TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – JUNE 6
1523 Gustav Vasa becomes king of Sweden.
1674 Sivaji crowns himself King of India.
1813 The United States invasion of Canada is halted at Stony Creek, Ontario.
1833 Andrew Jackson became the first U.S. president to ride in a train. It was a B&O passenger train.
1844 The Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) was founded in London.
1882 The first electric iron was patented by H.W. Seely.
1923 Much debate and laws occur when one-piece swimming suits become the fashion for beach-bound women. Various cities ban the new style while others will allow it but only if the new suits are appropriate for swimming and not just for fashion.
1924 The German Reichstag accepts the Dawes Plan, an American plan to help Germany pay off its war debts.
1925 Chrysler Corporation was founded by Walter Percy Chrysler.
1930 Frozen foods are sold commercially for the first time.
1933 The first drive in movie theater is opened in Camden, NJ.
1934 President Franklin Roosevelt signs the Securities Exchange Act, establishing the Securities and Exchange Commission.
1941 The U.S. government authorizes the seizure of foreign ships in U.S. ports.
1944 D-Day: Operation Overlord lands 400,000 Allied American, British, and Canadian troops on the beaches of Normandy in German-occupied France.
1946 The National Basketball Association (NBA) is founded
1966 African American James Meredith is shot and wounded while on a solo march in Mississippi to promote voter registration among blacks.
1968 U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy died at 1:44am in Los Angeles after being shot by Sirhan Sirhan. Kennedy was was shot the evening before while campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination.
1978 California voters overwhelmingly approve Proposition 13 A “People’s Initiative to Limit Property Taxation,”. Following the proposition 13 passage a cap is placed on property tax rates in the state, reducing them by an average of 57%.
1981 A major rail accident when more than 500 passengers are killed is caused by an engineer who was reverential of cows causing the train to go over the bridge and sink in the river.
1982 Israel invades southern Lebanon.The 1982 Lebanon War was triggered by the attack on Israeli ambassador, Shlomo Argov, in London on June 3. Thousands of civilians died during the war, which lasted three years.
1984 The video game Tetris is published Russian computer engineer, Alexey Pajitnov, created the puzzle game. With over 100 million copies sold, it is one of the most successful video games in history
1985 The U.S. Senate authorized nonmilitary aid to the Contras. The vote authorized $38 million over two years.
1985 The body of Nazi war criminal Dr. Josef Mengele is located and exhumed near Sao Paolo, Brazil.
1999Napster the online music file sharing service starts as the first widely-used peer-to-peer sharing service allowing music fans to easily share MP3 format song files with each other. The service is shut down by court order in July 2001.
2002 President Bush proposed a new Cabinet department: The Department of Homeland Security.
2005 The United States Supreme Court ruled that federal authorities could prosecute sick people who smoke marijuana on doctor’s orders. The ruling concluded that state medical marijuana laws did not protect uses from the federal ban on the drug.
2012 Archaeologists found two medieval “vampire” skeletons. The skeletons had been pierced through the chest by an iron rod that was meant to pin them to their graves and to prevent them from becoming vampires.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
