June 23
Today is
International Widows Day.
1314 –
First War of Scottish Independence: The
Battle of Bannockburn begins.
1611 – The mutinous crew of
Henry Hudson's fourth voyage sets Henry, his son and seven loyal crew members adrift in an open boat in what is now
Hudson Bay; they are never heard from again.
1683 –
William Penn signs a friendship treaty with
Lenni Lenape Indians in Pennsylvania.
1757 –
Battle of Plassey: Three thousand British troops under
Robert Clive defeat a 50,000-strong Indian army under
Siraj ud-Daulah at Plassey.
1780 – American Revolution:
Battle of Springfield fought in and around Springfield, New Jersey.
1810 –
John Jacob Astor forms the
Pacific Fur Company.
1868 –
Christopher Latham Sholes received a patent for an invention he called the "
Type-Writer."
1894 – The
International Olympic Committee is founded at the Sorbonne in Paris, at the initiative of
Baron Pierre de Coubertin.
1926 – The
College Board administers the first
SAT exam.
1931 –
Wiley Post and
Harold Gatty take off from Roosevelt Field, Long Island, New York in an attempt to circumnavigate the world in a single-engine plane.
1942 – The first selections for the gas chamber at Auschwitz take place on a train full of Jews from Paris.
Germany's latest fighter aircraft, a
Focke-Wulf Fw 190,
is captured intact when it mistakenly lands at
RAF Pembrey in Wales.
1943 – The British destroyers
HMS Eclipse and
HMS Laforey sink the
Italian submarine Ascianghi in the Mediterranean after she torpedoes the cruiser
HMS Newfoundland.
1946 – The
1946 Vancouver Island earthquake strikes Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada.
1959 – Convicted
Manhattan Project spy
Klaus Fuchs is released after only nine years in prison and allowed to emigrate to Dresden, East Germany where he resumes a scientific career.
1960 – The United States Food and Drug Administration declares
Enovid to be the first officially approved c
ombined oral contraceptive pill in the world.
1969 –
Warren E. Burger is sworn in as Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court by retiring
Chief Justice Earl Warren.
1970 -
Chubby Checker was arrested in Niagara Falls after police discovered marijuana and other drugs in his car.
1973 – A fire at a house in Hull, England which kills a six-year-old boy is passed off as an accident; it later emerges as the first of 26 deaths by fire caused over the next seven years by arsonist Peter Dinsdale.
1975 - During his
'Welcome To My Nightmare' tour in Vancouver, Canada, Alice Cooper falls from the stage and breaks six ribs.
1982 – Chinese American Vincent Chin
dies in a coma after being beaten in Highland Park, Michigan on June 19, by two auto workers who had mistaken him for Japanese and who were angry about the success of Japanese auto companies.
1985 – A terrorist bomb aboard
Air India Flight 182 brings the
Boeing 747 down off the coast of Ireland killing all 329 aboard.
1990 -
Buddy Holly's Gibson acoustic guitar sold for £139,658 ($237,419) in a Sotheby's auction. The guitar was in a tooled leather case made by Holly himself.
2010 - [Then] 62-year-old
Gregg Allman underwent a successful liver transplant operation at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida.
2013 –
Nik Wallenda becomes the first man to successfully walk across the Grand Canyon on a tight rope.
2014 – The last of
Syria's declared chemical weapons are
shipped out for destruction.
Births
1894 – Alfred Kinsey; 1912 – Alan Turing; 1923 – Elroy Schwartz; 1925 – Art Modell; 1927 – Bob Fosse; 1929 – June Carter Cash; 1936 – Richard Bach; 1940 – Wilma Rudolph; 1940 – Stu Sutcliffe; 1947 – Bryan Brown; 1955 – Glenn Danzig; 1956 – Randy Jackson; 1957 – Frances McDormand; 1964 – Joss Whedon; 1966 – Chico DeBarge; 1972 – Selma Blair; 1974 – Joel Edgerton; 1975 – KT Tunstall; 1977 – Jason Mraz; 1979 – LaDainian Tomlinson; 1980 – Melissa Rauch; 1984 – Duffy
Deaths
79 – Vespasian; 1970 –
Roscoe Turner; 1995 – Jonas Salk; 1997 – Betty Shabazz; 1998 – Maureen O'Sullivan; 2006 – Aaron Spelling; 2009 – Ed McMahon; 2011 – Peter Falk; 2013 – Bobby 'Blue' Bland, Frank Kelso; 2015 – Dick Van Patten