse beat back General George Crook's forces at Rosebud Creek in Montana Territory.

1877 – American Indian Wars: Battle of White Bird Canyon: The Nez Perce defeat the U.S. Cavalry at White Bird Canyon in the Idaho Territory.

1885 – The Statue of Liberty arrives in New York Harbor.

1939 – Last public guillotining in France: Eugen Weidmann, a convicted murderer, is guillotined in Versailles outside the Saint-Pierre prison.

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

1954 - Guitarist Danny Cedrone (guitar work on "Rock Around The Clock") falls down a flight of stairs, breaking his neck and dying instantly.

1965 - The Kinks and The Moody Blues made their US concert debut at the Academy of Music in New York City.

1972 – Watergate scandal: Five White House operatives are arrested for burgling the offices of the Democratic National Committee, in an attempt by some members of the Republican party to illegally wiretap the opposition.

1973 - Dolly Parton recorded 'I Will Always Love You' in RCA's Studio "B" in Nashville, Tennessee.

1978 - Andy Gibb became the first solo artist in the history of the US charts to have his first three releases reach No.1, when 'Shadow Dancing' hit the top of the chart. Spending seven weeks at No.1 it became the best selling single in the US in 1978.

1987 – With the death of the last individual of the species, the dusky seaside sparrow becomes extinct.

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

2012 - Bruce Springsteen played his longest show when he turned in a three-hour-and-48-minute, 32-song, set at the Estadio Santiago Bernabeu in Madrid.

2015 – Nine people are killed in a mass shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

Births

1704 – John Kay (no, not that one, this one invented the flying shuttle used in weaving); 1882 – Igor Stravinsky; 1898 – M. C. Escher; 1903 – Ruth Graves Wakefield (created the chocolate chip cookie); 1904 – Ralph Bellamy; 1910 – Red Foley; 1919 – Beryl Reid; 1943 – Newt Gingrich, Barry Manilow, Burt Rutan; 1945 – Tommy Franks; 1947 – Gregg Rolie, Paul Young; 1951 – Joe Piscopo; 1958 – Jello Biafra; 1960 – Thomas Haden Church; 1963 – Greg Kinnear; 1966 – Jason Patric; 1970 – Will Forte; 1980 – Venus Williams; 1987 – Kendrick Lamar

Deaths

1961 – Jeff Chandler; 1986 – Kate Smith; 2008 – Cyd Charisse; 2012 – Rodney King

[Gravdigr]

June 18

1178 – Five Canterbury monks see what is possibly the Giordano Bruno crater being formed. It is believed that the current oscillations of the Moon's distance from the Earth (on the order of meters) are a result of this collision.

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.

1767 – Samuel Wallis, an English sea captain, sights Tahiti and is considered the first European to reach the island.

1778 – American Revolutionary War: British troops abandon Philadelphia.

1812 – War of 1812: The U.S. Congress declares war on Great Britain, Canada, and Ireland.

1815 – Napoleonic Wars: The Battle of Waterloo results in the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte by the Duke of Wellington and Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher 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.

1930 – Groundbreaking ceremonies for the Franklin Institute are held.

1940 – Charles de Gaulle makes his Appeal of 18 June.

"Finest Hour" speech by Winston Churchill.

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

1971 – President Richard Nixon declares that illegal drugs are "public enemy number one", which becomes popularized as the "War on Drugs".

1974 - Peter Hoorelbeke drummer with US band Rare Earth was arrested after a concert for throwing his drumsticks into the crowd.

1977, Johnny Rotten and Paul Cook of the Sex Pistols were stabbed and beaten when they were attacked in a car park outside a London pub. They objected to the Pistols' anti-monarchist song 'God Save the Queen'. The next day, another member of the Pistols, [possibly Jamie Reed, there is a misprint in the article], was beaten by a gang armed with iron pipes.

1981 – The Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk, the first operational aircraft initially designed around stealth technology, makes its first flight.

