History Thread...

[CMRivdogs]

27 minutes ago, smr-nj said:

And I would venture a guess that probably 80% of Americans have never even heard of this.

If the current regime has its way….

[GalagaGuy]

44 minutes ago, smr-nj said:

And I would venture a guess that probably 80% of Americans have never even heard of this.

It sort of hit the mainstream back in 2019 when it was used as a plot device in the HBO Watchmen series so I'd bet that number is a lot lower.  

[LaceyLou]

On 5/30/2025 at 12:26 PM, oblong said:

I read about that in Halberstam's book The Fifties.  I'll say it again, if you haven't read that, please do.  It's a top 5 book for me.  I learned so much about so many things.

There's also an interesting book called Operation Paperclip, I believe by Annie Jacobsen (sp?). I recommend that for anybody interested in the Cold War era.

[CMRivdogs]

June 1

Quote

1779 

The court-martial of Benedict Arnold convenes in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After a relatively clean record in the early days of the American Revolution, Arnold was charged with 13 counts of misbehavior, including misusing government wagons and illegally buying and selling goods. Although his notorious betrayal was still many months away, Arnold’s resentment over this order and the perceived mistreatment by the American Army would fuel his traitorous decision.

Abruptly interrupted at its outset by a British attack north of New York City, the court-martial did not get underway again until December 23 in Morristown, New Jersey. Although Arnold was cleared of most charges, General George Washington issued a reprimand against him, and Arnold became increasingly angered.

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On June 1, 1974, the stop-choking technique invented by Cincinnati surgeon Henry J. Heimlich is published in the medical journal Emergency Medicine. The Heimlich maneuver, which involves thrusting inward and upward on the abdomen of choking victims, becomes the go-to method for saving lives.

Heimlich shared his informal findings in an essay he wrote for the June 1974 issue of the journal called “Pop Goes the Café Coronary.” The term “Café Coronary syndrome” refers to the act of a person choking while eating at a restaurant, and observers thinking the choker is suffering from a heart attack. The established professional medical treatment would be a tracheostomy, which involves the insertion of a large-caliber hypodermic needle into the trachea to provide a temporary airway, something only a doctor can do.

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On June 1, 1980, CNN (Cable News Network), the world’s first 24-hour television news network, makes its debut. The network signed on from its headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, with a lead story about the attempted assassination of civil rights leader Vernon Jordan.

CNN went on to change the notion that news could only be reported at fixed times throughout the day. At the time of CNN’s launch, TV news was dominated by three major networks—ABC, CBS and NBC—and their nightly 30-minute broadcasts.

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1494 Under commission from King James IV to turn eight bolls of malt into "aqua vitae" (or "water of life"), Friar John Cor distills Scotland’s first whisky at Lindores Abbey, igniting a national love affair with the beverage.

 

[CMRivdogs]

June 2

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/june-2

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On June 2, 1935, Babe Ruth, one of the greatest players in the history of baseball, ends his Major League playing career after 22 seasons, 10 World Series and 714 home runs. The following year, Ruth, a larger-than-life figure whose name became synonymous with baseball, was one of the first five players inducted into the sport’s hall of fame.

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On June 2, 1774, the British Parliament renews the Quartering Act. The Quartering Act, in conjunction with the Massachusetts Government Act, the Administration of Justice Act and the Boston Port Act, were known as the Coercive Acts.

News of 342 chests of tea dumped into Boston Harbor on December 16, 1773, in what was dubbed the Boston Tea Party, reached Britain in January 1774. Disgusted by the colonists’ action against private property, the British Parliament quickly decided upon the Coercive Acts as a means of reasserting British control over the colonies and punishing Boston.

On June 2, 1774, Parliament completed its punishment by expanding the Quartering Act. In its original incarnation, the Quartering Act of 1765 had merely demanded that colonists provide barracks for British soldiers. In Boston, those barracks were on an isolated island in Boston Harbor. In 1766, the act expanded to include the housing of soldiers in public houses (hotels) and empty buildings.

