Click photos for links to more information. June 30, 1520: Hernán Cortés and his army of Spanish conquistadors and native allies fought their way out of Tenochtitlan following the death of the Aztec king Moctezuma II, whom the Spaniards had been holding as a hostage. The event is often referred to as La Noche Triste account of the sorrow that Cortés and his surviving followers expressed at the loss of life and treasure incurred in the escape from Tenochtitlan. July 1, 1898: The Battle of San Juan Hill was fought in Santiago de Cuba. The fight for the heights was the bloodiest and most famous battle of the Warm as it was the scene of the greatest victory for the Rough Riders and their commander, the future Vice-President and later President, Theodore Roosevelt, who was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor in 2001 for his actions, July 2, 1776: The Continental Congress adopted a resolution severing ties with the Kingdom of Great Britain although the wording of the formal Declaration of Independence was not approved until July 4th. July 3, 1940: the French fleet of the Atlantic based at Mers el Kébir, was bombarded by the British fleet, coming from Gibraltar, causing the loss of three battleships: Dunkerque, Provence and Bretagne. One thousand two hundred sailors perished. July 4, 1939: Lou Gehrig, recently diagnosed with Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, told a crowd at Yankee Stadium that he considered himself "The luckiest man on the face of the earth" as he announced his retirement from major league July 5, 1937: Spam, the luncheon meat, was introduced into the market by the Hormel Foods Corporation. During World War II, more than 100 million pounds of the product were shipped overseas to feed Allied troops. After the war, Hormel aggressively market the product, increasing its popularity. Today, over seven billion cans of Spam have been sold worldwide. July 6, 1885: Louis Pasteur successfully tested his vaccine against rabies. The patient was Joseph Meister, a boy who had been bitten by a rabid dog. Despite facing possible prosecution for practicing medicine without a license, Pasteur decided to treat the boy with an experimental vaccine he had only tested on dogs.
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Click photos for links to more information. June 23, 1865: Brigadier General Stand Watie of the Confederate Army signed a cease-fire agreement with Union representatives for his command, the First Indian Brigade of the Army of the Trans-Mississippi at Doaksville in the Choctaw Nation. He was the last Confederate general in the field to surrender. June 24, 1314: The Battle of Bannockburn concluded with a decisive victory by Scottish forces led by Robert the Bruce, though England did not recognize Scottish independence until 1328 with the signing of the Treaty of Edinburgh-Northampton. June 25, 1976: Missouri Governor Kit Bond issued an executive order rescinding the Extermination Order and formally apologized on behalf of the state of Missouri for the suffering it had caused to the members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in the aftermath of the 1838 Mormon War. June 26, 1918: Allied Forces under John J. Pershing and James Harbord defeated Imperial German Forces under Wilhelm, German Crown Prince at the Battle of Belleau Wood. June 27, 1905: Sailors start a mutiny aboard the Russian Battleship Potemkin, denouncing the crimes of autocracy, demanding liberty and an end to war. The uprising later came to be viewed as an initial step towards the Russian Revolution of 1917. June 28, 1919: The Treaty of Versailles was signed in Paris, bringing fighting to an end in between Germany and the Allies of World War I. The other Central Powers were dealt with in separate treaties. Although the armistice, signed on 11 November 1918, ended the actual fighting, it took six months of negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference to conclude the peace treaty. June 29, 1950: The United States defeated England, 1-0, during the 1950 FIFA World Cup at Independência Stadium, in the city of Belo Horizonte. Striker Joe Gaetjens was the goal scorer. The result is considered one of the greatest upsets in the history of sports. Click photos for links to more information. June 16, 1816: Lord Byron read Fantasmagoriana to his four house guests at the Villa Diodati, Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, Claire Clairmont, and John Polidori, and challenged each guest to write a ghost story. His challenge culminated in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, John Polidori's short story, The Vampyre, and Byron's poem, Darkness. June 17, 1963: The United States Supreme Court ruled 8 to 1 in Abington School District v. Schempp against requiring the reciting of Bible verses and the Lord's Prayer in public schools. June 18, 1815: The Duke of Wellington and Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher defeated Napoleon Bonaparte at the Battle of Waterloo thereby forcing Bonaparte to abdicate the throne of France for the second and final time. June 19, 1865: Over two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, slaves