This Day in History

[Gravdigr]

Originally Posted by Gravdigr

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 García 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 Tormé; 2002 – Dee Dee Ramone; 2004 – Ronald Reagan; 2012 – Ray Bradbury; 2015 – Tariq Aziz; 2015 – Alan Bond; 2015 – Richard Johnson