Congress adopts the Stars and Stripes

On June 14, 1775, the Continental Congress authorizes the enlistment of expert riflemen to serve the United Colonies for one year. This launches the U.S. Army as America’s first national institution, more than a year before the Declaration of Independence is published on July 4, 1776. “Resolved, that six companies of expert riflemen, be immediately […]

Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, is born on June 14, 1811 in Litchfield, Connecticut, the seventh child of Congregationalist minister Lyman Beecher. Stowe studied at private schools in Connecticut and worked as a teacher in Hartford for five years until her father moved to Cincinnati in 1832. She accompanied him and continued […]

Henry Ossian Flipper, born into slavery in Thomasville, Georgia, in 1856, becomes the first African American cadet to graduate from the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York on June 14, 1877.  The United States Military Academy—the first military school in America—was founded by Congress in 1802 for the purpose of educating and […]

On June 14, 1940, Parisians awaken to the sound of a German-accented voice announcing via loudspeakers that a curfew was being imposed for 8 p.m. that evening as German troops enter and occupy Paris. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had tried for days to convince the French government to hang on, not to sue for […]

On June 14, 1951, the U.S. Census Bureau dedicates UNIVAC, the first commercially produced electronic digital computer in the United States. UNIVAC, which stood for Universal Automatic Computer, was developed by a team of engineers led by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, makers of ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic digital computer. These giant computers, […]

After suffering through six weeks of military defeats against Britain’s armed forces, Argentina surrenders to Great Britain, ending the Falklands War. The Falkland Islands, located about 300 miles off the southern tip of Argentina, had long been claimed by the British. British navigator John Davis may have sighted the islands in 1592, and in 1690 […]

On June 14, 2015, sheriff’s deputies in Missouri discover a grisly scene: the bloody body of Claudine “Dee Dee” Blanchard, who had been stabbed to death a few days before. The murder of Blanchard, lying face down in bed in a pool of blood, becomes a highly publicized case about Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, a […]

On June 14, 2017, a gunman walked onto a baseball field at Eugene Simpson Park in Alexandria, Virginia, opening fire on politicians and wounding House GOP Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana and four others. The representatives had been practicing for the annual Congressional Baseball Game for Charity. James Hodgkinson, a 66-year-old man, asked a passing […]