FRIDAY, JUNE 15
1215, Britain’s King John signed the Magna Carta, the first charter of English freedoms, and one of the most important documents in the history of political and human liberty.
1752, Ben Franklin proves lightning and electricity are related while flying a kite with a key attached during a thunderstorm.
1775, The Second Continental Congress votes unanimously to appoint George Washington Commander-In-Chief of the Continental Army.
1851, Baltimore dairyman Jacob Fussell sets up the first ice cream factory.
1916, The Boys Scouts of America are incorporated by a bill signed by President Wilson.
1924, J. Edgar Hoover becomes head of the FBI.
1992, Then-Vice President Dan Quayle, relying on an incorrect flash card, tells a Trenton, New Jersey, elementary school student that potato is spelled “potatoe.”
1995, At the O.J. Simpson murder trial, Simpson struggles to put on a pair of gloves that prosecutors say were worn the night Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were murdered.
1996, A truck bomb blew up in a retail district of Manchester, England, injuring more than 200 people in an attack claimed by the Irish Republican Army.
1996, Ella Fitzgerald, the “first lady of song,” died in Beverly Hills, California, at age 78.
SATURDAY, JUNE 16
1816 After an evening of ghost stories, Mary Shelley has a nightmare that gives her the inspiration forFrankenstein.
1829 Native American leader Geronimo is born. He dies in 1909.
1858, Senate candidate Abraham Lincoln gave a speech calling for an end to the fight over slavery. He famously said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
1884, The first roller coaster opens at Coney Island in Brooklyn, New York.
1890 Stan Laurel (of Laurel & Hardy fame; he’s the skinny one) is born. He dies in 1965.
1893, Cracker Jacks are invented by R.W. Rueckheim.
1897, the government signed a treaty of annexation with Hawaii.
1903, Ford Motor Company was incorporated.
1907 Actor Jack Albertson (Chico & The Man‘s Ed, a.k.a “The Man”) is born. He dies in 1981.
1949, Raging Bull Jake La Motta captured the middleweight boxing championship with a win over Marcel Cerdan.
1959 Actor George Reeves (he played Superman on TV and Stuart Tarleton in Gone With The Wind) is found dead of a gunshot wound at age 45. It’s ruled a suicide, although some people still question the ruling.
1972, actors Natalie Wood and Robert Wagner married for the second time.
1978 The movie Grease, starring Olive Newton-John and John Travolta, opens nationwide.
1987, Bernhard Goetz was acquitted of attempted murder in the New York City subway shooting of four young black men he said were going to rob him. He was eventually convicted of illegal weapons possession.
1996, Russians held their first independent presidential election. President Boris Yeltsin won after surviving a run-off.
1996, on this Father’s Day, just after the Chicago Bulls beat the Seattle Supersonics to win the NBA championship, Michael Jordan sank to the court’s floor and burst into tears, a release of the grief he felt for the loss of his father, who had been murdered in a random roadside attack three years before.
1998, Massachusetts’ highest court cleared the way for Louise Woodward to return home to England, upholding a judge’s ruling that freed the au pair convicted of killing a baby.
1998, The Detroit Red Wings took home the Stanley Cup for the second consecutive year after completing a sweep of the Washington Capitals with a 4-to-1 victory in game four.
1999, Vice President Al Gore announced his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination.
1999, Kathleen Ann Soliah, a fugitive member of the Symbionese Liberation Army, was captured in St. Paul, Minn., where she was living as Sara Jane Olson.
1999, Thabo Mbeki took the oath as president of South Africa, succeeding Nelson Mandela.
2000, Federal regulators approved the merger of Bell Atlantic and GTE Corporation, creating the nation’s largest local phone company.
SUNDAY, JUNE 17
1775, the Revolutionary War Battle of Bunker Hill was fought near Boston. American Colonel William Prescott told his troops, “Don’t fire till you see the whites of their eyes.”
1856, in Philadelphia, the Republican Party opened its first convention.
1885, the Statue of Liberty arrived in New York City.
1928, Amelia Earhart began a trans-Atlantic flight from Newfoundland to Wales – the first by a woman.
1962, a young Jack Nicklaus, who had just turned pro five months before, beat heavily-favored crowd favorite Arnold Palmer in an 18-hole playoff by three strokes to win his first of many U.S. Open titles.
1963, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down rules requiring the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer or reading of Biblical verses in public schools.
1972, five burglars broke into the Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate office building in Washington, D.C., and were arrested while trying to install eavesdropping equipment. This event ultimately resulted in the first resignation of a U.S. president, Richard Nixon.
1994, O.J. Simpson was charged with two counts of murder in the killings of his ex-wife Nicole and her friend, Ronald Goldman. He led a convoy of police cruisers on a slow-speed chase over 60 miles of Southern California freeways that was telecast live to the nation before he surrendered at his estate.
1994, the United States played host to the World Cup soccer tournament for the first time.
1996, ValuJet Airlines suspended its flight schedule indefinitely after a federal inspection found “several serious deficiencies” in the discount carrier’s operation. ValuJet resumed operations 15 weeks later.
1998, The Senate snuffed out Congress’ first bill to curb teen smoking, with Democrats accusing Republicans of being owned by Big Tobacco, and Republicans charging the measure was laden with too many amendments.
1999, The Republican-controlled House narrowly voted to loosen restrictions on sales at gun shows, marking a victory for the National Rifle Association.
1999, Joseph Stanley Faulder, a former auto mechanic who killed a woman during a 1975 burglary, was lethally injected in Huntsville, Texas and became the first Canadian to be executed in the United States in almost 50 years.
2000, In Cuba, more than 300,000 people turned out to protest the continued stay of Elian Gonzalez in the United States; it was the largest such demonstration since the previous December, when Cuba launched a national campaign of mass gatherings demanding the boy’s return.