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Senator Joseph McCarthy charges that communists have infiltrated the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the atomic weapons industry. Although McCarthy’s accusations created a momentary controversy, they were quickly dismissed as mere sensationalism from a man whose career was slipping away.

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June 2, 1775. Massachusetts requests the Continental Congress to take over regulation and direction of the New England Army, because it had been raised for the general defense of American rights. Provincial congress of South Carolina declares the citizens of the colony "ready to sacrifice their lives and their fortunes" for the American cause.

 

[CMRivdogs]

Also today's the 15th anniversary of JimJoyce ruining Armando Galarraga's perfect game

[chasfh]

On 5/30/2025 at 10:57 AM, oblong said:

Our Germans are better than their Gemrans.

And it wasn't just Von Braun.  He had a whole team he brought with him.  Huntsville became like Frankenmuth for awhile with all the Krauts living there.

And also regarding the moon.... If Kennedy didn't have his Bay of Pigs issue and the Russians didn't beat us into manned space flight, JFK may have never made his declaration about landing a man on the moon before 1970 and if he hadn't died.... that goal motivated the entire process and once it was reached they couldn't cancel missions fast enough as Vietnam was eating into the budgets.  And it was a Republican who did it.  The Apollo astronauts on the later missions that would have to meet or talk to Nixon could barely hide their disgust, even though most of them were Republicans.  Here's a guy trying to bask in the glory of a program he eliminated.  There were supposed to go up to Apollo 20 but 18-20 were cancelled.   There were 11 manned Apollo missions (7-17), plus Apollo 1 (the fire), and unmanned Apollos 4-6.  They skipped 2 and 3.

Apollo 7 was the first one I remember from when i was a little kid. I always wondered why they didn’t have any Apollo 1 through 6, but now I know a little more about it.

Do you happen to know why they skipped 2 and 3?

[oblong]

1 hour ago, chasfh said:

Apollo 7 was the first one I remember from when i was a little kid. I always wondered why they didn’t have any Apollo 1 through 6, but now I know a little more about it.

Do you happen to know why they skipped 2 and 3?

Researching it more.... there were test flights that filled those slots. (AS-201 and AS-202, AS stands for Apollo-Saturn) They just weren't officially Apollo's 2 and 3 at the time.  The Apollo 1 fire mission was unofficially and casually referred to as Apollo 1 internally, never publicly announced that way,  but those two test flights preceeded it. The widows of Grisson, White, Chaffee, asked for their husband's mission to remain Apollo 1 and NASA Admin agreed to do that.  But the problem is they had to figure out how to go forward so they just said "Screw it, we'll make the next one 4.   So what could have been Apollo 2 and 3 preceeded Apollo 1.  They just were never called that in the paperwork.  I don't know what they would have done if there hadn't been a fire and Apollo 1 launched, if it would have stil been called Apollo 1.  For example, the first manned Gemini mission was Gemini III.  So they had history of not starting with 1 for manned missions.  I suspect Apollo 1 sounds better for memorial purposes than Apollo 3 or 4.  There was another unmanned mission but it didn't carry a CSM (Command and Service Module) boilerplate so it didn't get an official designation internally, like AS-201, AS-202, etc.

Apollo 7, the one you first remember, gets forgotten because they didn't go the moon like Apollo 8, or have a LM, like Apollo 9 in low earth orbit to play with, so nothing very sexy about it.  But it was the first manned mission after the fire and they had to test out the completed CSM spacecraft.  Everything had to go well in order to continue on with the missions to meet the deadline.  What was originally going to be 3 missions was crammed into one.  The crew won an emmy award for their broadcast from space.  Commander Wally Schirra donated his to the San Diego Air and Space museum and I saw it 2 years ago.

 

 

 

[CMRivdogs]

June 3

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/june-3

Quote

On June 3, 1943, a group of U.S. sailors marches through downtown Los Angeles, carrying clubs and other makeshift weapons and attacking anyone wearing a “zoot suit”—the baggy wool pants, oversized coats and porkpie hats favored by many young men of color at the time.

