Today in
History ~ June 21
The longest day of the year, the
Summer Solstice.
Events
0524 - Battle at Vezerone: Burgundy beats France
0996 - Pope Gregory V crowns Otto III Roman Catholic German emperor
1498 - Jews are expelled from Nuremberg Bavaria by Emperor Maximillian
1547 - Great fire in Moscow
1607 - 1st Protestant Episcopal parish in America established, Jamestown
1633 - Galileo Galilei is tortured and threatened by Inquisition to "abjure, curse, & detest" his Copernican heliocentric views
1684 - King Charles II revokes Massachusetts Bay Colony charter
1788 - New Hampshire became the ninth and last necessary state to ratify the new
Constitution of the United States, thereby making the document the law of the land.
[H]
1805 - Great Stoneface Mt found in New Hampshire
1813 - At Vitoria, Spain a massive allied British, Portuguese, and Spanish force under British General Arthur Wellesley defeated the French under Joseph Bonaparte and Marshal Jean Jourdan, effectively ending the Peninsula War.
[H]
1821 - African Methodist Episcopal Zion (AMEZ) Church organizes (NYC)
1834 - Cyrus Hall McCormick got a patent for his reaping machine, a horse-drawn machine to harvest
wheat.
1868 - Wagner's only comic opera "Die Meistersinger von Nuremberg," premieres in Munich
1877 - The nation's increasingly embattled coal mines took center stage on this day in 1877, as ten members of a strident band of anthracite miners from Pennsylvania, known ads the "Molly Maguires" were hung for murder.
1879 - F. W. Woolworth opens his 1st store (failed almost immediately, so he found a new location and you know the rest...)
1887 - Britain celebrates golden jubilee of Queen Victoria
1893 - 1st Ferris wheel premieres (Chicago's Colombian Exposition)
1894 - Workers in Pittsburgh strike Pullman sleeping car company
1898 - Guam becomes a territory of US
1906 - U.S. canal commission decides Panama canal will be equipped with locks
1907 - E W Scripps founds United Press
1916 - The controversial U.S. military expedition against Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa brought the U.S. and Mexico closer to war when Mexican government troops attacked U.S. Brigadier General John J. Pershing's force at Carrizal, Mexico.
1917 - Hawaiian Red Cross founded
1919 - German Admiral von Reuter scuttles his own captured fleet
1923 - Marcus Garvey sentenced to 5 years for using mail to defraud
1932 - Heavyweight Max Schmeling lost a title fight by decision to Jack Sharkey, prompting Schmeling's manager, Joe Jacobs, to exclaim: "We was robbed!"
1938 - Baseball's Pinky Higgins gets 12th straight hit
1939 - Doctors reveal Lou Gehrig has amyotrophic laterial sclerosis
1940 - German occupiers disband Dutch States-General/Council of State
1942 - President Roosevelt/Prime Minister Churchill meet in Washington, DC
1942 - Rommel takes Tobruk in North Africa
1943 - Federal troops put down racial riot in Detroit 30 dead
1944 - Very heavy bombing on Berlin
1945 - Japanese defenders of Okinawa Island surrendered to American troops. American soldiers
found the body of the Japanese commander, Lt. Gen. Mitsuru Ushijima, who had committed suicide.
1946 - Bill Veeck buys Cleveland Indians for $2.2 million
1947 - The first post-war Mille Miglia began in Brescia, Italy
1948 - 1st stored computer program run - on the Manchester Mark I
1948 - Columbia Records became the first to commit to mass production of the 33-1/3-rpm album., plans to phase out 78's as Dr Peter Goldmark of CBS demonstrates "long playing record"
1948 - Lord Mountbatten resigns as Viceroy of India
1948 - The Republican national convention opened in Philadelphia.
1955 - Johnny Cash's first single, "Hey Porter," was released.
1963 - Cardinal Giovanni Battista Montini was chosen to succeed the late Pope John XXIII; the new pope took the name Paul VI.
1963 - France announces it will withdraw from NATO fleet in North Atlantic
1964 - 3 civil rights workers -- Michael H Schwerner Andrew Goodman & James E Chaney -- disappear after release from a Mississippi jail, on their way to investigate a church burning in Philadelphia, Miss. Their murdered bodies were found Aug.
4, buried in an earthen dam. [H]
1964 - Byron de la Beckwith arrested for murder of Medger Evers, found guilty 30 yr later
1968 - Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren resigns
1969 - Dmitri Shostakovitch's 14th Symphony, premieres in Moscow
1972 - Hurricane Agnes hit the eastern seaboard, wreaking havoc across seven states. Six days later, 118 people were dead.
1973 - The Supreme Court ruled that states may ban materials found to be obscene according to local standards.