in Galveston, Texas, United States, were finally informed of their freedom when General Gordon Granger read the contents of “General Order No. 3”. The anniversary is still officially celebrated in Texas and 13 other states as Juneteenth. June 20, 1893: Lizzie Borden was acquitted of the murders of her father and stepmother. Andrew Borden and Abby Borden were brutally murdered on August 4, 1892, in Fall River, Massachusetts. Lizzie Borden was arrested for the murders a week later. June 21, 1964: Three civil rights workers, Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Mickey Schwerner, were murdered in Neshoba County, Mississippi, by members of the Ku Klux Klan. June 22, 2009: Eastman Kodak Company announced that it would discontinue sales of the Kodachrome Color Film, concluding its 74-year run as a photography icon. Click photos for links to more information June 9, 1885: A peace treaty was signed to end the Sino-French War, with China eventually giving up Tonkin and Annam – most of present-day Vietnam – to France. June 10, 1829: The first University Boat Race between the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge took place. The event has been held annually since 1856, except during World War I and World War II. As of 2013 Cambridge have won the race 81 times and Oxford 77 times, with one dead heat. June 11, 1865: The Naval Battle of Riachuelo was fought on the rivulet Riachuelo (Argentina), between the Paraguayan Navy on one side and the Brazilian Navy on the other. The Brazilian victory was crucial for the later success of the Triple Alliance (Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina) in the Paraguayan War. June 12, 1964: Anti-apartheid activist and ANC leader Nelson Mandela was sentenced to life in prison for sabotage in South Africa. He served 27 years in prison, first on Robben Island, and later in Pollsmoor Prison and Victor Verster Prison, until his eventual release granted in 1990. June 13, 1893: Grover Cleveland underwent a secret, successful surgery to remove a large, cancerous portion of his jaw. The operation was not revealed to US public until 1917, nine years after the president's death. June 14, 1789: The HMS Bounty mutiny survivors, including Captain William Bligh along with eighteen others, reached Timor after a nearly 4,600 mile journey in an open boat. In October 1790, Bligh was honourably acquitted at the court-martial inquiring into the loss of the Bounty. June 15, 1785: Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and his companion, Pierre Romain, became the first-ever casualties of an air crash when their hot air balloon exploded during their attempt to cross the English Channel. De Rozier and the Marquis d'Arlandes made the first manned free balloon flight in 1783. Click photos for links to more information June 2, 1896: Guglielmo Marconi applied for a patent for his newest invention, the radio. As an entrepreneur, businessman, and founder of the The Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company in Britain in 1897, Marconi succeeded in making a commercial success of radio by innovating and building on the work of previous experimenters and physicists. June 3, 1839: In Humen, China, Lin Tse-hsü destroyed 1.2 million kg of opium confiscated from British merchants, providing Britain with a casus belli to open hostilities, resulting in the First Opium War. June 4, 1939: The MS St. Louis, a ship carrying 963 Jewish refugees, was denied permission to land in Florida, in the United States, after already being turned away from Cuba. Forced to return to Europe, more than 200 of its passengers later died in Nazi concentration camps. June 5, 1851: Harriet Beecher Stowe's anti-slavery serial, Uncle Tom's Cabin, or Life Among the Lowly, started a ten-month run in the National Era abolitionist newspaper. The novel changed forever how Americans viewed slavery, as it demanded an end of the institution, galvanized the abolition movement, and contributed to the outbreak of the Civil War. June 6, 1844: The Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) was founded in London in response to unhealthy social conditions arising in the big cities at the end of the Industrial Revolution. George Williams, who had come to London to work as a sales assistant in a draper’s shop, joined a group of fellow drapers to organize the first YMCA in order to substitute Bible study and prayer for life on the streets. June 7, 1892: Homer Plessy was arrested for refusing to leave his seat in the “whites-only” car of a train. Plessy would lose the resulting court case, Plessy v. Ferguson, in 1896. The landmark United States Supreme Court decision upheld the constitutionality of state laws requiring racial segregation in public facilities under the doctrine of “separate but equal.” June 8, 1794: Robespierre inaugurated the French Revolution's new state religion, the Cult of the Supreme Being, with large organized festivals all across France. The primary principles of the Cult of the Supreme Being were a belief in the existence of a god and the immortality of the human soul. |
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