Over the next week, the so-called Zoot Suit Riots spread throughout the city, including the largely Mexican-American neighborhood of East Los Angeles and the largely Black neighborhood of Watts. The riots marked the culmination of simmering racial tensions in Los Angeles, set against the backdrop of World War II.

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On June 3, 1754, during the Seven Years’ War, a 22-year-old lieutenant colonel in the Virginiamilitia named George Washington begins construction of a makeshift Fort Necessity. The fort was built to defend his forces from French soldiers enraged by the murder of Ensign Joseph Coulon de Jumonville while in Washington’s custody. One month later, the French, led by Jumonville’s half-brother, won Washington’s surrender and forced confession to Jumonville’s murder.

The Ohio Valley had long been a contested territory among French Canadians, various Indian groups and the British colonies of Pennsylvania and Virginia. When the French began to establish fortifications along the river and refused Virginia’s written demand that they depart, Virginia’s governor, Robert Dinwiddie, dispatched Washington to complete and defend a Virginian fort at the forks of the Ohio.

A quick personal note, Washington later bought the land around Fort Necessity. One of the reason the land was preserved and became part of the US Park Service

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On June 3, 1800, John Adams, the second president of the United States, arrives in Washington, D.C., where he briefly takes up residence in Georgetown and is fêted in advance of being the first American president to move to the burgeoning new capital city. When he arrives, its streets have yet to be paved and the major government buildings are still under construction.

Still, Adams is impressed with the future capital. In a June 13 letter to his wife Abigail, Adams wrote, "I like the Seat of Government very well and shall Sleep, or lie awake next Winter in the Presidents house. I have Slept very well on my Journey and been pretty well. An Abundance of Company and many tokens of respect have attended my Journey, and my Visit here is well recd... The Establishment of the public offices in this place has given it the Air of the seat of Government and all Things seem to go on well.”

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On June 3, 1965, 120 miles above the Earth, Major Edward H. White II opens the hatch of the Gemini 4 and steps out of the capsule, becoming the first American astronaut to walk in space. Attached to the craft by a 25-foot tether and controlling his movements with a hand-held oxygen jet-propulsion gun, White remained outside the capsule for just over 20 minutes. As a space walker, White had been preceded by Soviet cosmonaut Aleksei A. Leonov, who on March 18, 1965, was the first man ever to walk in space.

 

[romad1]

35 minutes ago, CMRivdogs said:

June 3

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/june-3

A quick personal note, Washington later bought the land around Fort Necessity. One of the reason the land was preserved and became part of the US Park Service

 

1943 was a weird year in America.  Not quite winning the war (we were but didn't have the satisfying offensive wins to prove it) and race strife in LA and Detroit and elsewhere because of the rapid economic shifts of the war economy.  

As an aside, can you imagine getting up in a propeller driven aircraft with squad sized unit to fly into Nazi Germany with little fighter protection to prove a theory of strategic bombing.   With a 10% chance of being shot down each mission.  

 

[CMRivdogs]

6 minutes ago, romad1 said:

1943 was a weird year in America.  Not quite winning the war (we were but didn't have the satisfying offensive wins to prove it) and race strife in LA and Detroit and elsewhere because of the rapid economic shifts of the war economy.  

As an aside, can you imagine getting up in a propeller driven aircraft with squad sized unit to fly into Nazi Germany with little fighter protection to prove a theory of strategic bombing.   With a 10% chance of being shot down each mission.  

 

I can't remember the name of the series, but it was an airborne version of Band of Brothers that kind of pushed that to the forefront. Incidentally we learned a few years ago that one of my wife's cousins' was a member of C Company. One of the other groups who parachuted into France during D Day. He was much older than my wife. There is a book out there somewhere about C Company. He was a bit of a prankster. I believe he went back to Pennsylvania after the was and worked for the railroad. 

