On June 4, 1919, the United States Congress approved the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution, formally initiating the final phase of a political struggle that had spanned more than seven decades. With the stroke of a legislative pen, Congress did not merely advance a…
Read MoreOn June 4, 1876, The Transcontinental Express, also called “The Lightning Express,” made history and it puttered into San Francisco a mere 83 hours or so after it had left New York City. “That any human being could travel across the entire nation in less than four…
Read MoreOn June 4, 1896, in the early hours of the morning, Henry Ford took his first significant step towards revolutionizing personal transportation by test-driving his pioneering invention, the Ford Quadricycle. This event marked a pivotal moment not only in Ford’s life but also in…
Read MoreOn June 3, 1863, the Army of Northern Virginia—ragged, proud, and buoyed by recent triumph—began its long march out of war-ravaged Virginia and into the lush, unbloodied countryside of Pennsylvania. At its head rode General Robert E. Lee, whose strategic genius and battlefield audacity…
Read MoreThe French Revolution crossed a fatal threshold on June 2, 1793, when François Hanriot, a failed clerk turned militant commander of the Paris National Guard, surrounded the National Convention at cannon-point and arrested 22 leading Girondist deputies—on orders not of the people, but of…
Read MoreOn June 3, 1937, the Duke of Windsor, formerly King Edward VIII of the United Kingdom, married Wallis Simpson, an American socialite. This event, held at the Château de Candé in Monts, France, changed the direction of the British monarchy forever. Edward VIII had…
Read MoreOn June 3, 1492, Martin Behaim, a German textile merchant and cartographer, presented to an audience in Nuremberg something that few had never seen before: a globe. Calling it The Erdapfel, which translates to “earth apple,” Behaim carefully managed the construction of the globe…
Read MoreOn June 2, 1953, the world watched intently as Queen Elizabeth II officially received her crown. Elizabeth’s coronation occurred while her country still had scars from World War II. NPR writes that “the start of the 25-year-old’s reign was widely seen as the dawn…
Read MoreOn June 2, 1774, the British Parliament passed a series of stringent measures known as the Intolerable Acts, also called the Coercive Acts, aimed at quelling growing unrest in the American colonies, particularly Massachusetts. This decisive action followed the infamous Boston Tea Party of…
Read MoreOn June 1, 1812, President James Madison asked Congress to grant him the authority to go to war with England, a risky move against a global power that nearly cost the young United States its independence, saw the White House burned, and propelled General…
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