On this date..

Machias Bay Map

In 1775, the Battle of Machias is the first naval battle of the American Revolution. Citizens of Machias, Maine (then part of Massachusetts) captured the armed British schooner HMS Margaretta when it threatened their town.

In 1776, The constitutional convention of the colony of Virginia adopted the Virginia Declaration of Rights, a model for the Bill of Rights that was later added to the U.S. Constitution.

In 1939, The Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, held its first induction ceremony; Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, and Honus Wagner were among the inaugural class, which had been elected three years earlier.

In 1944, Six days after the D-Day landing, the five Allied landing groups, made up of some 330,000 troops, link up in Normandy to form a single solid front across northwestern France.

In 1963, Activist Medgar Evers was fatally shot outside his home in Jackson, Mississippi; his murder received national attention and helped galvanize the American civil rights movement.

In 1967, In Loving v. Virginia the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously struck down a state law that banned interracial marriage, ruling that it was unconstitutional under the equal protection and due process clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment.

In 1974, On June 12, 1974, Little League Baseball, Inc. announces its decision to "defer to the changing social climate" and allow girls to play ball. The change comes after the organization lost a series of lawsuits in the state of New Jersey, and faced growing legal challenges in other states. (As an aside, I do not advocate for this type of inclusion as I believe a separate Little League comprised of girls could have been started for safety reasons)

In 1987, President Ronald Reagan delivered his famous speech at the Brandenburg Gate telling Soviet Premier Gorbachev to "take down this wall".

In 2011, Scientists publish the discovery of what may be the oldest artwork in the Americas: an engraving of a Ice Age mammoth on a fossil bone likely at least 13,000 years old. The bone, found in Florida, likely came from a mammoth, mastodon or giant sloth.