1983 – Space Shuttle program: STS-7, Astronaut Sally Ride becomes the first American woman in space.

Swiss band Yello ("Oh Yeah") released the first three- dimensional picture disc, complete with 3-D glasses.

1994 – The Troubles: Members of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) attack a crowded pub with assault rifles in Loughinisland, Northern Ireland. Six Catholic civilians are killed and five wounded.

2010 - John Lennon's handwritten lyrics to The Beatles song 'A Day In The Life' sold for $1.2m (£810,000) at an auction at Sotheby's in New York.

Births

1854 – E. W. Scripps; 1877 – James Montgomery Flagg; 1886 – George Mallory; 1903 – Jeanette MacDonald; 1913 – Sammy Cahn, Robert Mondavi; 1914 – E. G. Marshall; 1915 – Red Adair; 1917 – Richard Boone; 1936 – Barack Obama Sr.; 1939 – Lou Brock; 1942 – Roger Ebert, Paul McCartney; 1944 – Sandy Posey; 1952 – Carol Kane; 1956 – Brian Benben; 1961 – Randy Spears (porn actor/director); 1976 – Blake Shelton

Deaths

1959 – Ethel Barrymore; 1982 – John Cheever; 1992 – Peter Allen; 2000 – Nancy Marchand (played 'Tony Soprano's' mother on "The Sopranos"); 2002 – Jack Buck; 2011 – Clarence Clemons

[DanaC]

1778 – American Revolutionary War: British troops abandon Philadelphia.

One of the courts martial I examined for my thesis was for desertion. The soldier had fallen for a woman in Philadelphia, and couldn't bear to leave when the troops abandoned the city.

[Gravdigr]

June 19

Today is Juneteenth.

Today is also Father's Day (in the U.S.).

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 game 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 umpired.

1862 – The U.S. Congress prohibits slavery in United States territories, nullifying Dred Scott v. Sandford.

1865 – Over two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, slaves in Galveston, Texas, United States, are finally informed of their freedom. The anniversary is still officially celebrated in Texas and 41 other contiguous states as Juneteenth.

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

1944 – World War II: First day of the Battle of the Philippine Sea.

1949 -- The first ever NASCAR race was held at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

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

1973 - Edgar Winter's US No.1 hit 'Frankenstein' was awarded a Gold record. Winter named the song because of how many cuts and patches were contained in the original studio tape.

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

1980 - US singer Donna Summer became the first act to be signed by David Geffen to his new Geffen record label.

2009 – Mass riots involving over 10,000 people and 10,000 police officers break out in Shishou, China, over the dubious circumstances surrounding the death of a local chef.

2012 – WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange requested asylum in London's Ecuadorian Embassy for fear of extradition to the US after publication of previously classified documents including footage of civilian killings by the US army.

2014 - Gerry Goffin, who penned chart-topping songs with his then-wife Carole King died at the age of 75 in Los Angeles. He wrote dozens of hits over two decades, including 'The Loco-Motion', 'Will You Love Me Tomorrow' and '(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman'. After their divorce in 1968, Goffin continued writing songs, including a hit for Whitney Houston 'Saving All My Love for You' in 1985.

Births

1623 – Blaise Pascal; 1816 – William H. Webb (founder Webb Institute); 1834 – Charles Spurgeon; 1865 – Dame May Whitty; 1877 – Charles Coburn; 1893 – Madeleine Astor (Titanic survivor); 1896 – Wallis Simpson; 1897 – Moe Howard; 1902 – Guy Lombardo; 1903 – Lou Gehrig (39 years later he will be diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, now commonly known in the United States as "Lou Gehrig's Disease"); 1910 – Sydney Allard (Allard Motor Company Limited); 1910 – Abe Fortas; 1914 – Alan Cranston, Lester Flatt; 1921 – Louis Jourdan; 1928 – Nancy Marchand (played Tony Soprano's mother); 1930 – Gena Rowlands; 1938 – Wahoo McDaniel; 1940 – Shirley Muldowney; 1945 – Aung San Suu Kyi; 1947 – Salman Rushdie; 1950 – Ann Wilson (Heart); 1953 – Simon Wright; 1954 – Kathleen Turner; 1956 – Doug Stone; 1957 – Jean Rabe; 1959 – Mark DeBarge; 1962 – Paula Abdul; 1964 – Boris Johnson; 1969 – Lara Spencer; 1972 – Poppy Montgomery, Robin Tunney; 1976 – Scott Avett (The Avett Brothers); 1978 – Zoe Saldana; 1983 – Macklemore

