June 6th
 

1683 ~ Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum opened to the public as the world's first university museum.

1844 ~ The Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) was founded in London.

1868 ~ Birthday of Robert Falcon Scott, English Explorer.

1901 ~ Birthday of Sukarno, first President of Indonesia.

1903 ~ Birthday of Aram Khachaturian, Armenian composer.

1944 ~ D-Day began with the landing of 155,000 Allied troops on the beaches of Normandy in France.

1961 ~ Death of Carl Jung, Swiss psychologist.

1984 ~ Indian troops stormed the Golden Temple in Amritsar.

1985 ~ Authorities in Brazil exhumed a body later identified as that of Dr. Josef Mengele, the Nazi doctor who conducted medical experiments on inmates at Auschwitz.

2002 ~ The Wye Oak, Maryland's honorary state tree, was destroyed in a thunderstorm.

June 7th
 

1099 ~ Beginning of Siege of Jerusalem.

1848 ~ Birthday of Paul Gauguin, French Impressionist Painter.

1897 ~ Birthday of George Szell, Hungarian Conductor.

1917 ~ Birthday of Dean Martin, Singer & Actor.

1929 ~ Vatican City became a sovereign state.

1942 ~ The U.S. beat the Japanese in the Battle of Midway.

1952 ~ Birthday of Liam Neeson, Northern Irish Actor.

1954 ~ Death of Alan Turing, Mathematician, Computer Scientist.

1981 ~ The Israeli Air Force destroyed Iraq's Osiraq nuclear reactor.

2000 ~ U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson ordered the breakup of Microsoft.

June 8th
 

632 ~ Death of Muhammad, founder of Islam.

1810 ~ Birthday of Robert Schumann, Composer.

1876 ~ Death of George Sand, Author.

1887 ~ Herman Hollerith received a patent for his punch card calculator.

1910 ~ Birthday of John W. Campbell Jr., Science Fiction Writer, Publisher, & Editor.

1916 ~ Birthday of Professor Francis Harry Compton Crick, OM FRS, most noted for being one of the discoverers of the structure of the DNA molecule. Awarded Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 1962.

1949 ~ Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell was published.

1968 ~ James Earl Ray was arrested in London in connection with the murder of Martin Luther King.

1982 ~ An Argentine air attack sank the Sir Galahad and Sir Tristram supply ships in the Falklands.

1998 ~ Charlton Heston assumed the presidency of the National Rifle Association.

June 9th
 

1810 ~ Birthday of Otto Nicolai, Composer.

1870 ~ Death of Charles Dickens, English author.

1891 ~ Birthday of Cole Porter, Composer.

1916 ~ Birthday of Robert McNamara, U.S. Secretary of Defense, former president of the World Bank.

1934 ~ Donald Duck debuted in The Wise Little Hen.

1954 ~ Beginning of the end of the McCarthy Era.

1959 ~ The USS George Washington launched as the first submarine to carry ballistic missiles ("Boomers").

1970 ~ Assassination attempt on King Hussein of Jordan.

1973 ~ Secretariat won the Triple Crown.

2004 ~ The FCC agreed to a $1.75 million settlement with Clear Channel to resolve indecency complaints against Howard Stern and other radio personalities.

June 10th
 

1829 ~ First Boat Race between Oxford and Cambridge.

1836 ~ Death of André-Marie Ampère, French physicist.

1846 ~ The California Republic declared independence from Mexico.

1915 ~ Birthday of Saul Bellow, Canadian-born American author, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature.

1921 ~ Birthday of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.

1922 ~ Birthday of Judy Garland, Singer & Actress.

1967 ~ End of the Six-Day War.

1977 ~ The Apple II personal computer started shipping.

1999 ~ Yugoslav troops departed Kosovo, prompting NATO to suspend its air war.

2004 ~ Death of Ray Charles, Singer & Musician.

June 11th
 

1776 ~ The Continental Congress formed a committee to draft a Declaration of Independence from Britain.

1776 ~ Birthday of John Constable, English painter.

1892 ~ The Limelight Department, one of the world's first film studios, opened in Melbourne.

