Constantinople burns, killing thousands

On June 5, 1880, George Bernard Shaw, 23, quits his job at the Edison Telephone Company in order to write. Shaw was born in Dublin, Ireland, and left school at the age of 14 to work in a land agent’s office. In 1876, he quit and moved to London, where his mother, a music teacher, […]

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 […]

On June 5, 1956, in an appearance on “The Milton Berle Show,” Elvis Presley he set his guitar aside and put every part of his being into a blistering, scandalous performance of “Hound Dog.” By the end of 1955, Elvis Presley had nearly 18 months of nonstop touring behind him and two dozen singles already […]

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 […]

On June 5, 1969, U.S. troops abandon Ap Bia Mountain. A spokesman for the 101st Airborne Division said that the U.S. troops “have completed their search of the mountain and are now continuing their reconnaissance-in-force mission throughout the A Shau Valley.” This announcement came amid the public outcry about what had become known as the […]

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. Born on February 6, 1911, […]

On June 5, 2013, Americans learned that their government was spying broadly on its own people. That’s when The Guardian, and later The Washington Post, published the first of a series of reports put together from documents leaked by an anonymous source. The material exposed a government-run surveillance program that monitored the communications records of […]