Deaths

1937 – J. M. Barrie; 1953 – Ethel Rosenberg, Julius Rosenberg; 1966 – Ed Wynn; 1975 – Sam Giancana; 1995 – Peter Townsend (no, not that one, he's a 'Townshend'); 2010 – Manute Bol; 2012 – Richard Lynch; 2013 – James Gandolfini; 2013 – Slim Whitman; 2015 – James Salter

[Gravdigr]

June20

Today is the Summer Solstice, in the Northern Hemisphere, and, Winter Solstice in the Southern Hemisphere.

451 – Battle of Chalons: Flavius Aetius battles Attila the Hun. After the battle, which was inconclusive, Attila retreats, causing the Romans to interpret it as a victory.

1248 – The University of Oxford receives its Royal charter.

1631 – The sack of Baltimore: The Irish village of Baltimore is attacked by Algerian pirates.

1782 – The U.S. Congress adopts the Great Seal of the United States.

1819 – The U.S. vessel SS Savannah arrives at Liverpool, United Kingdom. It is the first steam-propelled vessel to cross the Atlantic, although most of the journey is made under sail.

1837 – Queen Victoria succeeds to the British throne.

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 axe murders of her father and stepmother.

1948 – Toast of the Town, later The Ed Sullivan Show, makes its television debut.

1963 – The so-called "red telephone" link is established between the Soviet Union and the United States following the Cuban Missile Crisis.

1969 - David Bowie records 'Space Oddity' at Trident Studios London. The track went on to become a UK No.1 when re-released in 1975.

1972 – Watergate scandal: An 18½-minute gap appears in the tape recording of the conversations between U.S. President Richard Nixon and his advisers regarding the recent arrests of his operatives while breaking into the Watergate complex.

1975 – The film Jaws is released in the United States, becoming the highest-grossing film of that time and starting the trend of films known as "summer blockbusters".

1979 – ABC News correspondent Bill Stewart is shot dead by a Nicaraguan soldier under the regime of Anastasio Somoza Debayle. The murder is caught on tape and sparks an international outcry against the regime.

1982 – The Argentine Corbeta Uruguay base on Southern Thule surrenders to Royal Marine commandos in the final action of the Falklands War.

1990 – The 7.4 Mw Manjil–Rudbar earthquake affects northern Iran with a maximum Mercalli intensity of X (Extreme), killing 35,000–50,000, and injuring 60,000–105,000.

1991 – The German Bundestag votes to move the capital from Bonn back to Berlin.

2001 – Andrea Yates, in an attempt to save her young children from Satan, drowns all five of them in a bathtub in Houston, Texas.

2003 – The Wikimedia Foundation is founded in St. Petersburg, Florida.

2004 - Organizers at a Paul McCartney show in Petersburg, Russia, hired three jets to spray dry ice into the clouds so it wouldn't rain during the concert. The gig was McCartney's 3,000th concert appearance. He had performed 2,535 gigs with the Quarrymen and The Beatles, 140 gigs with Wings and 325 solo shows.