1937 ~ Death of R. J. Mitchell, British aircraft designer, developer of the Spitfire.

1939 ~ Birthday of Jackie Stewart, Race car driver.

1942 ~ The U.S. and the USSR signed a lend lease agreement to aid the Soviet war effort in WWII.

1979 ~ Death of John Wayne, Actor.

1987 ~ Margaret Thatcher became the first British PM in 160 years to win a third consecutive term in office.

2001 ~ Death of Timothy McVeigh, terrorist (executed).

2004 ~ Cassini-Huygens made its closest flyby of Phoebe.

June 12th
 

1897 ~ Birthday of Anthony Eden, British P.M.

1942 ~ Anne Frank received a diary for her thirteenth birthday.

1963 ~ Death of Medgar Evers, American civil rights activist.

1967 ~ In Loving v. Virginia, the U.S. Supreme Court declared all state laws which prohibit interracial marriage to be unconstitutional.

1975 ~ Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was convicted on electoral corruption charges.

1979 ~ Bryan Allen flew the man powered Gossamer Albatross across the English Channel.

1987 ~ Ronald Reagan publicly challenged Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall.

1994 ~ Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman were murdered outside her home in Los Angeles.

1997 ~ Major league baseball began interleague play.

2003 ~ Death of Gregory Peck, Actor.

June 13th
 

1865 ~ Birthday of William Butler Yeats, Poet, awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature 1923.

1892 ~ Birthday of Basil Rathbone, Actor.

1944 ~ Germany launched the first V1 “Buzz Bomb” attack on England.

1966 ~ The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the police must inform suspects of their rights before questioning them (Miranda v. Arizona).

1967 ~ Solicitor General Thurgood Marshall was nominated as the first black Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

1970 ~ "The Long and Winding Road" became the Beatles' last #1 song.

1982 ~ Fahd became King of Saudi Arabia upon the death of his brother, Khalid.

1986 ~ Death of Benny Goodman, the ''King of Swing,'.

1995 ~ French president Jacques Chirac announced the resumption of nuclear tests in French Polynesia.

2005 ~ A jury acquitted Michael Jackson of molesting a 13-year-old cancer survivor at his Neverland ranch.

June 14th
 

1671 ~ Birthday of Tomaso Albinoni, Italian Composer.

1736 ~ Birthday of Charles Augustin de Coulomb, French mathematician. The unit of electrical charge, the coulomb, and Coulomb's law are named after him.

1775 ~ The U.S. Army was founded.

1903 ~ Birthday of Alonzo Church, Mathematician & Logician.

1909 ~ Birthday of Burl Ives, American Folk Singer, Author & Actor.

1919 ~ John Alcock and Arthur Brown depart St. John's, Newfoundland on the first nonstop transatlantic flight.

1940 ~ WWII: German troops enter Paris.

1952 ~ The keel was laid for the nuclear submarine USS Nautilus.

1982 ~ Argentine forces in the capital Port Stanley unconditionally surrender to British forces, bringing the Falklands War to an end.

1995 ~ Death of Roger Zelazny, science fiction author.

June 15th
 

1215 ~ King John put his seal to the Magna Carta at Runnymede, England.

1752 ~ Benjamin Franklin showed that lightning is electricity.

1836 ~ Arkansas became the 25th state.

1844 ~ Charles Goodyear received a patent for a process to strengthen rubber.

1843 ~ Birthday of Edvard Grieg, Norwegian Composer.

1904 ~ More than 1,000 people died in a fire aboard the steamboat General Slocum.

1978 ~ King Hussein of Jordan married Lisa Halaby, who became Queen Noor.

1995 ~ Death of John Vincent Atanasoff, computer pioneer.

1996 ~ In Manchester, U.K., a terrorist bomb injured over 200 people.

1996 ~ Death of Ella Fitzgerald, Jazz singer.

June 16th
 

1829 ~ Birthday of Geronimo, Apache Warrior & Leader.

1858 ~ Abraham Lincoln gave his “House Divided” speach in Springfield, Illinois. A brilliant piece of argument!

1890 ~ Birthday of Stan Laurel, Comedian.

