TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON: JUNE 3
1098 Christian Crusaders of the First Crusade seize Antioch, Turkey
1492 Martin Behaim presents the world’s first globe
1539 Hernando De Soto claims Florida for Spain.
1784 The U.S. Congress formally created the United States Army to replace the disbanded Continental Army. On June 14, 1775, the Second Continental Congress had created the Continental Army for purposes of common defense and this event is considered to be the birth of the United States Army.
1800 John Adams moved to Washington, DC. He was the first President to live in what later became the capital of the United States.
1864 Some 7,000 Union troops are killed within 30 minutes during the Battle of Cold Harbor in Virginia.
1888 The classic baseball poem “Casey at the Bat,” written by Ernest L. Thayer, is published in the San Francisco Examiner.
1918 Supreme Court rules child labor laws unconstitutional
1923 In Italy, dictator Benito Mussolini grants women the right to vote.
1938 The German Third Reich votes to confiscate so-called “degenerate art.”
1943 A mob of 60 from the Los Angeles Naval Reserve Armory beat up everyone perceived to be Hispanic, starting the week-long Zoot Suit Riots
1965 Astronaut Edward White becomes the first American to walk in space when he exits the Gemini 4 space capsule.
1969 74 American sailors die when the destroyer USS Frank E. Evans was cut in two by an Australian aircraft carrier in the South China Sea.
1976 US presented with oldest known copy of Magna Carta
1979 Ixtoc I rig in the Gulf of Mexico blows, spilling 3 million barrels of oil in one of the worst oil spills in history
1982 The Israeli ambassador to the U.K. is shot. Shlomo Argov survived the assassination attempt by a Palestinian terrorist group, but he was permanently paralyzed. The event triggered the 1982 Lebanon War.
1989 The Chinese government begins its crackdown on pro-democracy activists in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Hundreds are killed and thousands are arrested.
2013 The trial against whistleblower Bradley Manning begins. The American soldier, a trans woman now called Chelsea Manning, was responsible for leaking classified videos documenting U.S. war atrocities during the Iraq War. She was sentenced to 35 years confinement.
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