Births

1905 – Lillian Hellman; 1907 – Jimmy Driftwood; 1909 – Errol Flynn; 1924 – Chet Atkins; 1925 – Audie Murphy; 1928 – Martin Landau; 1933 – Danny Aiello; 1935 – Len Dawson; 1937 – Jerry Keller; 1940 – John Mahoney ("Frasier"'s father); 1941 – Stephen Frears; 1942 – Brian Wilson; 1945 – Anne Murray; 1946 – Bob Vila; 1949 – Alan Longmuir (Bay City Rollers), Lionel Richie; 1950 – Nouri al-Maliki; 1952 – John Goodman, Larry Riley; 1954 – Michael Anthony (bassist Van Halen); 1957 – Koko B. Ware; 1958 – Ron Hornaday, Jr. (race car driver); 1960 – John Taylor; 1967 – Nicole Kidman; 1967 – Dan Tyminski (singer of "Man Of Constant Sorrow"; 1968 – Robert Rodriguez; 1971 – Josh Lucas, Twiggy Ramirez (bassist 'Marilyn Manson'); 1978 – Quinton 'Rampage' Jackson; 1983 – Darren Sproles

Deaths

1875 - Joe Meek; 1945 – Bruno Frank; 1947 – Bugsy Siegel; 1972 – Howard Johnson; 2012 – LeRoy Neiman

[DanaC]

re: 1248 – The University of Oxford receives its Royal charter.

Though that was when it received its charter, iit existed for a long time before as a place of learning and teaching.

The University of Oxford (informally Oxford University or simply Oxford) is a collegiate research university located in Oxford, England, United Kingdom. While having no known date of foundation, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096,[1] making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the world's second-oldest surviving university.[1][8] It grew rapidly from 1167 when Henry II banned English students from attending the University of Paris.[1]

I went looking for the above and also found this little titbit which i did not know:

After disputes between students and Oxford townsfolk in 1209, some academics fled northeast to Cambridge where they established what became the University of Cambridge.[9] The two "ancient universities" are frequently jointly referred to as "Oxbridge".

I did not know that's how Cambridge was founded.

[Gravdigr]

June 21

1734 – In Montreal in New France, a slave known by the French name of Marie-Joseph Angélique is put to death, having been convicted of setting the fire that destroyed much of the city.

1749 – Halifax, Nova Scotia, is founded.

1854 – The first Victoria Cross is awarded during the bombardment of Bomarsund in the Åland Islands.

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

1898 – The United States captures Guam from Spain.

1900 – Boxer Rebellion. China formally declares war on the United States, Britain, Germany, France and Japan, as an edict issued from the Empress Dowager Cixi.

1915 – The U.S. Supreme Court hands down its decision in Guinn v. United States 238 US 347 1915, striking down Oklahoma grandfather clause legislation which had the effect of denying the right to vote to blacks.

1919 – Admiral Ludwig von Reuter scuttles the German fleet in Scapa Flow, Orkney. The nine sailors killed are the last casualties of World War I.

1942 – World War II: A Japanese submarine surfaces near the Columbia River in Oregon, firing 17 shells at nearby Fort Stevens in one of only a handful of attacks by Japan against the United States mainland.

* 1964 – Three civil rights workers, Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Mickey Schwerner, are murdered in Neshoba County, Mississippi.

1966 - Reg Calvert manager of The Fortunes, Screaming Lord Sutch and the owner of offshore pirate radio station Radio City was shot dead by business rival William Oliver Smedley during a confrontation. (Smedley was the owner of pirate station Radio Caroline). Smedley was later cleared of the murder on grounds of self defense.

Jimmy Page made his live debut with The Yardbirds at The Marquee Club in London.

1975 - Elton John, The Beach Boys, Joe Walsh, Rufus, and The Eagles all appeared in front of 120,000 fans at Wembley Stadium, London. Tickets cost £3.50 ($5.95).

Guitarist Ritchie Blackmore quit Deep Purple to form his own group, Rainbow.

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

2001 – A federal grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, indicts 13 Saudis and a Lebanese in the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 American servicemen.

