June 5th, 1981 – The “Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report” of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that five people in Los Angeles, California, have a rare form of pneumonia seen only in patients with weakened immune systems, in what turns out to be the first recognized cases of AIDS.
A day that was the dawn of a long sad story.
June 6, 1968 - Robert Kennedy died from bullet wounds received on the previous day
June 6, 1944 - Allied forces attack Normandy beaches to initiate Operation Overlord
My tiny historical quibble:The assault on Norman beaches by sea and air was actually Operation Neptune (D-Day) and was a part of the over-arching Operation Overlord which encompassed plans as far forward as the liberation of Normandy in general leading up to liberating Paris, and can be summed up as the Allied invasion into Northwest Europe. Neptune was, in effect, the first active military part of operation Overlord, but other aspects had been underway.
June 6, 1981: The Bihar Train Disaster occurs when a passenger train derails and plunges off a bridge into the Bagmati River in India. At least 800 die. It is the deadliest train accident in India’s history.
June 6, 1808: The French Emperor Napoleon’s brother, Joseph Bonaparte, is crowned King of Spain.
(No entry here, just thanks to MonkeyMensch. I appreciate the information.)
June 7, 1913: Denali (Mt. McKinley) is summited for the first time.
June 8, 1924: George Mallory and Andrew Irvine disappear on Mount Everest. The tallest mountain in the world has never been summited. The two were spotted very close to the top. And then the clouds closed in and neither man returned. George Mallory’s body was finally found in 1999, frozen and mummified. Andrew Levine’s remains have never been discovered. The question will always be, did they make it to the summit? We will probably never know with certainty.
June 9, 1893: A section of Ford’s Theatre in Washington D.C. collapses. 22 die and another 100 are injured. This is the same theatre where Abraham Lincoln was assassinated 28 years earlier.
June 9, 1954: Joseph Welch, special counsel for the United States Army, lashes out at Senator Joseph McCarthy during hearings on whether Communism has infiltrated the Army, giving McCarthy the famous rebuke, “You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”
June 9, 1969: Warren Burger confirmed as 15th Chief Justice of the United States.
June 10, 1886: Mount Tarawera erupts killing 150. This is the deadliest volcanic eruption ever in New Zealand.
June 11, 1979: John Wayne dies.
June 11, 1955: Eighty-three spectators are killed and at least 100 are injured after an Austin-Healey and a Mercedes-Benz collide at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the deadliest ever accident in motorsports.
June 12, 1889: The Armagh Train Disaster in Ireland kills 89 and injures 260. This is that country’s deadliest ever rail accident.
June 12, 1967: The United States Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia declares all U.S. state laws which prohibit interracial marriage to be unconstitutional.
June 12, 1942: Anne Frank receives a diary for her thirteenth birthday.
June 12, 1988 - A German production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Starlight Express opened at a specially built venue, the Starlighthalle (today called Starlight Express Theater) in Bochum, Germany, directed by Dion McHugh. It is still running 30 years later, making it the longest running musical not sung in English.
June 13, 1952: A Swedish DC-3 airplane with a crew of 8 disappears over the Baltic Sea. Three days later a rescue plane is shot down by the Soviet Union. All aboard that second plane manage to ditch the aircraft and survive. This became known as the Catalina Incident.
The Soviets denied any wrong doing. It was only after 40 years had passed that the truth finally came out. The Swedish DC-3 has been doing spywork for NATO. It was also shot down by the Soviets.