Also on this day
American Revolution
1776
On this day in 1776, off the coast of Charleston, South Carolina, British Commodore Sir Peter Parker notifies General Henry Clinton that he will land on the South Carolina mainland the next day on the flood tide, if the wind blows from the south.
After 10 years out of service, Parker...
Automotive
1902
On this day in 1902, German automaker Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft (DMG) first registers “Mercedes” as a brand name; the name will gain full legal protection the next September.
Mechanical engineer Gottlieb Daimler sold his first luxury gasoline-powered automobile to the sultan of Morocco in 1899; a year later, he formed DMG in his...
Civil War
1862
On this day, Confederate General Robert E. Lee meets with his corps commanders to plot an attack on General George McClellan’s Army of the Potomac. Launched on June 26, the attack would break the stalemate of the Peninsular campaign in Virginia and trigger the Seven Days’ Battles.
McClellan had spent two...
Cold War
1967
Hopes for better U.S.-Soviet relations run high as U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson meets with Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin in Glassboro, New Jersey, for a three-day summit. The meeting ended inconclusively, however, as issues such as Vietnam and the Middle East continued to divide the two superpowers. The Johnson-Kosygin meeting...
Crime
1934
William Bayly is convicted of murder in New Zealand despite the fact that the body of one of his alleged victims was never found. Most of the evidence against Bayly consisted of trace amounts of human hair, bone, and tissue, representing a marked advance in the field of forensics.
Sam and...
Disaster
1944
A spate of tornadoes across West Virginia and Pennsylvania kills more than 150 people on this day in 1944. Most of the twisters were classified as F3, but the most deadly one was an F4 on the Fujita scale, meaning it was a devastating tornado, with winds in excess...
General Interest
1956
On June 23, 1956, 99.95 percent of Egyptian voters mark their ballots to elect Gamal Abdel Nasser as the first president of the Republic of Egypt. Nasser, who toppled the Egyptian monarchy in 1952 in a military coup, was the only presidential candidate on the ballot. In the same ballot,...
1959
After only nine years in prison, Klaus Fuchs, the German-born Los Alamos scientist whose espionage helped the USSR build their first atomic and hydrogen bombs, is released from a British prison. Fuchs immediately left Britain for communist East Germany, where he resumed his scientific career.As a student in prewar Germany,...
2013
On this day in 2013, 34-year-old aerialist Nik Wallenda becomes the first person to walk a high wire across the Little Colorado River Gorge near Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona. Wallenda wasn’t wearing a safety harness as he made the quarter-mile traverse on a 2-inch-thick steel cable some 1,500...
Hollywood
1989
On this day in 1989, Tim Burton’s noir spin on the well-known story of the DC Comics hero Batman is released in theaters.
Michael Keaton starred in the film as the multimillionaire Bruce Wayne, who has transformed himself into the crime-fighting Batman after witnessing his parents’ brutal murder as a child....
Literary
1929
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Shaara is born today in Jersey City, New Jersey. Shaara attended Rutgers and later did graduate work at Columbia and the University of Vermont before becoming a college professor at Florida State University. He also worked as a merchant seaman, paratrooper, and policeman.
Shaara wrote four novels...
Music
1987
Long before Hannah Montana and High School Musical, in the late 1980s, a 16-year-old aspiring pop star named Tiffany Darwish had a self-titled debut album on a major record label that was gathering dust on record store shelves around the country. What transformed Tiffany the album into a quadruple-Platinum smash...
Old West
1878
Martin Sweeny, a former Indian agent and Arizona mining entrepreneur, is murdered near Tombstone, Arizona, in a dispute over a mining property.
Though he would never become famous, Martin Sweeny’s adventurous life and violent death is illustrative of the path many young men followed in the Wild West of the later...
Presidential
1927
The Sioux County Pioneer newspaper of North Dakota reports on this day in 1927 that President Calvin Coolidge will be “adopted” into a Sioux tribe at Fort Yates on the south-central border of North Dakota.
In anticipation of the president’s upcoming visit to the Black Hills region of North Dakota, the...
1972
On this day in 1972, President Richard Nixon signs into law the Higher Education Act, which includes the groundbreaking Title IX legislation. Title IX barred discrimination in higher education programs, including funding for sports and other extracurricular activities. As a result, women’s participation in team sports, particularly in collegiate athletics,...
1973
On this day in 1973, President Richard Nixon’s advisor, H.R. Haldeman, tells the president to put pressure on the head of the FBI to “stay the hell out of this [Watergate burglary investigation] business.” In essence, Haldeman was telling Nixon to obstruct justice, which is one of the articles Congress...
Sports
1972
On this day in 1972, Title IX of the education amendments of 1972 is enacted into law. Title IX prohibits federally funded educational institutions from discriminating against students or employees based on sex. It begins: “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from...
Vietnam War
1964
At a news conference, President Lyndon B. Johnson announces that Henry Cabot Lodge has resigned as ambassador to South Vietnam and that Gen. Maxwell Taylor will be his replacement. It was reliably reported that virtually every top official in the administration volunteered to serve as ambassador. Johnson made a point...
1969
Ben Het, a U.S. Special Forces camp located 288 miles northeast of Saigon and six miles from the junction of the Cambodian, Laotian and South Vietnamese borders, is besieged and cut off by 2,000 North Vietnamese troops using artillery and mortars. The base was defended by 250 U.S. soldiers and...
World War I
1915
On June 23, 1915, exactly one month after Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary, the Italian army attacks Austro-Hungarian positions near the Isonzo River, in the eastern section of the Italian front; it will become the first of twelve Battles of the Isonzo fought during World War I.
Of all the fronts...
World War II
1940
On this day in 1940, Adolf Hitler surveys notable sites in the French capital, now German-occupied territory.
In his first and only visit to Paris, Hitler made Napoleon’s tomb among the sites to see. “That was the greatest and finest moment of my life,” he said upon leaving. Comparisons between the...