9

6/2/2008 3:12:40 PM

Jun 3 1791

The French Assembly passes a resolution bringing decapitation to the common criminal: "Every person condemned to the death penalty shall have his head severed."

Jun 3 1943

Three days after a sailor had been badly injured in a brawl with a group of Hispanics, a mob of 60 servicemen leaves the Los Angeles Naval Reserve Armory and bludgeons anybody wearing a zoot suit. The first two victims are a couple of boys, aged 12 and 13, who were just sitting in the Carmen Theater watching a movie. Thus begins a weeklong race riot.

Jun 3 1968

Valerie Solanas, author of the SCUM Manifesto, arrives at the art studio of Andy Warhol and shoots him three times in the torso. Warhol barely survives the attempt on his life. Solanas is later jailed and institutionalized.

Jun 3 1989

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini dies after 11 days in a hospital, recovering from surgery to stop internal hemorrhaging.

Jun 3 1991

Students throw eggs at South Korean Prime Minister Chung Won Shik. Nobody is injured in the incident at Hankuk University in Seoul.

Jun 3 1998

15-year-old teen idol Brad Renfro is arrested in Knoxville, Tennessee and charged with possession of marijuana and cocaine.

6/3/2008 3:22:53 AM

Jun 4 1939

After already having been turned away by Cuba, the SS St. Louis is also denied permission to land in Florida. So it is forced to return to Europe with its cargo of 963 Jewish refugees, most of whom will later die in Nazi concentration camps.

Jun 4 1967

The Emmy for best comedy TV series is won by The Monkees. Good heavens.

Jun 4 1989

Chinese troops, firing a few warning shots, manage to push tens of thousands of student protesters out of Tiananmen Square without killing any of them. This changes once they're out of the Square, however. In the end, hundreds of unarmed citizens on the streets of Beijing are massacred by the army. Later, several leaders of the pro-democracy demonstration are publicly executed.

Jun 4 1989

645 rail passengers are killed in a natural gas explosion near Ufa, Russia. Their two trains are torn apart as they pass each other, throwing sparks near a leaky pipeline.

6/4/2008 3:23:04 AM

Jun 5 1956

Elvis Presley appears on Milton Berle TV show. His undulating hip movements during the song "Hound Dog" cause quite a controversy.

Jun 5 1968

Seconds after Senator Robert F. Kennedy is shot dead by Sirhan Sirhan in a Los Angeles hotel, witnesses wrestle the Palestinian to the ground and grab his smoking .22-caliber revolver. Sirhan later claims to have been acting unconsciously, possibly the result of hypnotic brainwashing.

Jun 5 1975

During the Wish You Were Here recording sessions, Syd Barrett just happens to wander into Abbey Road studio while Pink Floyd are mixing "Shine On You Crazy Diamond," a song written about Barrett. At first, none of Syd's former bandmates recognizes the fat, bald lunatic who is compulsively brushing his teeth.

Jun 5 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.

Jun 5 1998

Reuters and ABC News both erroneously report the death of Bob Hope, after Arizona congressman Bob Stump announces the comedian's demise on the floor of the U.S. Congress. This is to the great surprise of Bob Hope himself, who was eating breakfast at the time.

6/5/2008 6:40:27 AM

Jun 6 1752

A devastating fire destroys a third of Moscow, including 18,000 homes. Two other large-scale fires already struck the city in the previous 13 days.

Jun 6 1882

A cyclone in the Arabian Sea pushes huge waves into Bombay harbor, drowning 100,000 inhabitants.

Jun 6 1968

Senator Robert F. Kennedy dies at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles. The Democratic lawmaker had been campaigning for his party's Presidential nomination when he was shot three times by Sirhan Bishara Sirhan.

Jun 6 1976

American expatriate J. Paul Getty, named the richest man in the world in 1957, dies in London at age 83. According to the oil baron, "If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars."

Jun 6 1981

An Indian passenger train traveling between Mansi and Saharsa jumps the tracks at a bridge crossing, submerging 11 compartments beneath the Bagmati river. Although the government places the official death toll at 268 plus another 300 missing, the actual figure is more like 1,000 killed.

Jun 6 1984

Indira Gandhi dispatches the Indian Armed Forces to attack the Golden Temple in Amritsar, in an effort to flush out terrorists hiding inside Sikhism's most holy shrine. The government asserts that 576 combatants were killed and 335 wounded in the operation, although independent observers claim that this figure omits thousands of unarmed Sikh civilians who were killed in the crossfire.

