JUNE 1
1495, The first written record of scotch whiskey appears in The Exchequer Rolls of Scotland. Friar John Cor is the distiller.
1774, the Boston Port Bill, the first of the so-called Intolerable Acts imposed on the American colonies by England, became effective, closing Boston harbor until restitution was made for the tea destroyed in the Boston Tea Party.
1862, Robert E. Lee was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Confederate Army.
1862 Slavery is abolished in all U.S. possessions.
1880 The U.S. census stands at 50,155,783.
1890 The U.S. census stands at 62,622,250.
1925, Lou Gehrig entered a game against the Washington Senators in the eighth inning, beginning his record string of 2,130 consecutive games played. That record was broken by the Baltimore Orioles’ Cal Ripken, Jr.
1926, Legendary actress Marilyn Monroe was born. She died of a drug overdose on August 5th, 1962.
1938 Superman makes his debut in the first edition of Action Comics, which sells for 10 cents.
1939 Actor Cleavon Little (Blazing Saddles) is born. He dies in 1992.
1944, the BBC broadcast a line of poetry by 19th century French poet Paul Verlaine that was a coded message warning the French resistance that the D-Day invasion was imminent. The line was: “The long sobs of the violins of autumn.”
1958, Charles de Gaulle became premier of France.
1964 The Supreme Court bans prayers and Bible teaching in public schools on the constitutional grounds of separation of church and state.
1967, the Beatles released the album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. in the U.K. It was released in America one day later.
1968, author-lecturer Helen Keller, who earned a college degree despite being blind and deaf most of her life, died in Westport, Connecticut.
1980, Cable News Network (CNN) made its debut as TV’s first all-news station.
1997, Malcolm X’s widow, Betty Shabazz, was critically burned in a fire set by her 12-year-old grandson in her Yonkers, New York, apartment. She died less than a month later.
1998, President Clinton abruptly abandoned his executive privilege claim in the Monica Lewinskyinvestigation, reducing the prospect of a quick Supreme Court review of a dispute over the testimony of presidential aides.
1998, Thousands of refugees from Serbia’s Kosovo province streamed into neighboring Albania to escape deadly fighting.
1999, An American Airlines MD-82 landed off-center during a severe thunderstorm in Little Rock, Arkansas, and barreled off the end of the runway, breaking apart and catching fire; 11 people, including the captain, died.
2005 The Strawberry Field children’s home in Liverpool, England, which was immortalized in the 1967Beatles hit “Strawberry Fields Forever,” shut its doors after 69 years of operation.
JUNE 2
1692, The famous Salem Witch Trials begin. Massachusetts Bay Colony Governor Sir William Phipsordered a special court to expedite judgment of more than 150 people accused of witchcraft. Bridget Bishop was the first to be tried, and would end up being the first “witch” hanged only eight days later.
1740 Author the Marquis De Sade is born. He dies in 1814.
1851, Maine become the first state to pass a law banning alcohol.
1886, President Grover Cleveland married Frances Folsom in a White House ceremony. He’s the only president to ever marry in the executive mansion while in office.
1896, the radio was patented by Guglielmo Marconi.
1904 Athlete and actor Johnny Weissmuller is born. As a swimmer, he wins five Olympic Gold Medals and 52 national championships and set 67 world records. As an actor, his biggest roles was Tarzan, a job he kept from 1932 to 1948. He died in 1984.
1924, Congress granted full citizenship to American Indians.
1928 Kraft’s Velveeta Cheese is invented.
1935, Babe Ruth announced his retirement from baseball in his 22nd major league season, finishing his career with the Boston Braves.
1953, in a ceremony carried live on worldwide TV, Queen Elizabeth II was crowned in Westminster Abbey 16 months after the death of her father, King George the Sixth. The crowning of the new Queen Of England is one of the first international news events to be given complete coverage on television, as the BBC and all three American TV networks are on hand. Most viewers watch in black and white, since color TV is not yet the industry standard.
1987, President Ronald Reagan announced he was nominating economist Alan Greenspan to succeedPaul Volcker as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.
1989 10,000 Chinese soldiers are blocked by 100,000 Chinese citizens who are protecting students demonstrating for democracy in Tiananmen Square in Beijing.
1990 Actor Rex Harrison (My Fair Lady, Doctor Dolittle) dies at age 82.
1995, a U.S. Air Force plane was shot down by a Bosnian Serb missile while on NATO air patrol in Bosnia. Pilot Captain Scott O’Grady was rescued six days later.
1997, Timothy McVeigh was convicted on federal charges of murder and conspiracy in the Oklahoma City bombing. He was later sentenced to death and executed.
JUNE 3
1800, John Adams became the first president to live in the new capital of Washington, D.C. However, he didn’t move into the Executive Mansion — later known as The White House — until November.
1888, Ernest Lawrence Thayer’s classic baseball poem, “Casey at the Bat,” was first published, in theSan Francisco Daily Examiner. It appeared anonymously.
1925, Tony Curtis was born today. He dies in 2010.
1937, the Duke of Windsor, formerly King Edward the Eighth of England, who had abdicated the throne for the woman he loved, married that woman, American divorcee Wallis Warfield Simpson, in a civil ceremony in France.
1946, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that race separation on interstate buses is unconstitutional.
1959, the U.S. Air Force Academy graduated its first cadets.
1965, astronaut Edward White became the first American to walk in space, during the flight of Gemini Four.
1967, “Respect” by Aretha Franklin peaked at Number One on the pop singles chart.
1968, pop artist Andy Warhol was critically wounded in his New York film studio, known as The Factory, by actress Valerie Solanas.
1969, the last episode of the cult classic science-fiction TV show Star Trek aired on NBC.
1989, Chinese army troops began their sweep of Beijing to crush student-led pro-democracy demonstrations.
1989 Former Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini dies at age 89.
1992, Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton played the saxophone on The Arsenio Hall Show. Clinton played “Heartbreak Hotel” and “God Bless the Child.”
1999, caving in to Russian and Western demands, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic accepted a peace plan for Kosovo designed to end mass expulsions of ethnic Albanians and 11 weeks of NATO airstrikes.
2001 Actor Anthony Quinn (Lawrence Of Arabia, Zorba The Greek) dies at age 86.
