Explore here what happened on this day in history groundbreaking inventions and political milestones to cultural revolutions and heroic acts and let’s uncover the legacies that continue to influence our lives today www.thearticlesworld.com.
Events on June 8
218: Battle of Antioch: With the support of the Syrian legions, Elagabalus defeats the forces of emperor Macrinus.
452: Attila leads a Hun army in the invasion of Italy, devastating the northern provinces as he heads for Rome.
793: Vikings raid the abbey at Lindisfarne in Northumbria, commonly accepted as the beginning of Norse activity in the British Isles.
1042: Edward the Confessor becomes King of England – the country’s penultimate Anglo-Saxon king.
1191: King Richard I of England arrives in Acre, beginning the Third Crusade.
1663: Portuguese Restoration War: Portuguese victory at the Battle of Ameixial ensures Portugal’s independence from Spain.
1772: Alexander Fordyce flees to France to avoid debt repayment, triggering the credit crisis of 1772 in the British Empire and the Dutch Republic.
1776: American Revolutionary War: Continental Army attackers are driven back at the Battle of Trois-Rivières.
1783: Laki, a volcano in Iceland, begins an eight-month eruption which kills over 9,000 people and starts a seven-year famine.
1789: James Madison introduces twelve proposed amendments to the United States Constitution in Congress.
1794: Maximilien Robespierre inaugurates the French Revolution’s new state religion, the Cult of the Supreme Being, with large organized festivals all across France.
1856: A group of 194 Pitcairn Islanders, descendants of the mutineers of HMS Bounty, arrives at Norfolk Island, commencing the Third Settlement of the Island.
1861: American Civil War: Tennessee secedes from the Union.
1862: American Civil War: A Confederate victory by forces under General Stonewall Jackson at the Battle of Cross Keys, along with the Battle of Port Republic the next day, prevents Union forces from reinforcing General George B. McClellan in his Peninsula campaign.
1867: Coronation of Franz Joseph as King of Hungary following the Austro-Hungarian compromise (Ausgleich).
1887: Herman Hollerith applies for US patent #395,781 for the ‘Art of Compiling Statistics’, which was his punched card calculator.
1906: Theodore Roosevelt signs the Antiquities Act into law, authorizing the President to restrict the use of certain parcels of public land with historical or conservation value.
1924: British Mount Everest expedition: British mountaineers Andrew Irvine and George Mallory go missing.
1928: Second Northern Expedition: The National Revolutionary Army captures Beijing, whose name is changed to Beiping (“Northern Peace”).
1929: Margaret Bondfield is appointed Minister of Labour. She is the first woman appointed to the Cabinet of the United Kingdom.
1940: World War II: The completion of Operation Alphabet, the evacuation of Allied forces from Narvik at the end of the Norwegian Campaign.
1941: World War II: The Allies commence the Syria-Lebanon Campaign against the possessions of Vichy France in the Levant.
1942: World War II: The Imperial Japanese Navy submarines I-21 and I-24 shell the Australian cities of Sydney and Newcastle.
1943: World War II: The two-day Battle of Porta between the Royal Italian Army and the Greek People’s Liberation Army begins.
1953: An F5 tornado hits Beecher, Michigan, United States, killing 116, injuring 844, and destroying 340 homes.
1953: The United States Supreme Court rules in District of Columbia v. John R. Thompson Co. that restaurants in Washington, D.C., cannot refuse to serve black patrons.
1959: USS Barbero and the United States Postal Service attempt the delivery of mail via Missile Mail.
1961: Marriage of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent to Katharine Worsley at York Minster.
1966: An F-104 Starfighter collides with XB-70 Valkyrie prototype no. 2, destroying both aircraft during a photo shoot near Edwards Air Force Base. Joseph A. Walker, a NASA test pilot, and Carl Cross, a United States Air Force test pilot, are both killed.
1966: Topeka, Kansas, United States is devastated by a tornado that registers as an “F5” on the Fujita scale, exceeding US$200 million in damages. Seventeen people are killed, over five hundred more injured, and thousands of homes damaged or destroyed.
1967: Six-Day War: The USS Liberty incident: A United States Navy spy ship is attacked by the Israeli Air Force and Navy, resulting in 34 deaths and 171 wounded.
1968: James Earl Ray, the man who assassinated Martin Luther King Jr. is arrested at London Heathrow Airport.
1972: Vietnam War: Nine-year-old Phan Thị Kim Phúc is burned by napalm, an event captured by Associated Press photographer Nick Ut moments later while the young girl is seen running naked down a road, in what would become an iconic, Pulitzer Prize-winning photo.
1982: Bluff Cove Air Attacks during the Falklands War: Fifty-six British servicemen are killed by an Argentine air attack on two landing ships, RFA Sir Galahad and RFA Sir Tristram.
1982: VASP Flight 168 crashes in Pacatuba, Ceará, Brazil, killing 128 people.
1984: Homosexuality is decriminalized in the Australian state of New South Wales.
1987: New Zealand’s Labour government establishes a national nuclear-free zone under the New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act 1987.
1992: The first World Oceans Day is celebrated, coinciding with the Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
1992: GP Express Airlines Flight 861 crashes on approach to Anniston Regional Airport in Anniston, Alabama, killing three.
1995: Downed U.S. Air Force pilot Captain Scott O’Grady is rescued by U.S. Marines in Bosnia.
2001: Mamoru Takuma kills eight and injures 15 in a mass stabbing at an elementary school in the Osaka Prefecture of Japan.
2004: The first Venus Transit in well over a century takes place, the previous one being in 1882.
2007: Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia, is hit by the State’s worst storms and flooding in 30 years resulting in the death of nine people and the grounding of a trade ship, the MV Pasha Bulker.
2023: Former US President Donald Trump is indicted on federal charges of misusing classified information.