Jun 6 1985

Authorities in Embu, Brazil exhume the grave of one Wolfgang Gerhard in order to determine its true identity. The remains are later proven to be those of Dr. Josef Mengele, Auschwitz's notorious "Angel of Death." Mengele is thought to have drowned while swimming in the ocean in February 1979.

Jun 6 1989

During the Tehran funeral of the Ayatollah Khomeini, frenzied mourners accidentally tip his corpse out of its coffin and onto the ground. Three million horrified followers bear witness to the desecration.

Jun 6 1990

US district court judge Jose Gonzalez rules that the rap album As Nasty As They Wanna Be by 2 Live Crew violates Florida's obscenity law. Gonzalez declares that the predominant subject matter of the record is "directed to the 'dirty' thoughts and the loins, not to the intellect and the mind."

Jun 6 1991

For robbing a Las Vegas video store five weeks earlier, a judge gives former Diff'rent Strokes child star Dana Plato a six-year suspended sentence. Plato's haul from the caper was $164, which she obtained by brandishing a pellet gun at the clerk.

Jun 6 1997

During her senior prom, New Jersey teenager Melissa Drexler gives birth to a healthy baby in a bathroom stall. She then strangles the child with a plastic bag and severs the umbilicus with the sharp edge on the tampon dispenser. After stashing the corpse in the trash, Drexler returns to prom and proceeds to eat a salad, request a Metallica song, and dance.

Jun 6 1999

In the largest jailbreak in Brazilian history, 345 prisoners run out of the main gate of Putim maximum security prison, without even the slightest response from the warden or guards. This makes the 10th escape for the 3-year-old detention center. Authorities will kill two of the fugitives and accidentally jail five innocent bystanders in the ensuing manhunt.

6/6/2008 4:26:22 AM

Jun 7 1692

At 11:43am, a catastrophic earthquake strikes Port Royal, Jamaica, then known as "the richest and wickedest city in the world." Buildings are shaken apart and ships in harbor hurled onto busy streets. In just three minutes, the temblor takes out 70% of the population, killing 1,600 and seriously injuring 3,000 others.

Jun 7 1954

Despondent over court-ordered estrogen treatments to cure his homosexuality, Alan Turing commits suicide by consuming an apple laced with cyanide. Turing is considered the founder of modern computing, a pioneer in the field of Artificial Intelligence, and a crucial member of the team that cracked Germany's Enigma cipher in World War II.

Jun 7 1958

Prince Roger Nelson is born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The boy is destined to one day be known as the artist formerly known as Prince.

Jun 7 1982

In an effort to defray its $500,000 annual upkeep costs, Priscilla Presley opens Graceland to the public only five years after Elvis died in an upstairs bathroom. The bathroom is kept off-limits to tourists.

6/7/2008 2:07:11 PM

Jun 8 632

The prophet Mohammed, founder of Islam, dies in Mecca. One can safely assume he is at this very moment reclining on a soft couch somewhere in Paradise, being serviced by a high-bosomed virgin with dark eyes.

Jun 8 1967

34 American servicemen are killed and 171 wounded when the highly-conspicuous U.S.S. Liberty is strafed twice in 75 minutes by Israeli fighters and torpedo boats. The American spy ship happens to be sitting in international waters, 15 miles off the coast of Egypt, monitoring unfolding events of the Six Day War. Israel soon labels the incident a regrettable "error," claiming that they did not realize it was an American ship. For some reason, the United States pretends to accept this laughable explanation as well as a large restitution payment for the damage incurred by the vessel.

Jun 8 1986

Former UN Secretary General and Nazi war criminal Kurt Waldheim is elected president of Austria. One year later, the U.S. Justice Department places him on a watch list of undesirable aliens, making Waldheim the first foreign head of state legally forbidden from visiting America.

Jun 8 1998

The President of Nigeria, general Sani Abacha, dies of apparent heart failure during a Viagra-driven romp with three Indian whores. Abacha is quickly buried the following day without an autopsy or even a state funeral, fueling speculation that the general may have been poisoned by political rivals. Abacha stole more than $4 billion during his five years as dictator, and his widow Maryam is captured shortly thereafter attempting to flee the country with 30 suitcases full of American currency.

Jun 8 1999

The government of Colombia announces that it will include the estimated value of its illegal drug crops, exceeding half a billion dollars, when calculating its Gross National Product.