[chasfh]

1 hour ago, oblong said:

Researching it more.... there were test flights that filled those slots. (AS-201 and AS-202, AS stands for Apollo-Saturn) They just weren't officially Apollo's 2 and 3 at the time.  The Apollo 1 fire mission was unofficially and casually referred to as Apollo 1 internally, never publicly announced that way,  but those two test flights preceeded it. The widows of Grisson, White, Chaffee, asked for their husband's mission to remain Apollo 1 and NASA Admin agreed to do that.  But the problem is they had to figure out how to go forward so they just said "Screw it, we'll make the next one 4.   So what could have been Apollo 2 and 3 preceeded Apollo 1.  They just were never called that in the paperwork.  I don't know what they would have done if there hadn't been a fire and Apollo 1 launched, if it would have stil been called Apollo 1.  For example, the first manned Gemini mission was Gemini III.  So they had history of not starting with 1 for manned missions.  I suspect Apollo 1 sounds better for memorial purposes than Apollo 3 or 4.  There was another unmanned mission but it didn't carry a CSM (Command and Service Module) boilerplate so it didn't get an official designation internally, like AS-201, AS-202, etc.

Apollo 7, the one you first remember, gets forgotten because they didn't go the moon like Apollo 8, or have a LM, like Apollo 9 in low earth orbit to play with, so nothing very sexy about it.  But it was the first manned mission after the fire and they had to test out the completed CSM spacecraft.  Everything had to go well in order to continue on with the missions to meet the deadline.  What was originally going to be 3 missions was crammed into one.  The crew won an emmy award for their broadcast from space.  Commander Wally Schirra donated his to the San Diego Air and Space museum and I saw it 2 years ago.

 

 

 

I was eight when Apollo 8 went up, which is too young to realize what a humongous fricking deal it was. I had no context for processing that. It was just another thing happening on the way to my growing up. In fact, by the time the later Appolo missions were going up, I was bored with it. Oh, what, this again? Try that on your imagination.

[romad1]

4 minutes ago, CMRivdogs said:

I can't remember the name of the series, but it was an airborne version of Band of Brothers that kind of pushed that to the forefront. Incidentally we learned a few years ago that one of my wife's cousins' was a member of C Company. One of the other groups who parachuted into France during D Day. He was much older than my wife. There is a book out there somewhere about C Company. He was a bit of a prankster. I believe he went back to Pennsylvania after the was and worked for the railroad. 

"Masters of the Air" was pretty good from my perspective as an Air Force history dweeb who actually thinks the combined bomber offensive was necessary to win the war. 

"Rogue Heroes" about the SAS made by the "Peaky Blinders" folks is uneven (like Peaky Blinders) but contains greatness.  There is a scene in the final episode of the past season when they return from Italy to Britain.  One of the worst afflicted NCOs is unable physically to ring his own doorbell and just sits down on the corner in front of his house despondent and his wife runs out and greets him in sympathy. 

Edited June 3 by romad1

[CMRivdogs]

That's the series

[oblong]

50 minutes ago, chasfh said:

I was eight when Apollo 8 went up, which is too young to realize what a humongous fricking deal it was. I had no context for processing that. It was just another thing happening on the way to my growing up. In fact, by the time the later Appolo missions were going up, I was bored with it. Oh, what, this again? Try that on your imagination.

The history behind Apollo 8 is fascinating.  They were worried about meeting JFK's deadline, and also worried about the Russians beating us to the moon.  CIA reports showed them rolling out some Moon capable rockets and they had favorable launch windows that would have beaten us.  The development of the Lunar Module was falling behind.  So a NASA manager had the idea to swap Apollo's 8 and 9 and have 8 go to the moon directly without a Lunar Module.  The decision seems like a no brainer now to space geeks because they accomplished so many objectives.  They could prove out the work by the mathemticians, they could test the spacecraft's engines to go into and out of Earth and Lunar orbits.  They could take photos of potential landing sites.  But it was very risky as they were totally reliant on their engine working.  They only had one (Apollo 13 for example survived because they could use the LM engine).   Then you throw in the historical impact of 1968 being such a horrible year in the US.  Them going and reading from Genesis on Christmas Eve "saved 1968" as one telegram writer put it.  And there was the Earth Rise Photo.  Some insiders at NASA had the crew surviving as 50/50.  There was a risk of getting stuck in lunar orbit, there was a risk of being off on the trajactories and the math and they would have crashed into the moon...  

