TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – JUNE 9 2019
0452 Attila the Hun invades Italy.
0793 Vikings in long ships from modern-day Norway plunder St Cuthbert’s monastery on Lindisfarne Island, off the northeast coast of England
1191 King Richard I of England arrives at Acre in modern day Israel to join the Siege of Acre during the Third Crusade
1783 Laki volcano in southern Iceland begins 8-month eruption, killing 10,000 and causing widespread famines throughout Asia and Europe
1786 1st commercially-made ice cream sold (NY)
1789 James Madison introduces a proposed Bill of Rights in the US House of Representatives
1861 Tennessee votes to secede from the Union and join the Confederacy.
1887 Herman Hollerith patents his punch card calculator
The U.S. data processing pioneer, one of the grandfathers of the technology company IBM, used his revolutionary machine to process the large amount of data collected during the U.S. census of 1890/1891.
1904 U.S. Marines land in Tangiers, Morocco, to protect U.S. citizens.
1915 William Jennings Bryan quits as Secretary of State under President Woodrow Wilson.
1949 George Orwell publishes Nineteen Eighty-Four
Orwell’s nightmarish description of a totalitarian society set in the year 1984 is one of the most significant works of English literature and one of the best-known novels of all time. The phrase, Big Brother is watching you, stems from this work.
1953 The Supreme Court forbids segregated lunch counters in Washington, D.C.
1966 Gemini astronaut Gene Cernan attempts to become the first man to orbit the Earth untethered to a space capsule, but is unable to when he exhausts himself fitting into his rocket pack.
1967 Israeli airplanes attack the USS Liberty, a surveillance ship, in the Mediterranean, killing 34 Navy crewmen.
1968 James Earl Ray was arrested in London Airport on charges of conspiracy and murder in connection with the assassination of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
1969 President Richard Nixon meets with President Thieu of South Vietnam to tell him 25,000 U.S. troops will pull out by August.
1982 President Reagan became the first American president to address a joint session of Britain’s Parliament.
1987 New Zealand’s Labour government legislates against nuclear weapons and nuclear powered vessels in NZ. Only nation to legislate against nuclear power.
1987 The secretary “Fawn Hall” to national security aide Lt. Colonel Oliver North testified at the Iran-Contra hearings, saying she had helped to shred some documents. She had testified in exchange for immunity from prosecution.
1995 U.S. Air Force pilot Captain Scott O’Grady is rescued by U.S. Marines in Bosnia.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
