D-Day: Allies storm Normandy’s coast

In Ellicott’s Mills, Maryland, President Andrew Jackson boards a Baltimore & Ohio Railroad train for a pleasure trip to Baltimore. Jackson, who had never been on a train before, was the first president to take a ride on the “Iron Horse,” as locomotives were known then. The steam locomotive was first pioneered in England at […]

William Quantrill, the man who gave Frank and Jesse James their first education in killing, dies from wounds sustained in a skirmish with Union soldiers in Kentucky. Born and raised in Ohio, Quantrill was involved in a number of shady enterprises in Utah and Kansas during his teens. In his early 20s, he fled to […]

The first large-scale battle fought by American soldiers in World War I begins in Belleau Wood, northwest of the Paris-to-Metz road. In late May 1918, the third German offensive of the year penetrated the Western Front to within 45 miles of Paris. U.S. forces under General John J. Pershing helped halt the German advance, and […]

A U.S. Navy jet flying low-altitude target reconnaissance missions over Laos is shot down by communist Pathet Lao ground fire. Less than 48 hours later, a second jet, which was escorting an unarmed reconnaissance aircraft, is also shot down. Washington immediately ordered armed jets to escort the reconnaissance flights, and by June 9, escort jets […]

Twenty-three years after its 1948 premiere, “The Ed Sullivan Show” has its final broadcast on June 6, 1971. For more than two decades, Sullivan’s variety show was the premiere television showcase for entertainers of all stripes, including borscht-belt comedians, plate-spinning vaudeville throwbacks and, most significantly, some of the biggest and most current names in rock […]

In a bloody climax to two years of fighting between the Indian government and Sikh separatists, Indian army troops fight their way into the besieged Golden Temple compound in Amritsar–the holiest shrine of Sikhism–and kill at least 500 Sikh rebels. More than 100 Indian soldiers and scores of nonbelligerent Sikhs also perished in the ferocious […]

On June 6, 1998, the cable network HBO airs the pilot episode of “Sex and the City,” a new comedy series chronicling the lives and loves of four women living in New York City. The show’s creator, Darren Star, was best known at the time for producing the long-running Fox TV series Beverly Hills, 90210, […]