Month: June 2021 (Page 3 of 6)
On June 18, 1812, the War of 1812 began with a U.S. declaration of war against Britain.
In 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte met defeat at Waterloo.
In1873, suffragist Susan B. Anthony was found guilty by a judge in Canandaigua, New York, of breaking the law by casting a vote in the 1872 presidential election. (The judge fined Anthony $100, but she never paid the penalty.)
In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson and Japanese Prime Minister Hayato Ikeda spoke to each other by telephone as they inaugurated the first trans-Pacific cable completed by AT&T between Japan and Hawaii.
In 1983, astronaut Sally K. Ride became America’s first woman in space.
In 2003, baseball Hall-of-Famer Larry Doby, who broke the American League’s color barrier in 1947, died in Montclair, N.J., at age 79.
On June 15, 1215, following a revolt by the English nobility against his rule, King John puts his royal seal on Magna Carta, or “the Great Charter.”
In 1775, the Second Continental Congress voted unanimously to appoint George Washington head of the Continental Army.
In 1846, the U.S. – Canada boarder was established.
In 1864, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton signed an order establishing what is now Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.
And also in 1864, during the Civil War, Ulysses S. Grant’s Army of the Potomac and Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia collide for the last time as the first wave of Union troops attacks Petersburg, a vital Southern rail center 23 miles south of the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia. The two massive armies would not become disentangled until April 9, 1865, when Lee surrendered and his men went home.
In 1877, Henry Ossian Flipper, born into slavery in Thomasville, Georgia, in 1856, becomes the first African American cadet to graduate from the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York.
In 1902, the 20th Century Limited, an express passenger train between New York and Chicago, began service. (The Limited made its last run in December 1967.)
In 1955, following the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, the United States and Britain signed a cooperation agreement for “mutual defence purposes.”
On June 14, 1775, the Continental Army, forerunner of the United States Army, was created.
In 1777, the Second Continental Congress approved the original American flag.
In 1846, a group of U.S. settlers in Sonoma proclaimed the Republic of California.
In 1922, Warren G. Harding became the first president heard on radio, as Baltimore station WEAR broadcast his speech dedicating the Francis Scott Key memorial at Fort McHenry.
In 1943, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that public school students could not be forced to salute the flag of the United States.
In 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a measure adding the phrase “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance.
In 1972, the Environmental Protection Agency ordered a ban on domestic use of the pesticide DDT.