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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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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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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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 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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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…
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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…
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The Congress of Vienna, whose Final Act was signed on June 9, 1815, did not merely redraw borders—it sought to rewind the age. In the waning shadow of Napoleon’s first fall and on the eve of his improbable return, Europe’s old monarchies assembled not…
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On June 8, 793, the tranquil monastic community of Lindisfarne—an island off the northeast coast of Northumbria—was shattered by an act of violence so sudden, so foreign, and so brutal that it marked, in the minds of chroniclers and modern historians alike, the beginning…
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On June 7, 1099, after a brutal journey across Europe and the Levant, the weary but determined Crusader army arrived outside the walls of Jerusalem. Their arrival marked the beginning of one of the defining and bloodiest chapters of the First Crusade. The Crusaders,…
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