And the other thing that mission did was change who the first person to walk on the moon would be.  By swapping missions you swapped crews and that meant the backup crew as well.  Backup Crews flew 3 missions later.  So crews for 8 and 11 became 9 and 12.   Pete Conrad missed out on history.  He's the third man instead of the first man.  Of course Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were fortunate that all primary objectives were met on the previous missions or else the landing would have been pushed back.  Neil Armstrong wasnt picked to land first, he was picked to command the mission that ended up being the first that landed.  

And to the original commander Jim McDivit's credit, he was offered to swap missions and go to the moon on Apollo 8 but these guys being intelligent and driven and all of that, he focused on the science and challenge.  He felt all the stuff he'd do on Apollo 9, while only in earth orbit, was more of a challenge and "fun" than just "going on a sight seeing" tour around the moon.  

I could talk about this stuff all day

[oblong]

5 hours ago, CMRivdogs said:

June 3

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/june-3

A quick personal note, Washington later bought the land around Fort Necessity. One of the reason the land was preserved and became part of the US Park Service

 

Regarding Ed White.  He really did say this.  This photo is real.  Here's a clip from the HBO Series from the Earth to the Moon.  white was played by Chris Isaak.

 

[CMRivdogs]

June 4

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/june-4

Quote

At approximately 4:00 a.m. on June 4, 1896, in the shed behind his home on Bagley Avenue in Detroit, Henry Ford unveils the “Quadricycle,” the first automobile he ever designed or drove.

Ford was working as the chief engineer for the main plant of the Edison Illuminating Company when he began working on the Quadricycle. On call at all hours to ensure that Detroit had electrical service 24 hours a day, Ford was able to use his flexible working schedule to experiment with his pet project—building a horseless carriage with a gasoline-powered engine. His obsession with the gasoline engine had begun when he saw an article on the subject in a November 1895 issue of American Machinist magazine. The following March, another Detroit engineer named Charles King took his own hand-built vehicle—made of wood, it had a four-cylinder engine and could travel up to five miles per hour—out for a ride, fueling Ford’s desire to build a lighter and faster gasoline-powered model.

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1989..

Chinese troops storm through Tiananmen Square in the center of Beijing, killing and arresting thousands of pro-democracy protesters. The brutal Chinese government assault on the protestersshocked the West and brought denunciations and sanctions from the United States.

In May 1989, nearly a million Chinese, mostly young students, crowded into central Beijing to protest for greater democracy and call for the resignations of Chinese Communist Party leaders deemed too repressive. For nearly three weeks, the protesters kept up daily vigils, and marched and chanted. Western reporters captured much of the drama for television and newspaper audiences in the United States and Europe.

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1919 

The 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, granting women the right to vote, is passed by Congress and sent to the states for ratification.

The women’s suffrage movement was founded in the mid-19th century by women who had become politically active through their work in the abolitionist and temperance movements. In July 1848, 240 woman suffragists, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, met in Seneca Falls, New York, to assert the right of women to vote. Female enfranchisement was still largely opposed by most Americans, and the distraction of the North-South conflict and subsequent Civil Warprecluded further discussion. During the Reconstruction Era, the 15th Amendment was adopted, granting African American men the right to vote, but the Republican-dominated Congress failed to expand its progressive radicalism into the sphere of gender.

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On June 4, 1942, the Battle of Midway—one of the most decisive U.S. victories against Japan during World War II—begins. During the four-day sea-and-air battle, the outnumbered U.S. Pacific Fleet succeeded in destroying four Japanese aircraft carriers while losing only one of its own, the Yorktown, to the previously invincible Japanese navy.

 

[romad1]

5 minutes ago, CMRivdogs said:

June 4

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/june-4

 

A couple of Midway movies out there.  I think the scene where the three carriers are on fire and Japan realizes they lost the bulk of their Kido Butai in just minutes is amazing.  

