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
During the Six-Day War, Israeli aircraft and torpedo boats attack the USS Liberty in international waters off of Egypt’s Gaza Strip. – 1967.
June 9
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). – 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
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
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 before 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.
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