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 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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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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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…
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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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In the spring of 1964, the United States Senate found itself in the throes of a historic struggle. For 75 grueling days, a filibuster, the longest in Senate history, had paralyzed the chamber, blocking the passage of the Civil Rights Act. Southern senators, determined…
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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 9, 1949, the literary world witnessed the publication of George Orwell’s 1984, a novel that has since become a cornerstone in the canon of dystopian literature. The novel’s arrival marked a pivotal moment, capturing the anxieties of a post-war era and offering…
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