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June 5 is the 156th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (157th in leap years), with 209 days
remaining.
Events
- 1654 - Christina,
reigning queen of the Protestant nation Sweden, abdicates the throne and secretly converts to Catholicism.
- 1783 - The Montgolfier brothers publicly demonstrate their montgolfière (hot air balloon).
- 1817 - First Great Lakes steamer,
the Frontenac, is launched.
- 1829 - HMS Pickle captures
the armed slave ship Voladora off the coast of Cuba.
- 1837 - Houston, Texas is
granted a city charter.
- 1849 - Denmark becomes a constitutional monarchy by the signing of a new constitution.
- 1851 - Harriet
Beecher Stowe's anti-slavery serial, Uncle Tom's Cabin or, Life Among the Lowly starts a ten-month run in the National Era abolitionist newspaper.
- 1864 - American Civil
War: Battle of Piedmont - Union forces under General David Hunter defeat a
Confederate army at Piedmont, Virginia, taking
nearly 1,000 prisoners.
- 1900 - Boer War: British soldiers take Pretoria,
South Africa.
- 1916 - Stein's Dixie Jass Band plays its first gig under its new name, the Original Dixieland Jass Band.
- 1916 - Louis Brandeis is sworn in as a Justice of the United States Supreme Court.
- 1917 - World War I: Conscription begins in the United States as "Army registration day."
- 1924 - Ernst Alexanderson sends the first facsimile
across the Atlantic Ocean (to his father in Sweden).
- 1933 - The United
States Congress abrogates the United States' use of the gold standard by enacting a joint resolution (48 Stat. 112) nullifying the right
of creditors to demand payment in gold.
- 1944 - World War II: More than
1000 British bombers drop 5000 tons of bombs on German gun batteries on the Normandy coast in preparation for
D-Day.
- 1947 - Marshall Plan: At a
speech at Harvard University, United States Secretary of State George Marshall calls for economic aid to war-torn Europe.
- 1954 - The last new episode of the comic variety program, Your Show of Shows, airs.
- 1956 - Elvis Presley introduces
his new single, Hound Dog, on
The Milton
Berle Show, scandalizing the audience with his suggestive hip movements.
- 1959 - The first government of the State of
Singapore is sworn in.
- 1963 - British Secretary of
State for War John Profumo resigns in a sex scandal.
- 1967 - Six-Day War begins: The
Israeli air force launches simultaneous attacks on the air forces of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria.
- 1968 - U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy is shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California by Sirhan Sirhan.
(He died on June 6).
- 1975 - The Suez Canal opens for the
first time since the Six-Day War.
- 1976 - Collapse of the Teton Dam in
Idaho.
- 1977 - A coup takes place in Seychelles.
- 1977 - The Apple II, the first practical personal computer, goes on sale.
- 1981 - The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that five homosexual men in Los Angeles, California have a rare form of pneumonia seen only in patients with weakened immune
systems (these were the first recognized cases of AIDS).
- 1984 - Prime
Minister of India Indira Gandhi orders an attack on the Golden Temple, the Sikh holy spot.
- 1986 - A 52-year old man in Auburn, Washington dies after taking an Excedrin capsule laced with cyanide; this is the
first of two Excedrin deaths.
- 1987 - Ted Koppel hosts a "National
Town Meeting on AIDS" on a special 4-hour long live broadcast of Nightline.
- 1995 - Bose-Einstein condensate is first created.
- 1998 - A strike begins at the General Motors parts factory in Flint, Michigan that quickly spreads to five other assembly plants (the strike lasted seven weeks).
- 1998 - Both Reuters and ABC news erroneously report the death of comedian
Bob Hope after Arizona congressman
Bob Stump announces the demise of Hope on the floor of the U.S. Congress.
- 2001 - Senator
Jim Jeffords leaves the Republican party, an act which changes control of the United States Senate from the Republican party to the Democratic party.
- 2002 - Elizabeth Smart is kidnapped from her Salt Lake City, Utah home.
- 2002 - Mozilla 1.0, the first 'official' version, is released.
