1534 – Jacques Cartier was the first European to describe and map the Saint Lawrence River.
1732 – James Oglethorpe was granted a royal charter for the colony of the future U.S. state of Georgia.
1822 – Charles Graham of New York patented porcelain false teeth.
1856 – Five hundred Mormons left Iowa City, Iowa for the Mormon Trail.
1862 – American Civil War: Stonewall Jackson concluded his successful Shenandoah Valley Campaign with a victory in the Battle of Port Republic; his tactics during the campaign are now studied by militaries around the world.
1869 – Charles E. Hires sold his 1st root beer, in Philadelphia.
1902 – First Automat restaurant opened at 818 Chestnut St, Philadelphia.
1909 – Alice Huyler Ramsey, 22-year-old housewife from Hackensack, New Jersey, became the first woman to drive across the US, in a Maxwell 30. She drove 3,800 miles from Manhattan to San Francisco in 59 days.
1910 – A passenger on the SS Arawatta threw a bottle with note overboard. It was found June 6, 1983 in Queensland, Australia.
1915 – William Jennings Bryan resigned as Woodrow Wilson’s Secretary of State over a disagreement regarding the United States’ handling of the sinking of the RMS Lusitania.
1924 “Jelly-Roll Blues” was recorded by jazz pioneer pianist and composer Jelly Roll Morton.
1928 – Charles Kingsford Smith completed the first trans-Pacific flight in a Fokker Trimotor monoplane, the Southern Cross.
1930 – A Chicago Tribune reporter, Jake Lingle, was killed during rush hour at the Illinois Central train station by Leo Vincent Brothers, allegedly over a $100,000 gambling debt owed to Al Capone.
1934 – First appearance of Donald Duck in a cartoon, “The Wise Little Hen”.
1942 – Nazis killed all inhabitants of Lidice, which had been implicated in the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, Nazi controller of Bohemia and Moravia, to “teach the Czechs a final lesson of subservience and humility.”
1943 – “Pay-as-you-go” (withholding) US income tax deductions authorized.
1944 – World War II: Ninety-nine civilians were hanged from lampposts and balconies by German troops in Tulle, France, in reprisal for maquisards attacks.
1949 – George Orwell published his seminal novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four” set in the totalitarian state of Oceania.
1953 – The Flint–Worcester tornado outbreak sequence killed 94 people in Massachusetts.
1954 – Joseph Welch, special counsel for the United States Army, lashed out at Senator Joseph McCarthy during the Army–McCarthy hearings, giving McCarthy the famous rebuke, “You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”
1958 – “Purple People Eater” by Sheb Wooley hits #1.
1959 – The USS George Washington was launched. It was the first nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine.
1968 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson declared a national day of mourning following the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy.
1969 – Brian Jones left the Rolling Stones after developing a serious drug problem.
1970 – Bob Dylan was given an honorary Doctorate of Music at Princeton University.
1972 – Severe rainfall caused a dam in the Black Hills of South Dakota to burst, creating a flood that killed 238 people and caused $160 million in damage.
1975 – Tony Orlando & Dawn received a gold record for “He Don’t Love You”.
1978 – Johannes Gutenberg’s Bible, the first book produced using the printing press, (1 of 21 complete versions) sold for $2.4 million in London.
1979 – The Ghost Train (amusement park ride) fire at Luna Park Sydney, Australia, killed seven.
1980 – Comedian Richard Pryor suffered burns from free basing cocaine.
1983 – Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Party won British parliamentary election.
1984 – Cyndi Lauper got her first US #1 hit with “Time After Time”.
1989 – “Star Trek V: The Final Frontier” premiered in USA.
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