1912 ~ Birthday of Enoch Powell, British politician.

1933 ~ Start of President Roosevelt’s New Deal.

1938 ~ Birthday of Joyce Carol Oates, novelist.

1948 ~ The Miss Macao passenger seaplane became the first skyjacking of a commercial plane.

1963 ~ Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space.

1976 ~ Riots broke out in the black South African township of Soweto.

1977 ~ Death of Wernher von Braun, rocket scientist.

June 17th
 

1631 ~ Mumtaz Mahal died during childbirth. Her husband, Shah Jahan I, build her a tomb, the Taj Mahal.

1818 ~ Birthday of Charles Gounod, French Composer.

1882 ~ Birthday of Igor Stravinsky, Russian Composer.

1885 ~ The Statue of Liberty arrived in New York.

1898 ~ Birthday of M.C. Escher, Dutch Artist.

1928 ~ Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic.

1929 ~ Birthday of Tigran Petrosian, Georgian chess player.

1945 ~ Birthday of Eddy Merckx, Belgian Cycling Champion.

1961 ~ Rudolf Nureyev defected at Le Bourget airport in Paris.

1974 ~ The Irish Republican Army bombed the UK’s House of Parliament.

June 18th
 

1178 ~ Five Canterbury monks saw what was possibly the Giordano Bruno crater being formed on the Moon.

1815 ~ British and Prussian troops defeated the French under Napoleon Bonaparte at Waterloo in Belgium.

1915 ~ Birthday of Red Adair, Firefighter.

1928 ~ Death of Roald Amundsen, Explorer, first to the South Pole.

1942 ~ Birthday of Paul McCartney, Singer & Songwriter.

1945 ~ William Joyce (Lord Haw-Haw) was charged with treason.

1948 ~ The UN Commission on Human Rights adopted its International Declaration of Human Rights.

1967 ~ Jimi Hendrix burned his guitar on stage at the Monterey Pop Festival.

1979 ~ Presidents Carter and Brezhnev signed the SALT II strategic arms limitation treaty in Vienna.

1983 ~ Sally Ride became the first American woman in space.

June 19th
 

1623 ~ Birthday of Blaise Pascal, Mathematician.

1865 ~ More two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, slaves in Galveston, Texas were finally informed of their freedom.

1896 ~ Birthday of Wallis Warfield, the future Duchess of Windsor.

1934 ~ The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) was established.

1937 ~ Death of J.M. Barrie, Author, creator of the character Peter Pan.

1945 ~ Birthday of Aung San Suu Kyi, Politician, recipient of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize.

1953 ~ Death of Julius & Ethel Rosenberg, convicted spies.

1964 ~ The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was approved after surviving a filibuster in the Senate.

1978 ~ First appearance of the comic strip Garfield.

1982 ~ An Italian banker, Roberto Calvi, was found hanged under Blackfriars Bridge in London.

June 20th
 

1819 ~ Birthday of Jacques Offenbach, Composer.

1837 ~ Queen Victoria ascended to the British throne.

1877 ~ Alexander Graham Bell installed the first commercial telephone service in Hamilton, Ontario.

1899 ~ Birthday of Jean Moulin, leader of the French Resistance in WW II.

1909 ~ Birthday of Errol Flynn, Actor.

1942 ~ Birthday of Brian Wilson, one of The Beach Boys.

1948 ~ The Ed Sullivan Show, (née Toast of the Town) debuted.

1967 ~ Muhammad Ali was convicted of violating Selective Service laws.

1995 ~ Shell Oil abandoned plans to dump its Brent Spar oil rig at sea.

2002 ~ Death of Erwin Chargaff, biochemist.

June 21st
 

1527 ~ Death of Niccolò Machiavelli, Italian Historian & Political Author.

1788 ~ The U.S. Constitution went into effect as New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify it.

1905 ~ Birthday of Jean-Paul Sartre, Philosopher & Playwright, awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature 1964.

1908 ~ Death of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Russian Composer.

1919 ~ Admiral Ludwig von Reuter scuttled the German fleet in Scapa Flow, Orkney.

