June 5
Today is
World Environment Day.
70 Titus and his Roman legions breach the middle wall of Jerusalem in the
Siege of Jerusalem.
1817 The first Great Lakes steamer, the
Frontenac, is launched.
1851
Harriet Beecher Stowe's anti-slavery serial,
Uncle Tom's Cabin, or Life Among the Lowly, starts a ten-month run in the National Era abolitionist newspaper.
1883 The first regularly scheduled
Orient Express departs Paris.
1900
Second Boer War: British soldiers take Pretoria.
1917 World War I:
Conscription begins in the United States as "Army registration day".
1933 The U.S. Congress abrogates the United States' use of the
gold standard by enacting a joint resolution (48 Stat. 112) nullifying the right of creditors to demand payment in gold.
1940 World War II: After a brief lull in the
Battle of France, the Germans renew the offensive against the remaining French divisions south of the River Somme in
Operation Fall Rot ("Case Red").
1941 World War II: Four thousand Chongqing residents are asphyxiated in a bomb shelter during the
Bombing of Chongqing.
1942 World War II: The United States declares war on Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania.
1944 World War II: More than 1000 British bombers drop 5,000 tons of bombs on German gun batteries on the Normandy coast in preparation for
D-Day.
1963 The British Secretary of State for War, John Profumo, resigns in a sex scandal known as the
"Profumo affair".
1964
DSV Alvin is commissioned.
1967 The
Six-Day War begins: Israel launches surprise strikes against Egyptian air-fields in response to the mobilisation of Egyptian forces on the Israeli border.
1968
Robert F. Kennedy, a U.S. presidential candidate,
is shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, by Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian. Kennedy dies the next day.
1975 The
Suez Canal re-opens for the first time since the Six-Day War.
The United Kingdom holds its first country-wide referendum on remaining in the
European Economic Community (EEC).
1976 The
Teton Dam in Idaho, United States, collapses.
1981 The
"Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report" of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that five people in Los Angeles, California, have a rare form of pneumonia seen only in patients with weakened immune systems, in what turns out to be the first recognized cases of AIDS.
1989 The
Tank Man halts the progress of a column of advancing tanks for over half an hour after the
Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.
1993 Portions of the
Holbeck Hall Hotel in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, UK, fall into the sea following a landslide.
2001
Tropical Storm Allison makes landfall on the upper-Texas coastline as a strong tropical storm and dumps large amounts of rain over Houston. The storm causes $5.5 billion in damages, making Allison the costliest tropical storm in U.S. history.
2012 The last
transit of Venus of the 21st century begins.
2013 A
building collapse in Philadelphia, PA kills six and wounds 14 other people.
Births
1850 Pat Garrett; 1878 Pancho Villa; 1883 John Maynard Keynes; 1895 William Boyd (Hopalong Cassidy); 1898 Federico Garcνa Lorca; 1899 Otis Barton (designed the
bathysphere); 1919 Richard Scarry (illustrator); 1928 Robert Lansing; 1934 Bill Moyers; 1941 Spalding Gray, Robert Kraft; 1947 Tom Evans (Badfinger); 1947 Freddie Stone; 1949 Ken Follett; 1951 Suze Orman; 1952 Nicko McBrain (Iron Maiden); 1953 Kathleen Kennedy (co-founder
Amblin Entertainment); 1956 Kenny G; 1961 Mary Kay Bergman (voice actress on
South Park); 1962 Jeff Garlin; 1964 Rick Riordan (Percy Jackson book series); 1967 Ron Livingston; 1969 Brian McKnight; 1971 Mark Wahlberg; 1979 Pete Wentz
Deaths
1900 Stephen Crane; 1910 O. Henry; 1993 Conway Twitty; 1998 Jeanette Nolan; 1999 Mel Tormι; 2002 Dee Dee Ramone; 2004 Ronald Reagan; 2012 Ray Bradbury; 2015 Tariq Aziz