6/8/2008 5:05:30 PM

Jun 9 68

Rather than suffer a Senate-imposed death by flogging, Nero implores his secretary Epaphroditus to slit his throat. The freedman complies, giving the condemned emperor a quick death, just as centurions arrive at the villa to haul him away.

Jun 9 1930

Jake Lingle, a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, is shot dead gangland-style at the Illinois Central train station underpass, during rush hour. Dozens of people witness the murder, and the Leo Vincent Brothers are caught four months later after an intensive manhunt. Lingle was allegedly killed over a $100,000 gambling debt owed to Al Capone.

Jun 9 1980

In the midst of a cocaine binge, comedian Richard Pryor attempts suicide by dousing himself with rum and setting it ablaze. The self-immolation attempt goes haywire when the flaming man leaps from his apartment window and runs down the street, screaming in agony. Pryor barely survives the incident, and only after six weeks of intensive care and three skin graft surgeries.

Jun 9 1999

Honduran officials warn that, due to years of inadequate maintenance and obstructions caused by hurricane Mitch, the clogged sewers in Tegucigalpa pose an imminent threat to human life. They announce that the water treatment system includes tanks clogged with fecal matter that could disastrously explode at any moment.

6/9/2008 1:53:09 PM

1870 Charles Dickens died of a stroke

1978 Celtics draft Larry Bird

1973 Secretariat wins the Triple Crown by 31 lengths

6/9/2008 1:59:19 PM

Jun 10 1692

Bridget Bishop is hanged at Gallows Hill near Salem, Massachusetts after having been convicted of "certaine Detestable Arts called Witchcraft & Sorceries." Bishop is just the first casualty of what will come to be known as the Salem Witch Trials.

Jun 10 1942

The town of Lidice (Loditz) is liquidated by the Nazis as penalty for the assassination of Adolf Hitler's favorite general, Reinhard Heydrich. Every adult male is killed, the women sent to the camps, and the town bulldozed.

Jun 10 1973

The 17-year-old grandson of J. Paul Getty is abducted in Rome. When the kidnappers demand a $17 million ransom, the billionaire refuses. "I have 14 other grandchildren, and if I pay one penny now, then I will have 14 kidnapped grandchildren." After the grandson's severed ear arrives in the mail, Getty finally coughs up the money.

Jun 10 1980

Percy Wood, president of United Airlines, receives a parcel at his home in Lake Forest, Illinois. Inside is a copy of the book Ice Brothers by Sloan Wilson. When he opens the book, it suddenly explodes, throwing shrapnel into Wood's hands, face, and thigh. The book turns out to be a present from the Unabomber.

Jun 10 1999

Outside on the front lawn of his Miami home, Russell Cameron is covered with trash and doused with gasoline. Then his lunatic nephew, Thomas Pellechio, sets the pile on fire and runs away. When police arrive, they discover a 12.5 inch Oriental sword in Cameron's rectum, rammed in all the way up to the hilt.

6/10/2008 1:55:08 PM

Jun 11 1881

A phantom vessel appears in the sky to the passengers and crew of the ship Bacchante, including Price Albert Victor and Prince George, both sons of the Prince of Wales.

Jun 11 1955

An Austin-Healy and Mercedes-Benz collide at the Le Mans Grand Prix. The Mercedes drove into a dirt retaining wall, disintegrated, and the hood, chassis, and various auto parts sliced through the spectator crowd. Eighty-three were killed, and 100 others were missing various "parts".

Jun 11 1962

Frank Morris and the brothers John and Clarence Anglin escape from Alcatraz.

Jun 11 1963

Protesting the lack of religious freedom in South Vietnam, Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc burns himself with gasoline in a busy Saigon intersection.

Jun 11 1963

Governor Wallace stands in the schoolhouse door, blocking admission of niggers to the University of Alabama.

Jun 11 1964

Just after 9am, deranged World War II veteran Walter Seifert barges into a busy Cologne, Germany elementary school with a homemade flamethrower. He then proceeds to burn 8 children to death and seriously injure 21 others. In the process, he also stabs 2 teachers to death with a lance. Before police are finally able to apprehend him with a gunshot to the leg, Seifert swallows insecticide and proceeds to die in the hospital the next day.

Jun 11 1993

Actor Ray Sharkey dead from AIDS. Ray was a cocaine/heroin addict who appeared as mobster Sonny Steelgrave on the TV show Wiseguy.

