This Week in History 6/6 – 6/12

This Week in History

June 6:

• WW2: D-Day, known as Operation Neptune, when 150,000 Allied Expeditionary Force landed in Normandy, France (1944)
• YMCA established as a Christian organization concerned with the body, mind, and spirit (1844)
• Senator Robert F. Kennedy, Democratic nominee for US presidency, dies from his wounds after he was shot the previous night (1968)
• First slaves arrive in Louisiana (1716)
• After Mount Tambora erupts, a weather condition that produce the “year without a summer” causes 10 inches of snowfall in New England (1716)
  
• First drive-in theater opens in Camden, New Jersey (1934)
• WW2: Nazi troops executed 96 prisoners by firing squad (1944)
• Theodore Roosevelt Jr receives Congressional Medal of Honor (1944)
• US Revolutionary War: Nathan Hale, first American spy who said “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.” as he was executed by British, was born (1755)
• US Federal gas tax enacted (1932)
• US Congress pass an act authorizing a civil code and government for the territory of Alaska after gold discoveries bring lawlessness and disorder to the area (1900)
• Levi Strauss make his first pair of blue jeans (1850)
• Supreme Court tosses out automatic death penalty laws (1977)
• War of 1812: US invasion of Canada halted at Stoney Creek  (1813)
• Cyclone in Arabian Sea near Bombay, India drowns 100,000 (1882)
• A near-Earth asteroid estimated at 10 metres diameter explodes over the Mediterranean Sea between Greece and Libya (2002)
• Inhabitants of Seville, Spain massacre 5,000 Jews (1391)
• Electric iron patented (1882)

June 7:

• Daniel Boone begins exploring Kentucky (1769)
• Charles Haddon Spurgeon preached his last sermon at the Tabernacle in London (1891)
• Vatican City becomes a sovereign state (1929)
• Evangelist George Bennard introduced his new hymn, ‘The Old Rugged Cross,’ during a revival he was conducting at Pokagon, Michigan (1913)
• WW2: As the Battle of Midway ends, Admiral Nimitz wins first naval defeat of Japan (1942)
• Sony introduces the Betamax videocassette recorder for sale to the public (1975)
• The Supreme Court of the United States decides on Griswold v. Connecticut, effectively legalizing the use of contraception by married couples (1965)
• 16th century archaeology remains of the Curtain Theatre, where some of Shakespeare’s plays were first performed, were found under a pub in London (2012)
• US Civil War: Battle of Milliken’s Bend, Louisiana where Jefferson Davis’ home burnt (1863)
• English King Charles I ratifies the Petition of Rights (1628)
• Asian cholera kills 6,000 people in Canada (1832)
• Earthquake in Porte Royale, Jamaica kills 3,000 (1692)
• First Crusaders arrive in Jerusalem (1099)
• Rotterdam Netherlands founded (1340)
• England declares war on France (1557)

June 8:

• James Madison introduces a proposed Bill of Rights in the U.S. House of Representatives (1789)
• James Earl Ray, assassinator of Martin Luther King Jr., is assassinated (1968)
• Alexander Solzhenitsyn, exile of Communist Soviet Union and author, spoke at Harvard decrying lack of moral courage in the West (1978)
• Film stars Frederic March, John Garfield, Paul Muni, and Edward G. Robinson, are named in a FBI report as Communist Party members (1949)
• US Civil War: US Sanitary Commission is given executive approval (1861)
• US Civil War: Tennessee votes to secede from the Union (1861)
• Jews revolt against Rome capturing fortress of Antonia in Jerusalem (65 AD)
• Vikings attacked the church on Lindisfarne islan, first recorded Viking attack in England (793 AD)
• Mohammed dies and is still dead (632 AD)
• Commercially made ice cream first advertised (1786)
• Congress endorses penny post card (1872)
• Ives W McGaffey patents first vacuum cleaner (1869)
• Mormon Church reversed a 148-year- long policy of spiritual discrimination against African-American leadership within the denomination (1978)

June 9:

• US Academy at West Point founded (1802)
• First US “dime novel” published: “Malaseka, The Indian Wife of the White Hunter,” by Ann Stevens (1860)
• WW2: Nazis kill all inhabitants of Lidice which had been implicated in the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich to “teach the Czechs a final lesson of subservience and humility” (1942)
• Emperor Nero commits suicide to avoid death by flogging sentence imposed by Senate (68 AD)
• WW2: Norway surrenders to Germany (1940)
• William Carey, father of modern missions who translated the Bible into 25 languages, died (1834)
• Alice Huyler Ramsey, a 22-year-old housewife and mother from Hackensack, New Jersey, becomes the first woman to drive across the USA, driving a Maxwell automobile 3,800 miles from Manhattan to San Francisco in 59 days with three non-driving female companions (1909)
• French navigator Jacques Cartier becomes the first European explorer to discover the St. Lawrence River in present-day Quebec, Canada (1534)
• Colony of Georgia created to house debtors and poor from England (1732)
• Edward Snowden publically makes his identity known as the leaker of NSA documents (2013)
• 500 Mormons leave Iowa City, Iowa and head west for Salt Lake City, Utah carrying all their possessions in two-wheeled handcarts (1856)
• England’s Parliament established a uniformity of religious services and the first Anglican Book of Common Prayer (1549)
• US President Grant meets with Sioux chief Red Cloud (1870)
• Death of St. Columba, pioneer missionary to Scotland (597 AD)
• In China, Boxers destroy the race course in Peking, a few miles from the legations and the center and symbol of diplomatic social life and Western privilege (1920)

June 10:

• Bridget Bishop became the first person hanged for witchcraft during the Salem Witch Trials in Massachusetts. (1692)
• US Revolutionary War: John Adams proposes Continental Army (1775)
• Benjamin Franklin flies kite during thunderstorm (1752)
• Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia forms (1794)
• US Revolutionary War: British customs officials seize John Hancock’s ship, The Liberty, on the suspicion that Hancock had illegally unloaded cargo without paying duties a month earlier (1768)
• Washington supersedes Philadelphia as US capital (1793)
• New York passes first effective law regulating practice of medicine (1760)
• WW2: Italy declares war on France and Great Britain (1940)
• France revolutionary regime begins trials (1794)
• Tripoli declares war on US for refusing tribute (1801)
• First American log cabin at Fort Christina at Wilmington, Delaware (1639)
  
• The first class of the United States Naval Academy students graduate (1854)
• Spanish American War: US Marines land in Cuba (1898)
• WW2: FDR becomes 1st US president to visit a foreign country during wartime (1943)
• First public zoo opens in Paris (1793)
• Chicago Tribune begins publishing (1847)
• Alcoholics Anonymous founded in Akron, Ohio as a Christian organization (1935)
• John Dillinger robs his first bank, in New Carlisle, Ohio (1933)
• Babe Ruth becomes all time Home Run champ (1921)

June 11:

• US Revolutionary War: Continental Congress creates committee including Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston to draft a Declaration of Independence (1776)
• Six Day War ends with Israel gaining West Bank and Jerusalem (1967)
• Benjamin Franklin invents his Franklin stove (1742)
• Brazil’s first Pentecostal Church was established (1918)
• England grants Sir Humphrey Gilbert a patent to explore & colonize North America (1578)
• Iowa Territory organized (1838)
• Captain James Cooke discovers Great Barrier Reef off Australia (1770)
• John Wayne dies (1979)
• Brothers John and Clarence Anglin and fellow inmate Frank Morris escape from Alcatraz Island prison, the only ones to do so (1962)
• Trojan War: Troy is sacked and burned, according to calculations by Eratosthenes (1184 BC)
• Hundred Years’ War starts with the Battle of Jargeau (1429)
• Birth of David C. Cook, pioneer developer of Sunday School curriculum (1850)
• Hundred Years’ War begins (1429)

June 12: 

• Reagan challenges Gorbachev to “tear down this wall” (1987)
• David Brainerd was ordained a missionary to the Indians in Colonial New England (1744)
• Anne Frank gets a diary as a birthday present (1942)
• New Amsterdam legally becomes an English colony and renamed New York after English Duke of York (1665)
• USSR executes 8 army leaders as Stalin’s purge continues (1937)
• WW2: Himmler orders extermination of all Nazi ghettos in occupied Poland (1943)
• Comstock Silver Lode in Nevada discovered (1859)
• WW2: Hitler orders enslavement of Slavic peoples (1942)
• Harry Houdini frees himself from a straight jacket while suspended upside down 40 feet above ground in NYC (1923)
• Raiders Of The Lost Ark, the first an Indiana Jones film directed by Stephen Spielberg, produced by George Lucas and starring Harrison Ford premieres (1981)
• WW1: In Germany, the Reichstag pass the second Navy Bill, which calls for doubling the German Navy within 20 years (1900)
• In Cuba, the constitutional convention – knowing that the USA will not withdraw its troops until does so – adopts the Platt Amendment as part of its constitution (1901)
• Al Capone is indicted on 5,000 counts of prohibition & perjury (1931)
• Nelson Mandela is sentenced to life in prison in South Africa (1964)
• WW2: Future president John F. Kennedy receives medals for valor (1944)
• Niagara Falls, Ontario incorporated as a city (1903)
• Secret Service extends protection of president to his family (1917)