1945 ~ The battle for Okinawa ended; 12,520 Americans and 110,000 Japanese were killed in the 83-day campaign.

1964 ~ Three civil rights workers disappeared in Philadelphia, Miss. Their bodies were found buried in an earthen dam six weeks later.

1989 ~ The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that flag burning is protected speech under the Constitution.

2001 ~ Death of Carroll O'Connor, American Actor.

2004 ~ SpaceShipOne became the first privately funded space plane to achieve spaceflight.

June 22nd
 

1856 ~ Birthday of H. Rider Haggard, Author.

1940 ~ WWII: France forced to sign armistice with Germany.

1941 ~ WWII: Germany invaded the USSR.

1953 ~ Birthday of Cyndi Lauper, singer.

1969 ~ Death of Judy Garland, Singer & Actress.

1976 ~ Canadian House of Commons voted to abolish capital punishment.

1986 ~ Diego Maradona scored both the Hand of God goal and the Goal of the Century against England during the FIFA World Cup in Mexico City.

1987 ~ Death of Fred Astaire, Dancer & Actor.

1996 ~ The Quake computer game was released.

2002 ~ Death of Ann Landers, Columnist.

June 23rd
 

1894 ~ Birthday of Alfred Kinsey, Sexologist.

1912 ~ Birthday of Alan Turing, Mathematician.

1927 ~ Birthday of Bob Fosse, Choreographer.

1940 ~ Adolf Hitler toured Paris in now occupied France.

1943 ~ Birthday of Vint Cerf, co-designer of the TCP/IP protocols and one of the “Fathers of the Internet".

1947 ~ President Truman's veto of the Taft-Hartley Act overridden.

1956 ~ Gamal Abdel Nasser elected president of Egypt.

1985 ~ An Air India Boeing 747 was blown apart off the coast of Ireland by Sikh extremists.

1993 ~ Lorena Bobbitt sexually mutilated her husband after he allegedly raped her.

1995 ~ Death of Jonas Salk, developer of the Salk polio vaccine.

June 24th
 

1314 ~ Scotland regained its independence in the Battle of Bannockburn, when Scotland's King Robert I defeated the English.

1519 ~ Death of Lucrezia Borgia, duchess of Ferrara.

1692 ~ Kingston, Jamaica founded.

1896 ~ Birthday of Jack Dempsey, Heavyweight boxer.

1901 ~ First exhibition of Pablo Picasso's work.

1910 ~ Japan invaded Korea.

1915 ~ Birthday of Fred Hoyle, cosmologist and science fiction author.

1948 ~ Communist forces cut off all land and water routes between West Germany and West Berlin, prompting the U.S. to organize the Berlin Airlift.

1997 ~ The Roswell Incident debunked by the USAF.

2004 ~ Federal investigators questioned President Bush in connection with the news leak of a CIA operative's name.

June 25th
 

1822 ~ Death of E.T.A. Hoffmann, German Writer, Composer & Painter.

1876 ~ Col. George A. Custer and his 7th Cavalry were wiped out in the Battle of Little Big Horn.

1894 ~ Birthday of Hermann Oberth, Physicist & one of the founding fathers of Rocketry and Astronautics.

1903 ~ Birthday of George Orwell, Writer.

1950 ~ The Korean War began when North Korea invaded South Korea.

1991 ~ Croatia and Slovenia declared their independence from Yugoslavia.

1993 ~ Kim Campbell became the first female Prime Minister of Canada.

1997 ~ An unmanned cargo ship crashed into Russia's Mir space station, knocking out half of the station's power and rupturing a pressurized laboratory.

1997 ~ Death of Jacques-Yves Cousteau, French Explorer, Scientist & Inventor.

1998 ~ The U.S. Supreme Court ruled the Line Item Veto Act of 1996 unconstitutional.

Conspiracy theory says that Jacques Cousteau, kidnapped by the Russians and stashed on Mir, was killed when a CIA controlled resupply craft crashed into the station in a vain attempt to free the living (temporarily) cultural icon. Almost worked too, despite the slight lack of a plan to return him safely to the Calypso. Spooky.

