Henry VIII marries his first wife, Catherine of Aragon

On June 11, 1776, the Continental Congress selects Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, John Adams of Massachusetts, Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, Roger Sherman of Connecticut and Robert R. Livingston of New York to draft a declaration of independence. They have come to be known as the Committee of Five. Knowing Jefferson’s prowess with a pen, Adams […]

Lieutenant John F. Kennedy receives the Navy and Marine Corps Medal—one of the Navy’s highest honors for gallantry—for his heroic actions as the commanding officer of a motor torpedo boat during World War II on June 11, 1944. The future president also received a Purple Heart for wounds received during battle. As a young man, Kennedy […]

On June 11, 1955, a racing car in Le Mans, France, goes out of control and crashes into stands filled with spectators, killing 83 people, including the driver, Frenchman Pierre Levegh. The tragedy in the famous 24-hour endurance race led to a ban on racing in several nations. The Le Mans race, organized by France’s […]

Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc publicly burns himself to death in a plea for President Ngo Dinh Diem to show “charity and compassion” to all religions. Diem, a Catholic who had been oppressing the Buddhist majority, remained stubborn despite continued Buddhist protests and repeated U.S. requests to liberalize his government’s policies. More Buddhist monks immolated […]

Then 34-year-old director Steven Spielberg reportedly drew on his own experiences as an unusually imaginative, often-lonely child of divorce for his science-fiction classic E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, which is released on June 11, 1982. For Spielberg, E.T. marked a return to territory he had first visited with the classic Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), […]