- 2004 - Smarty Jones loses at the
Belmont Stakes to Birdstone and fails to bid the Triple Crown.
Births
- 1341 - Edmund of
Langley, a younger son of King Edward III of England
(d. 1402)
- 1718 - Thomas
Chippendale, furniture maker (d. 1779)
- 1723 - Adam Smith, economist (d.
1790)
- 1757 - Pierre Jean George Cabanis, physiologist (d. 1808)
- 1771 - King Ernest I of
Hanover (d. 1851)
- 1781 - Christian August Lobeck, classical scholar (d. 1860)
- 1819 - John Couch Adams,
co-discoverer of Neptune (d. 1892)
- 1850 - Pat Garrett, Western lawman
(d. 1908)
- 1876 - Tony Jackson, musician (d.
1920)
- 1879 - Robert Mayer,
philanthropist (d. 1985)
- 1883 - John Maynard
Keynes, economist (d. 1946)
- 1884 - Ralph Benatzky, composer (d. 1957)
- 1887 - Pancho Villa,
revolutionary (d. 1923)
- 1894 - Roy Thomson, Lord Thomson of
Fleet, publisher(d. 1976)
- 1895 - William Boyd ("Hopalong
Cassidy"), actor (d. 1972)
- 1898 - Federico
García Lorca, lyricist and dramatist (d. 1936)
- 1912 - Josef Neckermann, entrepreneur and dressage equestrian (d. 1992)
- 1919 - Richard Scarry,
children's author (d. 1994)
- 1925 - Boy Gobert, actor (d. 1986)
- 1925 - Art Donovan, American football star
- 1928 - Robert Lansing, actor
(d. 1994)
- 1928 - Tony Richardson, actor (d. 1991)
- 1931 - Jacques Demy, playwright
- 1932 - Christy Brown, author (d. 1981)
- 1934 - Bill Moyers, journalist and
muckraker
- 1938 - Karin Balzer, East German
hurdler
- 1939 - Joe Clark, sixteenth Prime Minister of Canada
- 1939 - Margaret Drabble, English novelist
- 1941 - Martha Argerich,
Argentinian pianist
- 1941 - Spalding Gray, actor, screenwriter, and monologue artist (d. 2004)
- 1944 - Tommie Smith, athlete
- 1947 - Laurie Anderson,
performance artist, actress, composer
- 1949 - Ken Follett, author
- 1954 - Nicko McBrain, musician
(Iron Maiden)
- 1956 - Luci Francum nee Geissler
- 1962 - Princess Astrid of Belgium
- 1967 - Joe DeLoach, American
athlete
- 1970 - Martin Gelinas,
ice hockey player
- 1971 - Mark Wahlberg ("Marky
Mark"), singer, actor
- 1979 - David Bisbal, singer
Deaths
- 535 - Epiphanius of Constantinople, patriarch of Constantinople
- 1316 - King Louis X of
France (b. 1289)
- 1900 - Stephen Crane, author
(b. 1871)
- 1910 - O. Henry, author (b. 1862)
- 1913 - Chris von der
Ahe, baseball pioneer (b. 1851)
- 1916 - Horatio
Kitchener, Lord Kitchener, Field Marshal (b. 1850)
- 1920 - Rhoda Broughton,
author (b. 1840)
- 1921 - Georges Feydeau,
French playwright (b. 1862)
- 1930 - Pascin, the "Prince of Montparnasse"
(b. 1885)
- 1942 - Samuel Adams, naval officer (b. 1912)
- 1975 - Paul Keres, chess player (b. 1916)
- 1993 - Conway Twitty, country musician (b. 1933)
- 1998 - Jeanette Nolan, actress
- 1998 - Sam Yorty, former mayor of
Los Angeles, California (b.1909)
- 1999 - Mel Tormé, singer, composer,
actor (b. 1925)
- 2002 - Dee Dee Ramone,
musician ("The Ramones") (b. 1952)
- 2003 - Jürgen
Möllemann, German politician (b. 1945)
- 2004 - Ronald Reagan, President of the United States (b. 1911)
Holidays and observances
June 4 - June 6 - May 5 - July 5 -- listing of all days
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