Oldfart,

So the CIA was behind THAT as well! You know, I never saw it in that light until now! Thank you! :)

June 26th
 

1541 ~ Death of Francisco Pizarro, Spanish Conqueror of Peru.

1824 ~ Birthday of Lord Kelvin, Physicist.

1898 ~ Birthday of Willy Messerschmitt, Aircraft Designer.

1933 ~ Birthday of Claudio Abbado, Conductor.

1934 ~ Initial flight of the first practical helicopter, the Focke-Wulf 61. You must scroll down a bit through the Hanna Reitsch page to get to the FW-61 entry, but her write up of her experience it is an interesting read.

1959 ~ Queen Elizabeth and President Eisenhower inaugurated the St Lawrence Seaway.

1963 ~ President Kennedy visited West Berlin, where he offered American solidarity to the citizens of West Germany: "Ich bin ein Berliner".

1964 ~ The Beatles released the album A Hard Day's Night.

1996 ~ The U.S. Supreme Court ordered the Virginia Military Institute to admit women or forgo state support.

1997 ~ The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Communications Decency Act violated the First Amendment, and thus unconstitutional.

June 27th
 

1838 ~ Birthday of Paul von Mauser, Weapon Designer.

1880 ~ Birthday of Helen Keller, spokeswoman for the Deaf and Blind.

1893 ~ Crash of the New York Stock Exchange.

1905 ~ Mutiny on the battleship Potemkin.

1931 ~ Birthday of Charles Bronfman, Industrialist & Philanthropist.

1950 ~ The U.S. decided to send armed forces to fight in the Korean War.

1954 ~ The world's first nuclear power station went on line in Obninsk, near Moscow.

1957 ~ First British Smoking Causes Lung Cancer report released.

1967 ~ The world's first ATM installed in Enfield, London.

2001 ~ Death of Jack Lemmon, Actor & Film Director.

June 28th
 

1577 ~ Birthday of Peter Paul Rubens, Flemish Baroque Painter.

1712 ~ Birthday of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Franco-Swiss Philosopher.

1880 ~ The Australian bushranger Ned Kelly was captured at Glenrowan.

1906 ~ Birthday of Maria Goeppert-Mayer, Physicist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in physics.

1914 ~ Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria and his wife Sophia were killed by a Serbian nationalist, the casus belli of World War I.

1919 ~ The Treaty of Versailles was signed, ending World War I.

1926 ~ Birthday of Mel Brooks, Filmmaker.

1992 ~ Death of Mikhail Tal, eighth World Chess Champion.

1996 ~ The Citadel voted to admit women, ending a 153-year-old men-only policy at the South Carolina military school.

2004 ~ The U.S.-led coalition transferred sovereignty to the interim Iraqi government.

June 29th
 

1861 ~ Death of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Poet. “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways…”

1868 ~ Birthday of George Ellery Hale, Astronomer.

1880 ~ France annexed Tahiti.

1888 ~ First known recording of classical music made, on a wax cylinder.

1895 ~ Death of Thomas Henry Huxley, Scientist. "Darwin's Bulldog"

1922 ~ France granted 1 km² at Vimy Ridge "freely, and for all time, to the Government of Canada, the free use of the land exempt from all taxes".

1963 ~ Birthday of Anne-Sophie Mutter, Violinist.

1974 ~ Isabel Peron is sworn in as first female president for Argentina.

1995 ~ U.S. Space Shuttle Atlantis docked with Russian space station Mir.

2003 ~ Death of Katharine Hepburn, Actress.

June 30th
 

1817 ~ Birthday of Joseph Dalton Hooker, Botanist & Champion of Charles Darwin.

1905 ~ During his annus mirabilis, Albert Einstein published the article On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies (PDF) in which he introduced special relativity.

That must have been an exciting period to be a physicist!

1908 ~ Tunguska impact event occurred in Siberia.

1934 ~ Night of the Long Knives, Adolf Hitler's violent purge of his political rivals in Germany took place.

1936 ~ ''Gone with the Wind'' by Margaret Mitchell published.