Jun 11 1999

I ' M D E A D J I M
DeForest Kelley, "Bones" from the original Star Trek television series, dead of a "lingering illness".

6/11/2008 1:29:42 PM

Jun 12 1963

Civil rights lawyer Medgar Evers is shot dead in the driveway of his home in Philadelphia, Mississippi. The assassin, a klansman named Byron De La Beckwith, dodges prison when two all-white juries return hung verdicts, but is finally convicted of the crime in 1994.

Jun 12 1978

David Berkowitz is sentenced to 365 consecutive years in prison without the possibility of parole. Berkowitz killed six New Yorkers between 1976 and 1977, known collectively as the Son of Sam murders.

Jun 12 1994

Nicole Brown Simpson and her male friend Ronald Goldman are savagely murdered in front of Simpson's condominium complex in Brentwood, California. The most plausible suspect turns out to be Nicole's estranged husband O.J., who is arrested for the crime a month later.

6/12/2008 1:26:49 PM

oh snap! OJ!

6/12/2008 1:27:25 PM

Jun 13 1886

The bodies of Bavaria's mad King Ludwig II and his physician, Dr. Gudden, are discovered floating face-down in Lake Starnberg. The recently-deposed monarch had been under house arrest ever since his uncle, Prince Luitpold von Bayern, staged a coup a few days earlier.

Jun 13 1920

The United States Postal Service rules that children may not be sent via Parcel Post.

Jun 13 1934

Two months before becoming Fuhrer, Hitler meets Mussolini in Venice. Unfortunately, Mussolini refuses to have an interpreter and his German is not good, so neither man can understand the other. Unimpressed, Mussolini gathers a general impression of the German as "a silly little monkey."

Jun 13 1944

The Third Reich fires eleven V-1 flying bombs at England from France. Only four of the Buzzbombs actually strike London, but the Germans will eventually follow that up with another 9,000.

Jun 13 1962

Three convicts -- Frank Lee Morris and the brothers Anglin -- escape from Alcatraz island in a rowboat made out of raincoats. They are the only prisoners believed to have successfully escaped.

Jun 13 1971

Next to the White House wedding photo of President Nixon's daughter Tricia, the New York Times runs its first story on the "Pentagon Papers," a top secret DoD analysis authored by the RAND Corporation detailing every mistake and deception made during the 30-year history of the Vietnam War. Attorney General John Mitchell manages to block any further publication of the embarrassing documents, but the court order is countermanded two weeks later in a Supreme Court decision.

Jun 13 1981

During the Trooping the Colour ceremony, a 17-year-old fires six blanks from a revolver at Queen Elizabeth II, startling her horse. Marcus Sargeant is later sentenced to five years imprisonment for the offense.

Jun 13 1985

Mailroom workers discover a bomb inside a suspicious parcel at Boeing, Inc.'s Fabrication Division in Auburn, Washington. After the police bomb squad disarms it, investigators discover the initials "FC" stamped on both caps, making it the first explosive device recovered intact from the Unabomber.

6/13/2008 2:13:22 PM

DeForest Kelley aka "Bones" was awesome.

6/14/2008 2:21:00 AM

Jun 14 1648

Midwife Margaret Jones is hanged in Boston for witchcraft. It is the first such execution for the Massachusetts colony, but not the first in the colonies.

Jun 14 1954

At the Lincoln Memorial, President Dwight Eisenhower signs a law inserting the words "under God" into the Pledge of Allegiance. Eisenhower declares: "From this day forward, the millions of our schoolchildren will daily proclaim in every city and town, every village and rural schoolhouse, the dedication of our nation and our people to the Almighty." Precisely which Almighty is left to the listener's imagination.

Jun 14 1961

1980s pop music star Boy George is born in Kent, England. As he later comes to describe his childhood, "I had five brothers and I was brought up drinking the same water and being fed the same doctrine as my brothers, but somehow I turned out to be a fabulous homosexual."

Jun 14 1962

Albert DeSalvo murders Anna Slesersby by strangling her with the belt from her robe. She is only the first victim of "The Boston Strangler."

Jun 14 1966

The Vatican announces the abolition of its Index librorum prohibitum (Index of Prohibited Books), originally instituted in 1557 by Pope Paul IV.

