Shortly before midnight on June 2, 1919, a powerful explosion tore through the Washington, D.C., home of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. The blast shattered windows, damaged neighboring houses, and ripped apart the front of Palmer’s residence. Palmer, his wife, and their young daughter…
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The 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…
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On June 1, 1974, a short article appeared in the journal Emergency Medicine offering a remarkably simple answer to one of the most terrifying medical emergencies imaginable. A person eating dinner suddenly clutched his throat. He could not speak. He could not breathe. Within…
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On June 1, 1495, John Cor changed the drinking world forever. That’s when the monk first recorded that he had begun whisky production in Scotland in the Exchequer Rolls of Scotland. The entry indicates that “eight bolls of malt” were allocated to “Friar John…
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By the final day of May 1864, the American Civil War had entered a new and increasingly brutal phase. For nearly four weeks, Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant had driven the Union Army of the Potomac southward through Virginia, refusing to retreat after battles…
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On May 30, 1431, in the Norman city of Rouen, the English-dominated tribunal that had spent months trying to destroy Joan of Arc finally delivered her to the fire. She was nineteen years old, a peasant girl from Domrémy who had become, in the…
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On May 31, 1859, the iconic clock tower now known as Big Ben began to keep time for the first time. Located at the north end of the Palace of Westminster in London, the tower has since become one of the most recognizable symbols…
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On May 31, 1879, a modest but consequential shift in New York City’s cultural topography took place: Gilmore’s Garden, a frequently repurposed arena at 26th Street and Madison Avenue, was renamed Madison Square Garden by railroad heir William Henry Vanderbilt. The name change was…
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On May 29, 363, Roman Emperor Julian the Apostate achieved one of the most impressive battlefield victories of late antiquity when his army defeated the forces of the Sasanian Empire outside the walls of Ctesiphon, the Persian capital. Yet the triumph would quickly turn…
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It began not with a battle cry, but with a refusal. On May 30, 1381, villagers in Brentwood, Essex, stood their ground against royal tax collectors—and in so doing, ignited one of the most explosive popular uprisings in English history. The Peasants’ Revolt, also…
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