June 6
The Ashmolean, the world’s first university museum, opens in Oxford, England. -1683.
A general strike by some 12,000 auto workers and others in Lansing, Mich. shuts down the city for a month in what was to become known as the city’s “Labor Holiday.” – 1937.
Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower gives the go-ahead for the largest amphibious military operation in history: Operation Overlord, code named D-Day, the Allied invasion of German-occupied northern France in Normandy. – 1944.
More than 500 passengers are killed when their train plunges into the Baghmati River in India. The rail accident, the worst in India, was caused by an engineer, who was reverential of cows, when he tried to avoid a cow on the track. – 1981.
In a bloody climax of two years of fighting between the Indian government and Sikh separatists, Indian army troops fight their way into the besieged Golden Temple compound in Amritsar, the holiest shrine of Sikhism, and kill at least 500 Sikh rebels. – 1984.
June 7
Hudson Stuck, an Alaskan missionary, leads the first successful ascent of Mt. McKinley, Alaska, the highest point on the American continent at 20,320 feet. – 1913.
June 8
In Medina, in present-day Saudi Arabia, Muhammad, founder of Islam and one of the most influential religious and political leaders in history, dies in the arms of Aisah, his third and favorite wife. – 632.
Some 35,000 members of the Machinists union begin what is to become a 43-day strike, the largest in airline history, against five carriers. The mechanics and other ground service workers wanted to share in the airlines’ substantial profits. – 1966.
During the Six-Day War, Israeli aircraft and torpedo boats attack the USS Liberty in international waters off of Egypt’s Gaza Strip. – 1967.
Tropical Storm Allison hits Houston, Texas, for the second time in three days. Although Allison never even approached hurricane status, by the time it dissipated in New England a week later, it killed about 50 individuals and caused $5 Billion in damages. – 2001.
June 9
A flash flood in Rapid City, S.D., kills more than 200 individuals. This flood demonstrated the danger of building in a floodplain region. – 1972.
With a spectacular victory at the Belmont Stakes, Secretariat becomes the first horse since Citation in 1948 to win America’s coveted Triple Crown (the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, and the Belmont Stakes). In one of the finest performances in racing history, Secretariat, ridden by Ron Turcotte, completed the 1.5-mile race in two minutes and 24 seconds, a dirt-track record for that distance. – 1973.
June 10
Benjamin Franklin flies a kite during a thunderstorm and collects a charge in a Leyden jar when the kite is struck by lightning, to enable him to demonstrate the electrical nature of lightning. He coined a number of terms used today, including battery, conductor, and electrician and invented the lightning rod, used to protect buildings and ships. -1752.
After two months of desperate resistance, the last surviving Norwegian and British defenders of Norway are overwhelmed by the Germans, and the country is forced to capitulate to the Nazis. – 1940.
President John Kennedy signs a law mandating equal pay to women who are performing the same jobs as men (Equal Pay Act). – 1963.
June 11
The Continental Congress selects Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, John Adams of Massachusetts, Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, and Robert R. Livingston of New York to draft a declaration of independence. – 1776.
Five days after the D-Day landing, the five Allied landing groups, made up of some 330,000 troops, link up in Normandy to form a single solid front across northwestern France. – 1944.
Facing federalized Alabama National Guard troops, Alabama governor George Wallace ends his blockade of the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa and allows two African American students to enroll. – 1963.
June 12
Two-hundred sixty die in Butte, Mont. mine disaster; 14,000 strike against unsafe conditions. – 1917.
On this day in 1987, in one of his most famous Cold War speeches, president Ronald Reagan challenges Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down” the Berlin Wall, a symbol of the repressive communist era in a divided Germany. – 1987.
Sources: History.com, Toil and Trouble, by Thomas R. Brooks; American Labor Struggles, by Samuel Yellen; IWW calendar, Solidarity Forever; Historical Encyclopedia of American Labor, edited by Robert E. Weir and James P. Hanlan; Southwest Labor History Archives/George Meany Center; Geov Parrish’s Radical History; workday Minnesota; Andy Richards and Adam Wright, AFL-CIO Washington DC Metro Council.
• “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” —George Santayana, Philosopher