On this date...
In 1700, Massachusetts ordered priests to leave the colony.
1745, American colonials captured Louisburg, Cape Breton Island, from the French
In 1775, the Battle of Bunker Hill was fought. However, it was mostly fought on Breed’s Hill, not Bunker Hill - this mistake occurred because of a newspaper reporter who wrote the information down incorrectly.
In 1776, Washington sent Congress a letter from Brigadier General Sullivan and judged that Sullivan wanted the Canadian command. Washington is credited with being active, spirited, zealous for the cause, and capable, but is noted for his vanity and eagerness for popularity.
In 1776, Major General Artemas Ward writes from Boston: Continental privateers have brought two Glasgow transports into Nantasket with about 210 Highland troops and baggage. One armed transport fights before surrendering.
In 1788, after a lengthy stay in Europe, future US President John Adams and his wife, Abigail Adams, returned to Boston.
In 1850, the paddle-wheeler “G P Griffith” burned off Mentor, Ohio, killing 206 people.
In 1856, the Republican Party opened its first convention in Philadelphia.
In 1876, Sioux and Cheyenne Native Americans scored a tactical victory over General Crook’s forces at the Battle of the Rosebud, foreshadowing the disaster of the Battle of the Little Bighorn eight days later.
In 1877, during the Indian Wars, the Nez Perce defeated the US Cavalry at White Bird Canyon in the Idaho Territory.
In 1885, the Statue of Liberty arrived in New York as a gift from France.
In 1894, the first US poliomyelitis epidemic broke out in Rutland, Vermont.
In 1898, the United States Navy Hospital Corps was established.
In 1915, the League to Enforce Peace was organized at Independence Hall in Philadelphia with William Howard Taft as president; its program anticipates the League of Nations.
In 1928, Amelia Earhart embarked on the first trans-Atlantic flight by a woman as a passenger in a plane piloted by Wilmer Stulz.
In 1930, President Herbert Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which boosted U.S. tariffs to historically high levels, prompting foreign retaliation.
In 1932, the Bonus Army: around a thousand World War I veterans assembled at the United States Capitol as the US Senate considered a bill that would give them certain benefits.
In 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s secretary of war, Henry Stimson, phoned then-Missouri Senator Harry S. Truman and politely asked him not to make inquiries about a defense plant in Pasco, Washington.
In 1953, the US Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas stayed the executions of spies Julius & Ethel Rosenberg scheduled for the next day their 14th anniversary.
In 1954, the CIA exile army landed in Guatemala. Organized by John Foster Dulles and United Fruit Co.
In 1963, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Abington (Pa.) School District v. Schempp, struck down, 8-1, rules requiring the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer or the reading of biblical verses in public schools.
In 1965, a show opened in the Palo Duro Canyon’s outdoor amphitheater called “Thundering Sounds of the West.” The successful reception of that show led to the development and production of Texas in 1966, which has continued each summer since.
In 1972, President Richard Nixon’s eventual downfall began with the arrest of five burglars inside the Democratic headquarters in Washington, D.C.’s Watergate complex.
In 1976, the National Basketball Association (NBA) announced a merger with its rival, the American Basketball Association (ABA). It took on the ABA’s four most successful franchises: the Denver Nuggets, the Indiana Pacers, the New York (later Brooklyn) Nets, and the San Antonio Spurs.
In 1982, during US President Reagan’s 1st address to the UN General Assembly, he said, “We must serve mankind through genuine disarmament.”
In 1991, the body of the 12th US President, Zachary Taylor, was exhumed to test how he died; rumors had persisted since he died in 1850 of arsenic poisoning - no evidence of this was found.
In 1994, after leading police on a slow-speed chase on Southern California freeways, O.J. Simpson was arrested and charged with murder in the deaths of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman.
In 2008, hundreds of same-sex couples got married across California on the first full day that same-sex marriage became legal by order of the state’s highest court; an estimated 11,000 same-sex couples would be married under the California law in its first three months.
In 2015, nine Black worshippers were killed when a gunman opened fire during a Bible study gathering at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
In 2015, the US Treasury announced that an image of a woman would replace Alexander Hamilton on the US $10 bill. It was later reversed in 2016, and Hamilton remains on the ten-dollar bill.
In 2021, the Supreme Court, in a 7-2 ruling, left the Affordable Care Act intact, rejecting a major Republican-led effort to repeal the national health care law known informally as “Obamacare.”
In 2021, Juneteenth was established as a US federal holiday.
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