John Lee Hooker, American blues singer and guitarist died in his sleep, aged 83.

* 2005 – Edgar Ray Killen, who had previously been acquitted for the murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Mickey Schwerner, is convicted of manslaughter 41 years afterwards (the case had been reopened in 2004).

2009 – Greenland assumes self-rule.

Births

1639 – Increase Mather; 1850 – Daniel Carter Beard (co-founded the Boy Scouts of America); 1890 – Frank S. Land (founded DeMolay International; 1896 – Charles Momsen (invented the Momsen lung); 1903 – Al Hirschfeld; 1905 – Jean-Paul Sartre; 1921 – Judy Holliday, Jane Russell; 1925 – Maureen Stapleton; 1932 – Lalo Schifrin; 1933 – Bernie Kopell ('Doc' on The Love Boat); 1938 – Don Black (co-wrote theme songs for "Thunderball", "Diamonds Are Forever" and "The Man with the Golden Gun"); 1940 – Mariette Hartley; 1941 – Joe Flaherty; 1944 – Ray Davies; 1947 – Meredith Baxter(mom on "Family Ties"), Michael Gross (dad on "Family Ties"); 1947 – Joey Molland (Badfinger); 1948 – Don Airey (keyboard); 1950 – Joey Kramer; 1951 – Nils Lofgren; 1953 – Benazir Bhutto; 1957 – Berkeley Breathed; 1959 – Kathy Mattea; 1961 – Kip Winger; 1964 – Doug Savant; 1965 – Lana Wachowski (formerly Larry, bro sis of Lilly (formerly Andy); 1966 – Gretchen Carlson, Mancow Muller; 1967 – Jim Breuer; 1967 – Pierre Omidyar (founder eBay), Carrie Preston; 1973 – Juliette Lewis; 1979 – Chris Pratt; 1983 – Edward Snowden; 1985 – Lana Del Rey

Deaths

1527 – Niccolò Machiavelli; 1582 – Oda Nobunaga; 1591 – Aloysius Gonzaga (namesake of Gonzaga University); 1652 – Inigo Jones; 1661 – Andrea Sacchi; 1874 – Anders Jonas Ångström; 1876 – Antonio López de Santa Anna (Remember the Alamo?); 1908 – Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov; 1940 – Smedley Butler (at the time of his death the most decorated Marine in U.S. history); 1964 – James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner; 1985 – Hector Boyardee (founded Chef Boyardee); 1987 – Earl 'Madman' Muntz; 2001 – John Lee Hooker; 2001 – Carroll O'Connor; 2003 – Jason Moran; 2003 – Leon Uris; 2007 – Bob Evans; 2008 – Scott Kalitta (drag racer, son of drag racer Connie Kalitta, the wreck that killed him resulted in NHRA shortening the track to 1,000 feet); 2012 – Richard Adler; 2014 – Jimmy C. Newman

[Gravdigr]

On this day in history Gravdigr's computer decided to take a shit 9/10s of the way through todays post.

So...

Nothing happened today. No one was born. No one died.

Sorry.

[xoxoxoBruce]

I'm sorry no one died... except your computer, I am sorry about that.

[Undertoad]

July 22:

1815
Napoleon abdicated his throne for the second time after his defeat at Waterloo.

1870
The U.S. Justice Department was created.

1874
Dr. Andrew Still became the first to practice osteopathy.

1943
W.E.B. DuBois became the first black member of the National Institute of Letters.

1944
President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the G.I. Bill of Rights.

1969
Singer-actress Judy Garland died.

1987
Actor-dancer-singer Fred Astaire died.

2011
Legendary Boston crime boss,James "Whitey" Bulger is found and arrested by federal authorities in Santa Monica, Calif.

[Gravdigr]

It hiccupped just enough to lose the arm long post I was almost finished with.

That noise you probably heard was me screaming "Sonofabitch!!".

Helluva thang, helluva thang...




ETA: Thx, UT.