1975 - "Jaws" by Steven Spielberg opens
1975 - Elton John, the Eagles, the Beach Boys, Rufus, and Joe Walsh played for 120,000 fans at Wembley Stadium in London.
1975 - Soyuz 19 returns to Earth
1977 - Former White House chief of staff HR Haldeman enters prison
1977 - Menachem Begin (Likud), becomes Israel's 6th PM
1978 - Andrew Lloyd Webber & Tim Rice's musical "Evita," premiers in London
1980 - Punk rock group The Stranglers was charged with starting a riot at Nice University in France.
1982 - John W. Hinckley, Jr., who on March 30, 1981, shot President Ronald Reagan and three others outside a Washington, D.C., hotel, was found not guilty of attempted murder for reasons of insanity. He was ordered
confined to a Washington, D.C., mental hospital.
1984 - The United States reported that an explosion in mid-May at a Soviet navy supply depot 900 miles north of Moscow had apparently killed more than 200 people.
1985 - American, Brazilian & West German forensic pathologists claim skeletal remains exhumed in Brazil were Nazi Dr Josef Mengele; strong doubts persist
~ June 6 [H]
1986 - Pres Reagan gives speech defending his judicial appointments
1987 - A parade in Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco, marked the 20th anniversary of the "Summer of Love."
1988 - The Rascals began its first tour together in 20 years, in Columbus, Ohio.
1989 - The Supreme Court ruled that burning the American flag as a form of political protest is protected by the First Amendment.
1990 - 7.7 Earthquake with 100s of after shocks hits Iran; about 50,000 die
1990 - A concert featuring Tracy Chapman, Judy Collins and Ritchie Havens marked Nelson Mandela Day in the United States.
1990 - At Yankee Stadium rally, Nelson Mandela dons a NY Yankee baseball cap & proclaims "I am a Yankee!"
1990 - NYC's Zodiac killer shoots 4th victim, Larry Parham
1990 - The U.S. House of Representatives failed by 34 votes to pass a flag-protection constitutional amendment.
1991 - Secretary of State James Baker visited Yugoslavia, where he pleaded for a peaceful solution to multiethnic conflicts that were threatening to erupt into civil war.
1992 - Russian President Boris Yeltsin returned home from his North America
tour.
1992 - "Batman Returns" smashed the box office record with a weekend opening estimated at $44.6 million.
1993 - The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal by Creedence Clearwater Revival's John Foherty to recover lawyers' fees from a failed copyright infringement suit brought against him.
1995 - Dr. Henry Foster lost a crucial Senate vote in his bid to become surgeon general as only 57 senators voted to cut off debate, three short of the 60 needed.
1996 - European leaders agreed to gradually lift a global ban on British beef exports imposed nearly three months earlier following a scare over "mad cow" disease.
1996 - Pentagon officials said American troops destroyed an Iraqi ammunition depot in March 1991 that may have contained chemical weapons.
1997 - Cambodia announced the capture of former Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot.
1997 - Summit leaders meeting in Denver wrestled with a list of global
challenges.
1997 - The WNBA made its debut as the New York Liberty defeated the Los Angeles
Sparks, 67-57.
1998 - Opposition leader Andres Pastrana Arango was elected president of Columbia by a narrow margin.
1999 - President Bill Clinton visited Slovenia, formerly part of Yugoslavia, where he publicly urged Serbs to reject Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic.
1999 - Yoko Ono told Newsweek that George Harrison and Ringo Starr were not among the first people she thought to call the night John Lennon was killed. She said the first thing she did when she got back from the hospital was to ask her assistant to call Paul McCartney, Julian Lennon and John's Aunt Mimi.
2000 - North Korea promised to refrain from long-range missile tests after the United States lifted some economic sanctions against it.
2000 - NASA announced that its Mars Global Surveyor had spotted grooved surface features, suggesting a relatively recent water flow on the planet.
2000 - Some 55 years after World War II ended, 22 Asian-American veterans received the Medal of Honor for bravery on the battlefield during a White House ceremony.
2001 - A federal grand jury in Alexandria, Va., indicted 13 Saudis and a
Lebanese in the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia that killed 19
American servicemen.
2001 - The first total solar eclipse of the new millennium swept across southern
Africa.
