2004 – The World War II Memorial is dedicated in Washington, D.C.
1167 – Battle of Monte Porzio: Holy Roman army supporting Pope Alexander III is defeated by Christian of Buch and Rainald of Dassel
1176 – Battle at Legnano: Lombard League beats Frederick Barbarossa and the Holy Roman Empire
1453 – Constantinople, capital of the Eastern Roman Empire falls to the Turks under Mehmed II; ends the Byzantine Empire
1660 – On his 30th birthday Charles II returns to London from exile in the Netherlands to claim the English throne after the Puritan Commonwealth comes to an end
1733 – The right of Canadians to keep Indian slaves is upheld in Quebec City
1765 – Patrick Henry’s historic speech against the Stamp Act, answering a cry of “Treason!” with, “If this be treason, make the most of it!”
1787 – “Virginia Plan” by Thomas Jefferson proposed to the Constitutional Convention advocating for a national government with three branches – legislative, executive, and judicial
1790 – Rhode Island becomes last of original 13 colonies ratifying US Constitution
1848 – Wisconsin becomes 30th US state
1849 – Lincoln says “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.”
1903 – May coup d’etat: Alexander Obrenovich, King of Serbia, and Queen Draga, are assassinated in Belgrade by the Black Hand (Crna Ruka) organization
1912 – 15 young women are fired by Curtis Publishing in Philadelphia for dancing the “Turkey Trot” during their lunch break
1916 – Official flag of President of the United States adopted
1916 – U.S. forces invaded Dominican Republic and remained until 1924.
1919 – Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, that when light passes a large body, gravity will bend the rays confirmed by Arthur Eddington’s expedition to photograph a solar eclipse on the island of Principe, West Africa
1919 – The Republic of Prekmurje founded – a short-lived, unrecognised state, which on June 6, 1919 was incorporated into the newly established Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (renamed “Yugoslavia” in 1929)
1932 – The Bonus Army of World War I veterans begins to assemble in Washington, D.C. to request cash bonuses promised to them to be paid in 1945
1943 – Meat and cheese rationed in US
1968 – US Truth in Lending Act signed into law
1974 – U.S. President Nixon agreed to turn over 1,200 pages of edited Watergate transcripts.
1982 – Pentagon plans 1st strategy to fight a nuclear war
1988 – NBC aired “To Heal A Nation,” the story of Jan Scruggs’ effort to build the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
1989 – Student pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square, China construct a replica of the Statue of Liberty, naming it the Goddess of Democracy
1994 – Great iceball comet seen above North Sea
1999 – Olusegun Obasanjo takes office as President of Nigeria, the first elected and civilian head of state in Nigeria after 16 years of military rule
2000 – Fiji’s military took control of the nation and declared martial law following a coup attempt by indigenous Fijians in mid-May.
2001 – Natural gas futures plunge 6% to a 10-month low on speculation that growing US inventories will help power plants meet summer demand for air-conditioning
2004 – The World War II Memorial is dedicated in Washington, D.C.
2012 – Thousands march in protest in Johannesburg against Brett Murray’s controversial painting The Spear
2014 – President Obama approves US military training of ‘moderate’ Syrian rebels to fight the regime of Bashar al-Assad and al Qaeda-linked groups
2015 – The Obama adminstration removed Cuba from the U.S. terrorism blacklist. The two countries had severed diplomatic relations in January of 1961.
2018 – Starbucks closes more than 8,000 US stores early for racial bias training after two black men wrongly arrested in a store in April
2019 – US Special Counsel Robert Mueller says charging President Donald Trump with a crime was never an option as no legal means to charge a sitting president; and that his report does not exonerate the president
2019 – Transgender no longer classified as a mental health illness by the World Health Organization
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