[CMRivdogs]

June 5

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/june-5

Quote

Shortly after midnight on June 5, 1968, Senator Robert Kennedy is shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles after winning the California presidential primary. Immediately after he announced to his cheering supporters that the country was ready to end its fractious divisions, Kennedy was shot several times by 24-year-old Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan. He was pronounced dead a day later, on June 6, 1968.

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On June 5, 1944, more than 1,000 British bombers drop 5,000 tons of bombs on German gun batteries placed at the Normandy assault area, while 3,000 Allied ships cross the English Channel in preparation for the invasion of Normandy—D-Day.

The day of the invasion of occupied France had been postponed repeatedly since May, mostly because of bad weather and the enormous tactical obstacles involved. Finally, despite less-than-ideal weather conditions—or perhaps because of them—General Eisenhower decided on June 5 to set the next day as D-Day, the launch of the largest amphibious operation in history. Ike knew that the Germans would be expecting postponements beyond the sixth, precisely because weather conditions were still poor.

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 1967. Israel responds to a build-up of Arab forces along its borders by launching a preemptive aerial attack against Egypt. Jordan subsequently entered the fray, but the Arab coalition was no match for Israel’s armed forces. In six days of fighting, Israel occupied the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt, the Golan Heights of Syria and the West Bank and Arab sector of East Jerusalem, both previously under Jordanian rule. By the time the United Nations cease-fire took effect on June 11, Israel had more than doubled its size, including claiming the Old City of Jerusalem from Jordan.

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On June 5, 2004, Ronald Wilson Reagan, the 40th president of the United States, dies after a long struggle with Alzheimer’s disease. Reagan, who was also a well-known actor and served as governor of California, was a popular president known for restoring American confidence after the problems of the 1970s.

 

[oblong]

My favorite Reagan quote isn't "Tear down this wall".  It's "these are the boys of Pointe Du Hoc" during his D Day Anniversary speech in 1984.  It makes me teary thinking about it.

 

[romad1]

Not liking the Hegseth DOD renaming the Harriet Tubman or the Harvey Milk.   

[CMRivdogs]

June 6

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/june-6/d-day

Quote

On June 6, 1944, Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower gives the go-ahead for the largest amphibious military operation in history: Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of northern France, commonly known as D-Day.

By daybreak, 18,000 British and American parachutists were already on the ground. An additional 13,000 aircraft were mobilized to provide air cover and support for the invasion. At 6:30 a.m., American troops came ashore at Utah and Omaha beaches.

Incidentally, if you happen to be traveling in the foothills of Western Virginia between Lynchburg and Roanoke the National D Day Memorial is located in Bedford, Va. https://www.dday.org.

Soldiers from Bedford were part of Company A of the 116th Infantry Regiment, 29th Division. 35 Soldiers from that small town were assigned to that Division, 19 died that day, another 4 would lose their lives before the end of the campaign. The greatest proportion of losses of any town in America 

 

 

[romad1]

7 hours ago, CMRivdogs said:

June 6

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/june-6/d-day

Incidentally, if you happen to be traveling in the foothills of Western Virginia between Lynchburg and Roanoke the National D Day Memorial is located in Bedford, Va. https://www.dday.org.

Soldiers from Bedford were part of Company A of the 116th Infantry Regiment, 29th Division. 35 Soldiers from that small town were assigned to that Division, 19 died that day, another 4 would lose their lives before the end of the campaign. The greatest proportion of losses of any town in America 

 

 

an achievement that was almost simultaneously being duplicated in scale on the other side of the world in the invasion of Saipan and Tinian (on June 15, 1944).  We really did a lot of building up in 1942 and 1943.  

[CMRivdogs]

June 7

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/june-7

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On June 7, 1913, Hudson Stuck, an Alaskan missionary, leads the first successful ascent of Denali(formerly known as Mt. McKinley), the highest point on the North American continent at 20,320 feet.

Stuck, an accomplished amateur mountaineer, was born in London in 1863. After moving to the United States, in 1905 he became archdeacon of the Episcopal Church in Yukon, Alaska. Stuck traveled Alaska’s difficult terrain to preach to villagers and establish schools.

