June 1
Approximately 12,500 longshoremen strike the Pacific Coast, from San Diego, Calif. to Bellingham, Wash.. – 1916.
A Warsaw Poland underground newspaper, the Liberty Brigade, makes public the news of the gassing of tens of thousands of Jews at Chelmno, a death camp in Poland. – 1942.
A coal mine explosion kills 236 workers at the Yamano mine near Fukuoka, Japan. The tragic disaster might have been avoided if the operators of the mine had taken even the most basic safety precautions. – 1965.
CNN (Cable News Network), the world’s first 24-hour television news network, makes its debut. – 1980.
June 2
In an event that is generally regarded as marking the end of the U.S. Civil War, Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith, commander of Confederate forces west of the Mississippi River, signs the surrender terms offered by Union negotiators. With Smith’s surrender, the last Confederate army ceases to exist, to bring a formal end to the bloodiest four years in U.S. history, with 620,000 Union and Confederate soldiers dead. – 1865
Babe Ruth, one of the greatest players in the history of baseball, ends his Major League Baseball 22-year playing career with 10 World Series, 1915, 1916, 1918, 1921, 1922, 1923, 1926, 1927, 1928, 1932, and 714 home runs. – 1935.
Queen Elizabeth II is formally crowned monarch of the United Kingdom. – 1953.
June 3
One-hundred-twenty miles above the earth, Major Edward H. White II opens the hatch of the Gemini 4 and steps out of the capsule, to become the first American astronaut to walk in space. – 1965.
June 4
The 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to guarantee women the right to vote, is passed by Congress and sent to the states for ratification. – 1919.
Japanese Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, commander of the fleet that attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, launches a raid on Midway Island with almost the entirety of the Japanese navy. The attack on Midway was an unmitigated disaster for the Japanese, which resulted in the loss of 322 aircraft and the death of 3,500 men. They were forced to withdraw from the area before attempting a landing on the island they sought to conquer. – 1942.
One of Adolf Hitler’s deadly submarines, the U-505, was seized as it made its way home after patrolling the Gold Coast of Africa. The U-boat had invaluable code books and papers that were used by Allied forces to help in code-breaking. It is on display in Chicago at the Museum of Science and Industry. – 1944
Chinese troops storm through Tiananmen Square in the center of Beijing and kill and arrest thousands of pro-democracy protesters. The brutal Chinese government assault on the protesters shocked the West and brought denunciations and sanctions from the United States. – 1989.
June 5
Senator Robert Kennedy is shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles after winning the California presidential primary. Kennedy was shot several times by a 22-year-old Palestinian assassin. Kennedy died a day later. – 1968.
On this day, 3,400 members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union walk out on their jobs at a General Motors (GM) metal-stamping factory in Flint, Mich. to begin a strike that will last seven weeks and stall production at GM facilities nationwide. – 1998.
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.” The strike was precipitated by the arrest of nine workers, including the wife of the auto workers local union president: The arrest left three children in the couple’s home unattended. – 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.