Birthdays
Today
1596 - Michael Fjodorovitsj, tsar of Russia (1613-45)/1st Romanov
1688 - Alexander Pope, English poet (Rape of the Lock)
1731 - Martha Washington (Dandridge Custis) (The first First Lady of the U.S., wife of 1st U.S. President
George Washington) (made a mean cherry pie, we hear) :-)
1732 - Johann Christoph Frederic Bach, composer
1774 - Daniel D. Tompkins, (D-R) 6th VP (1817-25)
1879 - Umberto Brunelleschi, Italian cartoonist/illustrator (Candide)
1882 - Rockwell Kent, artist/painter/illustrator (Canterbury Tales)
1891 - Hermann Scherchen, Berlin Germany, conductor (Nature of Music)
1892 - Reinhold Niebuhr, US, theologian (Nature & Destiny of Man)
1903 - Al[bert] Hirschfield, St Louis Mo, cartoonist (NINA, NY Times)
1903 - Dorothy Stickney, actress
1905 - Jean-Paul Sartre (philosopher, writer: Being and Nothingness; playwright: No Exit, The Flies, The Age of Reason; rejected Nobel Prize for literature [1964])
1905 - Randy Moore (baseball)
1912 - Mary McCarthy, American novelist (Group)
1918 - Eddie Lopat (Lopatynski) (baseball)
1921 - Jane (Ernestine) Russell (full-figured gal) (actress: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, The Outlaw, Paleface, The Road to Bali)
1921 - Judy Holliday (Tuvin) (actress: Adam's Rib, Bells are Ringing, Born Yesterday, It Should Happen to You)
1925 - Maureen Stapleton (Academy Award-winning actress: Reds [1981]; A View from the Bridge, Bye, Bye Birdie, Cocoon: The Return)
1927 - Carl Stokes (TV commentator) mayor of Cleveland
1930 - Helen Merrill (Milcetic) (jazz singer)
1930 - Mike McCormack, NFL offensive tackle (NY Yankees Cleveland)
1931 - Lawrence K Grossman, NBC News president
1931 - Margaret Heckler, former HEW secretary
1932 - Lalo [Boris] Schifrin, Buenos Aires Argentina, composer
1932 - O.C. (Ocie Lee) Smith (singer: Little Green Apples, Daddy's Little Man, Lighthouse, Slow Walk, The Son of Hickory Holler's Tramp; vocalist for Count Basie Orchestra)
1933 - Bernie Kopell (actor: Get Smart, The Love Boat, Love American Style, When Things were Rotten, Combat Academy)
1933 - Bernie Kopell, (Love Boat)
1935 - Fran‡oise Sagan, French novelist
1935 - Francoise Sagan (novelist: "Billions, and billions and billions of stars.")
1935 - Monte Markham, Actor
1938 - Ron Ely (Pierce) (actor: Tarzan; host: Miss America Pageant, Slavers, Doc Savage)
1940 - Joe Flaherty, Comedian (2nd City)
1940 - Mariette Hartley (actress: Encino Man, Silence of the Heart, Improper Channels; TV hostess, commercials: Polaroid)
1943 - Brian Sternberg (pole-vaulter)
1944 - Ray Davies, a kinky singer
1947 - Duane Thomas (football: Dallas Cowboys running back: Super Bowl V, VI)
1947 - Meredith Baxter Birney (actress: Family Ties, Bridget Loves Bernie, Til Murder Do Us Part)
1947 - Michael Gross (actor: Family Ties, Firestorm: 72 Hours in Oakland, In the Heat of Passion 2: Unfaithful)
1947 - Wade Phillips (football: coach: Denver Broncos)
1953 - Benazir Bhutto, 1st female leader of a Moslem nation (Pakistan)
1956 - Rick Sutcliffe (baseball: Rookie of the Year: LA Dodgers [1979]; Cy Young Award-winner: Chicago Cubs [1984])
1973 - Juliette Lewis (actress: Cape Fear, Husbands and Wives, Natural Born Killers, Romeo is Bleeding, What's Eating Gilbert Grape?)
1982 - Prince William of Wales, son of Prince Charles & Princess Diana
Famous
deaths
1377 - Edward III, king of England (1327-77), dies
1527 - Nicolo Machiavelli, Florentine statesman/author (The Prince), dies at 57
1529 - John Skelton, English poet, dies at 69
1591 - Aloysius [Luigi] Gonzaga, Prince/Italian Jesuit saint, dies
1908 - Nikolai A Rimski-Korsakov, prolific Russian composer/orchestrator (Sheherazade, The Tsar's Bride, The Legend of theee Invisible City of Kitezh), dies at 64
1934 - [James] Thorne Smith, US, fantasy author (Stray Lamb, Turnabout)
1964 - Andrew Goodman, US civil rights activist, murdered at 20 [H]
1964 - James Chaney, US civil rights activist, murdered at 21 [H]
1964 - Michael Schwerner, US civil rights activist, murder at 21 [H]
1965 - Bernard M Baruch, pres advisor, dies at 94
1973 - Frank Leahy, football coach (Notre Dame), dies at 64
1995 - Tristan Jones, sailor, dies at 71
2001 - Actor Carroll O'Connor at 76
2001 - Blues musician John Lee Hooker at 80.
If
you have other Birthdays or events to add for this day please
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