Thursday, June 04, 2009
Only 210 days until the Year 2010
Today is:
National Day in Tonga
On The Way To Today... June 4th
1647 - The English army seized King Charles I as a hostage.
1783 - Brothers Etienne and Joseph Montgolfier made the first public
demonstration of a hot-air balloon.
1812 - The Louisiana Territory was renamed the Missouri Territory.
1816 - The first stately, double decker steamboat, "The Washington",
was launched at Wheeling, West Virginia.
1831 - The Belgium Congress proclaimed Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg
as the first monarch of an independent Belgium.
1859 - The French defeated the Austrians at the Battle of Magenta,
Italy.
1878 - Turkey turned Cyprus over to the British.
1896 - Henry Ford took a test run around the streets of Detroit,
Michigan, in his Ford automobile.
1924 - In memory of all the soldiers from New York who died in World
War I, an eternal light was dedicated at New York City's Madison
Square.
1931 - Willaim Swan made the first rocket-glider flight in Atlantic
City, New Jersey.
1935 - Invisible glass was patented by Gerald Brown and Edward Pollard
of London.
1939 - In Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Sylvan Goldman introduced the first
grocery store shopping cart. The original shopping cart was really a
folding chair on wheels.
1939 - The S.S. St. Louis, carrying more than 900 Jewish refugees from
Germany, was turned away from the Florida coast.
1940 - British Prime Minister Winston Churchill made his famous "We
shall fight on the beaches ... we shall never surrender" speech to the
House of Commons.
1940 - The allied military evacuation from Dunkirk, France, ended.
1942 - The Battle of Midway, the turning point in the sea war in the
Pacific, began.
1944 - Rome was liberated by allied troops with the U.S. General Mark
Clark leading the way into the city. Historic sites had been left
intact.
1947 - The House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved the
Taft-Hartley Act.
1970 - The British protectorate of Tonga became independent within the
Commonwealth.
1977 - The Soviet Union published its new draft constitution, which
was approved by the Supreme Soviet the following October.
1986 - Jonathan Jay Pollard, a former Navy intelligence analyst,
pleaded guilty in Washington to spying for Israel.
democracty demonstrators. A month and a half earlier, students began a
demonstration on behalf of democracy, which by this time became a
demonstration of hundreds of thousands of people, from all aspects of
People's Army sent in tanks which literally rolled over demonstrators.
Television captured all the events for viewers around the world to
watch. The Chinese government claimed only a few people had died, but
other sources estimated hundreds to thousands of protestors were kiled
in Tiananmen Square. However, there were no contradiction that
thousands of demonstrators were jailed over the event.
1989 - Gas from a leaking pipeline exploded, engulfing two packed
passenger trains on the Trans-Siberian railway; 575 people were killed
and more than 600 injured in the second worst rail disaster ever.
1991 - After a 20-day general strike, the communist government in
Albania under Fatos Nano resigned. In 1993, the U.N. Security Council
agreed to send armed troops to Bosnia to protect six "safe havens" --
Sarajevo, Tuzla, Zepa, Srebrenica, Gorazde and Bihac.
1994 - Bangladesh ordered the arrest of feminist writer Taslima Nasrin
after she told an Indian newpaper the Koran should be "thoroughly
revised."
1996 - Europe's Ariane-5 rocket was blown up by ground controllers
after it veered off course 40 seconds into its maiden flight.
1998 - A federal judge sentenced Terry Nichols to life for his role in
the Oklahoma City bombing.
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