According to tradition, on June 15, 1752, Benjamin Franklin performed his most famous science experiment, one that helped make him renowned and is most often associated with him. As the skies of Philadelphia began to darken with the approaching of a thunderstorm and many…
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On June 14, 1949, a rhesus monkey named Albert II made history by becoming the first mammal—and the first monkey—to travel into space. Strapped into the nose cone of a repurposed German V-2 rocket, Albert II reached an altitude of 83 miles (134 kilometers),…
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The annual Congressional Baseball Game for Charity is a long-standing bipartisan tradition where members of the United States Congress are divided into teams by political affiliation to compete in a friendly baseball match. On June 14, 2017, in Alexandria, Virginia, however, the fun was…
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On June 14, 1954, the United States of America officially became a nation “under God” When President Dwight Eisenhower signed a bill to insert the phrase into the Pledge of Allegiance. First designed in 1892, the pledge originally avoided referencing religion. In 1892, Francis…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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