FRIDAY JUNE 8
1824 The washing machine is patented by Noah Cushing.
1869 Ives McGaffney of Chicago patents the first vacuum cleaner.
1861, Tennessee became the 11th and final state to secede from the Union. It was also the first state readmitted to the Union after the end of the Civil War.
1948, The Milton Berle Show debuted on NBC as the Texaco Star Theater, with Berle originally a guest host before later becoming the permanent star. The show was a huge hit, and Uncle Milty was credited with boosting the new TV industry.
1950, the Boston Red Sox set the major-league record for runs scored by one team as they destroyed the St. Louis Browns, 29-4, at Fenway Park.
1953 The U.S. Supreme Court rules that restaurants in the District Of Columbia cannot refuse to serve blacks.
1963 A drive against cigarette smoking is opened by the American Heart Association, the first voluntary public agency to do so.
1965 U.S. troops in South Vietnam are given orders to begin fighting offensively, not just defensively, as American policy originally dictated.
1966, pro football reached a merger agreement under which the NFL and AFL would be joined into one league, with two divisions: the NFC and the AFC. The merger also created the yearly championship that we now call the Super Bowl, with the first one played in 1967.
1968, the capture in London of James Earl Ray, the suspected assassin of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., was announced.
1969, baseball legend Mickey Mantle’s No. 7 was retired by the New York Yankees on Mickey Mantle Day at Yankee Stadium.
1969 President Richard Nixon announces that 25,000 U.S. troops will be withdrawn from Vietnam by the end of August.
1987, Fawn Hall, Oliver North’s secretary, began testifying at the Iran-Contra hearings about how she helped shred documents and steal others for her boss.
1995, Mickey Mantle received a liver transplant at a Dallas hospital. He died of cancer two months later.
1999, President Clinton announced new restrictions aimed at making it tougher for teens to sneak into R-rated movies.
SATURDAY JUNE 9
1534, French explorer Jacques Cartier became the first European to discover the river he named for St. Lawrence in present-day Quebec.
1822 Charles Graham receives the first patent for false teeth.
1869 Charles Elmer Hires sells his first root beer in Philadelphia.
1870 Author Charles Dickens (David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol) dies at age 58.
1883 The Chicago El, the first commercial electric railway line, begins operation.
1898, with the signing of the Second Convention of Peking, Britain was granted 99 years of rule over Hong Kong.
1934, Donald Duck made his first screen appearance, in The Wise Little Hen.
1954, during the Senate-Army hearings, Army counsel Joseph Welch assailed Communist-hunting SenatorJoseph McCarthy for his verbal attack on a member of Welch’s law firm. Welch famously said, “Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”
1973, Secretariat became horse racing’s first Triple Crown winner in 25 years by winning the 105th Belmont Stakes after taking the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness. Secretariat set a one-and-a-half-mile course world record (two minutes, 24 seconds) and a record for largest margin of victory in the Belmont (31 lengths).
1978, leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints struck down a 148-year-old policy excluding black men from the Mormon priesthood.
1980, comedian Richard Pryor suffered nearly fatal burns at his California home when a mixture of “free-base” cocaine exploded.
1986, the Rogers Commission released its report on the Challenger disaster, saying an O-ring on one of the solid fuel rockets had failed, causing the explosion of the space shuttle a little over one minute after takeoff. The report criticized NASA and rocket-builder Morton Thiokol for management problems that led to disaster, which took the lives of seven astronauts.
1993, Japanese Crown Prince Naruhito married commoner Masako Owada in an elaborate Shinto religious ceremony.
1993 The U.S. Post Office unveils its “Legends Of American Music, Rock And Roll-Rhythm And Blues” stamp series. It features Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, Bill Haley, Ritchie Valens, Otis Redding, Clyde McPhatter, and Dinah Washington.
1999, after 78 days of NATO airstrikes, Yugoslav and Western generals signed a pact clearing the way for a Kosovo peace plan.
2000, the Justice Department released a report saying an 18-month investigation had found no credible evidence that conspirators aided or framed James Earl Ray in the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
SUNDAY JUNE 10
1692, Bridget Bishop was hanged as the first victim of the Salem witch trials.
1854, the U.S. Naval Academy graduated its first class.
1910 Blues legend Howlin’ Wolf is born. He dies in 1976.
1922 Actress-singer Judy Garland (The Wizard Of Oz, Meet Me In St. Louis, Easter Parade, A Star Is Born; mother of Liza Minnelli) is born. She dies in 1969.
1935, Alcoholics Anonymous was founded by William G. Wilson and Dr. Robert Smith.
1943 The ball point pen is invented.
1946, Italy replaced its abolished monarchy with a republic.
1952 The first drive-thru restaurant opens.
1962 Actor Chris Penn (Footloose, Reservoir Dogs, Rush Hour; brother of Sean Penn is born. He dies in January of 2006.
1965 The first Subway Sandwiches store opens.
1967, the Six-Day Middle East War ended as Israel, Jordan, Iraq, Egypt, and Syria agreed to observe a U.N.-mediated cease-fire.
1977, convicted Martin Luther King, Jr. assassin James Earl Ray escaped from prison in Tennessee. He was recaptured three days later.
1978, Affirmed won the 110th Belmont Stakes becoming horse racing’s most recent Triple Crown winner.
1985 Coca-Cola announces that they will bring back their original flavor as “Classic Coke,” after their “New Coke” campaign doesn’t work out.
1985, Claus Von Bulow was acquitted in his retrial on charges that he’d tried to murder his heiress wife,Martha “Sunny” Von Bulow. The story of his trial was made into the film Reversal Of Fortune.
1996, The Rosie O’Donnell Show debuted.
1999, NATO announced that it had suspended the bombing campaign in Kosovo, and the U.N. Security Council formally ratified the negotiated peace proposal.
2002, American Jose Padilla was arrested for allegedly plotting with al-Qaida terrorists to detonate a “dirty bomb” that would spread radioactive material, possibly targeting Washington, D.C. Padilla was a former gang member from Chicago who’d converted to Islam.
has closed the Mormon Island State Recreation Area swimming beach following reports of swimmer’s itch.
