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.
June 13
Alexander the Great, the young Macedonian military genius who forged an empire stretching from the eastern Mediterranean to India, dies in Babylon, in present-day Iraq, at the age of 33. – 323 B.C.E..
The U.S. Supreme Court hands down its decision in Miranda v. Arizona to establish the principle that all criminal suspects must be advised of their rights prior to interrogation. – 1966.
After more than a decade in space, Pioneer 10, the world’s first outer-planetary probe, leaves the solar system. The next day, it radioed back its first scientific data on interstellar space. – 1983.
June 14
During the American Revolution, the Continental Congress adopts a resolution stating that “the flag of the United States be thirteen alternate stripes red and white” and that “the Union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new Constellation.” – 1777.
Residents in Paris, France are awakened to the sound of a German-accented voice announcing by loudspeakers that a curfew was being imposed for 8 p.m. that evening when German troops enter and occupy Paris. – 1940.
The first commercial computer, UNIVAC I, is installed at the U.S. Census Bureau. – 1951.
TWA Flight 847 from Athens to Rome is hijacked by Shiite Hezbollah terrorists who immediately demand to know the identity of ‘’those with Jewish-sounding names.” Two of the Lebanese terrorists, armed with grenades and a 9-mm. pistol, force the plane to land in Beirut, Lebanon. – 1985.
Michael Jordan leads the Chicago Bulls to an 87-86 victory over the Utah Jazz in Game Six of the NBA Finals to clinch their third consecutive NBA championship, for the second time in the 1990s. Jordan scores 45 points and makes the game-winning jump shot with 5.2 seconds remaining in the game. – 1998.
June 15
More than 1,000 individuals taking a pleasure trip on New York City’s East River on the riverboat-style steamer General Slocum, are drowned, or burned to death, when a fire sweeps through the boat. It was one of the United States’ worst maritime disasters. – 1904.
June 16
The first roller coaster in America opens at Coney Island, in Brooklyn, N.Y.. Its speed is approximately six miles per hour and cost a nickel to ride. – 1884.
National Industrial Recovery Act becomes law. It establishes the right to unionize, sets maximum hours and minimum wages for every major industry, abolishes sweatshops and child labor. – 1933.
Aboard Vostok 6, Soviet Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova becomes the first woman to travel into space. After 48 orbits and 71 hours, she returned to earth, having spent more time in space than all U.S. astronauts combined to that date. – 1963.