On June 13, 1777, a young French aristocrat named Gilbert du Motier, the Marquis de Lafayette, landed near Charleston, South Carolina, to join the American Revolutionary cause. Barely 19 years old, Lafayette arrived not as a representative of the French crown, but as an…
Read More
On June 13, 1971, The New York Times began publishing a series of articles based on the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Department of Defense study of U.S. political and military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967. It was a bombshell report. The Pentagon…
Read More
On June 13, 1893, the president of the United States learned he would have to disappear for a few days. Shortly into his second term in The White House, Grover Cleveland noticed a rough spot on the roof of his mouth. After consulting the…
Read More
On June 12, 1939—exactly a century after the mythic debut of baseball in Cooperstown, New York—the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum opened its doors to the public. The date was deliberately chosen to commemorate what organizers believed was the 100th anniversary of…
Read More
Anne Frank received her now-famous diary on June 12, 1942, a gift for her thirteenth birthday. The diary, a red-and-white checkered notebook, was an unassuming present that would later become one of the most poignant and powerful symbols of the human spirit in the…
Read More
On June 12, 1429, Joan of Arc achieved her first offensive military victory, winning a battle near the small town of Jargeau on the southern bank of the Loire River in central France. By the end of 1428, writes historians, “the English and their…
Read More
They came not with violence but with the law—federal agents, marshals, and the force of a constitutional order long delayed. And yet, standing rigid before the arch of Foster Auditorium in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Governor George Wallace conjured a spectacle of resistance that had been…
Read More
In the sweltering heat of June 1776, the Second Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia and decided to change the course of human events. The delegates, representing the thirteen colonies, faced the monumental task of justifying a rebellion that had already sparked skirmishes and ignited…
Read More
On June 11, 2002, Fox changed the way people watch television by introducing a revolutionary show: American Idol. One of the most iconic and popular singing competition shows in history, the Idol quickly took root as a national phenomenon. The show also us to some of the biggest…
Read More
The morning of June 10, 1692, dawned grim and overcast over the Puritan town of Salem, Massachusetts. That day, Bridget Bishop—widow, tavern-keeper, and long-rumored consorter with the devil—was led to Gallows Hill and hanged for the crime of witchcraft. Her execution marked the first…
Read More