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On June 7, 1776, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia introduces a resolution for independence to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia; John Adams seconds the motion.

Lee’s resolution declared: “That these United Colonies are, and of right out to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved; that measures should be immediately taken for procuring the assistance of foreign powers, and a Confederation be formed to bind the colonies more closely together.”

During the ensuing debates, it became clear that New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and South Carolina were as yet unwilling to declare independence, but would likely be ready to vote in favor of a break with England in due course. Thus, Congress agreed to delay the vote on the Lee Resolution until July 1. In the intervening period, Congress appointed a committee to draft a formal declaration of independence. Its members were John Adams of Massachusetts, Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, Robert R. Livingston of New York and Thomas Jefferson of Virginia. Jefferson, well-known to be the best writer of the group, was selected to be the primary author of the document, which was presented to Congress for review on June 28, 1776.

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1958 Berry Gordy Jr. launches Tamla Records in Detroit with an $800 loan. The label, later known as Motown, became a cultural powerhouse, with its artists delivering 110 Top 10 hits between 1961 and 1971 alone.

 

[CMRivdogs]

June 8

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/june-8

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James Earl Ray, an escaped American convict, is arrested in London, England, and charged with the assassination of African American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

On April 4, 1968, in Memphis, King was fatally wounded by a sniper’s bullet while standing on the balcony outside his second-story room at the Motel Lorraine. That evening, a Remington .30-06 hunting rifle was found on the sidewalk beside a rooming house one block from the Lorraine Motel. During the next several weeks, the rifle, eyewitness reports, and fingerprints on the weapon all implicated a single suspect: escaped convict James Earl Ray. A two-bit criminal, Ray escaped a Missouri prison in April 1967 while serving a sentence for a holdup. In May 1968, a massive manhunt for Ray began. The FBI eventually determined that he had obtained a Canadian passport under a false identity, which at the time was relatively easy.

On June 8, Scotland Yard investigators arrested Ray at a London airport. Ray was trying to fly to Belgium, with the eventual goal, he later admitted, of reaching Rhodesia. Rhodesia (now called Zimbabwe) was at the time ruled by an oppressive and internationally condemned white minority government. Extradited to the United States, Ray stood before a Memphis judge in March 1969 and pleaded guilty to King’s murder in order to avoid the electric chair. He was sentenced to 99 years in prison.

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On June 8, 1948, a hand-built aluminum prototype labeled “No. 1″ becomes the first vehicle to bear the name of one of the world’s leading luxury car manufacturers: Porsche.

The Austrian automotive engineer Ferdinand Porsche debuted his first design at the World’s Fair in Paris in 1900. The electric vehicle set several Austrian land-speed records, reaching more than 35 mph and earning international acclaim for the young engineer. He became general director of the Austro-Daimler Company (an outpost of the German automaker) in 1916 and later moved to Daimler headquarters in Stuttgart. Daimler merged with the Benz firm in the 1920s, and Porsche was chiefly responsible for designing some of the great Mercedes racing cars of that decade.

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During the Six-Day War, Israeli aircraft and torpedo boats attack the USS Liberty in international waters off Egypt’s Gaza Strip. The intelligence ship, well-marked as an American vessel and only lightly armed, was attacked first by Israeli aircraft that fired napalm and rockets at the ship. The Liberty attempted to radio for assistance, but the Israeli aircraft blocked the transmissions. Eventually, the ship was able to make contact with the U.S. carrier Saratoga, and 12 fighter jets and four tanker planes were dispatched to defend the Liberty. When word of their deployment reached Washington, however, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara ordered them recalled to the carrier, and they never reached the Liberty. The reason for the recall remains unclear.

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On June 8, 1966, the rival National Football League (NFL) and American Football League (AFL) announce that they will merge. The first “Super Bowl” between the two leagues took place at the end of the 1966 season, though it took until the 1970 season for the leagues to unite their operations and integrate their regular-season schedules.