In the fading light of the evening on June 16, 1858, Abraham Lincoln stepped before the Illinois Republican Convention in Springfield and delivered a speech that startled even his allies with its moral clarity and stark prognosis. Accepting his party’s nomination for the United…
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The Battle of Stoke Field, fought on June 16, 1487, ended one of the longest, most important wars in English history, the Wars of the Roses, a protracted series of civil wars that engulfed the country for over three decades. The seeds of the…
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On June 16, 1884, Americans visiting Coney Island in New York experienced the thrill of a lifetime when the first roller coaster in the United States opened to the public. Invented and built by LaMarcus Thompson, known as “the Father of the Gravity Ride,”…
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On June 15, 2022, Microsoft formally retired Internet Explorer, the once-dominant web browser that had defined an entire era of online life. After 26 years—and no small share of controversy—the company decommissioned IE in favor of its successor, Microsoft Edge, signaling the end of…
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Arlington National Cemetery, one of the most hallowed grounds in the United States, has a rich history intertwined with the nation’s Civil War and its aftermath. Its creation was driven by both practical needs and symbolic gestures, transforming a site of personal significance into…
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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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