1943 ~ Birthday of Florence Ballard, American Singer (The Supremes).

1960 ~ Congo gained independence from Belgium.

1971 ~ The crew of the Soyuz 11 spacecraft died when the landing capsule depressurized after separating from the main craft.

1985 ~ Birthday of Mike Tyson, American boxer.

1997 ~ The UK returns sovereignty over Hong Kong to the PRC.

Tunguska, I'd forgotten about that. Still a mega-mystery what blew up above the tundra.

July 1st
 

1646 ~ Birthday of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, German Mathematician & Philosopher.

1863 ~ The American Civil War battle of Gettysburg began.

1906 ~ Birthday of Estée Lauder, Cosmetics Pioneer.

1916 ~ On the first day of the Battle of the Somme 18,000 British soldiers were killed, and 40,000 wounded.

1925 ~ Death of Erik Satie, French Composer.

1963 ~ The British Government admitted that former diplomat Kim Philby had worked as a Soviet agent.

1980 ~ "O Canada" became the national anthem of Canada.

2000 ~ Death of Walter Matthau, Actor.

2004 ~ Cassini-Huygens was successfully inserted into orbit around Saturn.

2004 ~ Death of Marlon Brando, Actor.

July 2nd
 

1714 ~ Birthday of Christoph Willibald Gluck, German Composer.

1906 ~ Birthday of Hans Bethe, German-born Physicist., awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 1967.

1908 ~ Birthday of Thurgood Marshall, U. S. Supreme Court justice.

1937 ~ Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared over the Pacific Ocean.

1947 ~ Something the Army Air Force later said was a weather balloon crashed near Roswell, N.M. Eyewitness accounts gave rise to speculation it might have been an alien spacecraft.

1961 ~ Death of Ernest Hemingway, Author, awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature 1954.

1964 ~ President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law a sweeping civil rights bill.

1966 ~ France began nuclear weapons testing at Moruroa in the South Pacific.

1977 ~ Death of Vladimir Nabokov, Russian-born writer.

1982 ~ Larry Walters attached 45 helium balloons to a lawn chair and ascended into history and to a height of 11,000 feet.

Amelia and Roswell, with a touch of Danny Deckchair. What a wonderful day.

July 3rd
 

1608 ~ The city of Quebec was founded by Samuel de Champlain.

1854 ~ Birthday of Leoš Janáček, Czech Composer.

1863 ~ The final day of the battle of Gettysburg.

1883 ~ Birthday of Franz Kafka, Czech-born German author.

1935 ~ Death of André Citroën, Automobile Pioneer.

1938 ~ World speed record, 126 mph, set for a steam railway locomotive, by the Mallard.

1962 ~ Algeria became independent after 132 years of French rule.

1971 ~ Death of Jim Morrison, lead singer of The Doors.

1986 ~ Death of Rudy Vallee, Singer, Actor, Bandleader, & Entertainer.

1988 ~ USS Vincennes shot down Iran Air Flight 655 over the Persian Gulf.

Jim Morrison's dead?

July 4th
 

1054 ~ A supernova was recorded by the Chinese near the star ζ Tauri. Its remnants form the Crab Nebula.

1776 ~ The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence.

1807 ~ Birthday of Giuseppe Garibaldi, Italian Patriot.

1845 ~ American writer Henry David Thoreau began a two-year experiment in simple living at Walden Pond near Concord, Mass.

1855 ~ The first edition of Walt Whitman's book of poems Leaves of Grass was published.

1883 ~ Birthday of Rube Goldberg, Cartoonist.

1885 ~ Birthday of Louis B. Mayer, Movie Executive (one of the M’s in MGM).

1934 ~ Death of Maria Curie, Polish-born scientist, recipient of he Nobel Prize in Physics 1903.

1976 ~ The U.S. celebrated its Bicentennial.

1976 ~ Israeli commandos rescued 100 hostages at Entebbe Airport, Uganda.

July 5th
 

1810 ~ Birthday of Phineas Taylor "P. T." Barnum, Circus Owner.

1853 ~ Birthday of Cecil Rhodes, South African Politician.

1911 ~ Birthday of Georges Pompidou, President of France.

1948 ~ British National Health Service (NHS) Act enacted.

1951 ~ William Shockley invented the junction transistor.

1969 ~ Death of Walter Gropius, German architect.

1971 ~ The voting age in the U.S. was reduced to 18 from 21.

1975 ~ Arthur Ashe becomes the first black man to win the Wimbledon singles' championship.

1989 ~ Oliver North received a $150,000 fine and a suspended prison term for his part in the Iran-Contra affair.

1996 ~ Birthday of Dolly the sheep, first cloned mammal.

July 6th
 

1946 ~ Birthday of George W. Bush, 43rd President of the U.S.

1957 ~ Althea Gibson became the first black tennis player to win a Wimbledon singles title.

1962 ~ Death of William Faulkner, American Novelist.

1964 ~ A Hard Day's Night, the first Beatles film, premiered.

1971 ~ Death of Louis Armstrong, Jazz Musician.

1973 ~ Death of Otto Klemperer, German Conductor.

1974 ~ The radio program A Prairie Home Companion was first broadcast.

1989 ~ The Piper Alpha drilling platform in the North Sea was destroyed by explosions and fires killing 167 oil workers.

1997 ~ The rover Sojourner rolled onto the Martian landscape to begin inspecting soil and rocks.

1998 ~ Death of Roy Rogers, Cowboy Actor & Singer.

Piper Alpha's one of the reasons I declined a job on a rig earlier today. Good money, 4 weeks on, 1 off, long swim hope.

July 7th
 

1860 ~ Birthday of Gustav Mahler, Austrian Composer.

1887 ~ Birthday of Marc Chagall, Russian-born Painter.

1898 ~ The U.S. annexed Hawaii as a territory.

1907 ~ Birthday of Robert Heinlein, Science Fiction Writer.

1930 ~ Death of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Scottish Writer.

1940 ~ Birthday of Ringo Starr, Beatle.

1958 ~ President Eisenhower signed the Alaska Statehood Act.

1978 ~ The Solomon Islands gained independence from the U.K.

1981 ~ President Reagan nominated Sandra Day O'Connor to become the first female justice on the Supreme Court.

2005 ~ Terrorist bombings in London killed 52 victims and four suicide bombers.

July 8th.
 

1695 ~ Death of Christiaan Huygens, Dutch Scientist.

1776 ~ The first public reading of the Declaration of Independence.

1822 ~ Death of Percy Shelley, English poet.

1838 ~ Birthday of Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin, German Inventor.

1882 ~ Birthday of Percy Grainger, Australian Composer.

1889 ~ In the last championship bare-knuckle boxing match, John L. Sullivan defeated Jake Kilrain.

1889 ~ The first issue of the Wall Street Journal published.

1950 ~ General Douglas MacArthur was named commander-in-chief of UN forces in Korea.

1986 ~ Kurt Waldheim was inaugurated as president of Austria despite controversy over his alleged ties to Nazi war crimes.

1997 ~ Mayo Clinic researchers warned that the dieting-drug "fen-phen" could cause severe heart and lung damage.

July 9th
 

1896 ~ William Jennings Bryan delivered his “Cross of Gold” speech.

1900 ~ Queen Victoria gave royal assent to an act creating the Commonwealth of Australia, uniting separate colonies under one federal government.

1916 ~ Birthday of Edward Heath, P.M. of the UK

1947 ~ The engagement of Britain's Princess Elizabeth to Lt. Philip Mountbatten was announced.

1974 ~ Death of Earl Warren, Governor of California, Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

1984 ~ York Minster was struck by lightning; the resulting fire destroyed the roof of the South Transept.

1989 ~ Two bombs exploded in Mecca, killing one pilgrim and wounding 16 others.

1995 ~ The Grateful Dead played their last concert, at Soldier Field in Chicago.

1997 ~ Mike Tyson's boxing license was suspended and he was fined $3 million for biting Evander Holyfield's ear in a televised match.

2001 ~ The Big Bang Theory of the origin of the universe received substantial support.