Jun 14 1976

The Gong Show debuts on NBC. People with dubious talents perform their acts before a celebrity panel of judges, who are free to eject the performer at any time by banging a large gong. The best non-gonged performer each night wins $516.32.

Jun 14 1989

Zsa Zsa Gabor is arrested for slapping a Beverly Hills police officer and driving with an expired license. Afterwards Zsa Zsa complains to the press that the handling she received from the BHPD "was like Nazi Germany." Ultimately, Gabor is convicted and sentenced to 72 hours in jail.

Jun 14 1993

During a weeklong Product Tampering scare, Pepsi-Cola suspends its advertising campaign after nationwide reports of customers discovering syringes in unopened cans of Diet Pepsi. In response, television host David Letterman suggests ten new slogans, including "200cc's of great taste" and "Every can inspected by Ray Charles" (the company's blind celebrity spokesman).

6/14/2008 3:37:31 AM

Quote :

"television host David Letterman suggests ten new slogans, including "200cc's of great taste" and "Every can inspected by Ray Charles" (the company's blind celebrity spokesman)."

lol

6/14/2008 5:41:53 AM

Jun 15 1409

Petros Philargos is elected Pope Alexander V by the Council of Pisa. This poses a certain amount of difficulty, as there already is a Pope in Rome, Gregory XII, and another in Avignon, Benedict XII. Ultimately, none of the three is willing to step down, leading the Chuch into a double schism.

Jun 15 1667

Jean-Baptiste Denis performs the world's first blood tranfusion on a human subject. He gives a feverish and drowsy man about 12 ounces of lamb's blood, after which the patient "rapidly recovered from his lethargy, grew fatter and was an object of surprise and astonishment to all who knew him." Nevertheless, it will be another century before human-to-human transfusions are attempted.

Jun 15 1955

The Eisenhower administration stages the first annual OPAL exercise. In the "Operation Alert" drill, air raid sirens blare across America to assess our preparations for a nuclear attack. Duck and cover, people.

Jun 15 1969

Hee Haw debuts on CBS television as a summer replacement for the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. The country bumpkin musical comedy show quickly becomes an institution, airing weekly until its demise in December 1997.

Jun 15 1992

The Supreme Court rules in US v. Alvarez-Machain that it is permissible for America to abduct suspects in foreign countries and smuggle them into the United States for trial, without extradition approval from those other countries. Of course, the U.S. recognizes no reciprocal right for the reverse to happen on our soil.

Jun 15 1993

The Washington Times reports that at least 1,416 Boy Scout leaders have been expelled for molestation since 1973. Of course, those were only the ones who actually got caught.

Jun 15 1999

Nicholas Vitalich is arrested outside a supermarket in San Diego, California for slapping his girlfriend upside the head with a large tuna. Vitalich is booked for assault with a deadly weapon, namely the fish.

6/15/2008 3:13:55 AM

Quote :

"The Supreme Court rules in US v. Alvarez-Machain that it is permissible for America to abduct suspects in foreign countries and smuggle them into the United States for trial, without extradition approval from those other countries. Of course, the U.S. recognizes no reciprocal right for the reverse to happen on our soil. "

hell yeah.

6/15/2008 3:43:39 AM

where do you pull the history moments from?

6/15/2008 3:44:01 AM

6/15/2008: jen and dnl make first contact

6/15/2008 3:44:33 AM

mit der internet

6/15/2008 3:51:54 AM

damn, it seems like some shit happened every day in 1999

6/15/2008 4:27:57 AM

1999 had it goin on.

6/15/2008 4:30:34 AM

Jun 16 1750 BC

King Hammurabi dies in Babylon, and is succeeded by his son Samsu-iluna.

Jun 16 1948

In the first skyjacking of a commercial plane, three armed men storm the cockpit of the Miss Macao, a passenger seaplane operated by Cathay Pacific airline. When the pilot refuses to turn over the controls, he is shot dead and the plane crashes into the ocean. The only survivor among the 27 people on board is the leader of the terrorists.

Jun 16 1958

Imre Nagy, once prime minister of Hungary for all of ten days, is executed by the Soviet Union for attempting to withdraw his country from the Warsaw Pact.

Jun 16 1959

While entertaining friends at his home, George Reeves, who played the title character in the original Superman TV series, goes upstairs to his bedroom and commits suicide with a 9mm German Luger.

Jun 16 1960

Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho opens in New York.

Jun 16 1976

15,000 schoolchildren take to the streets of Soweto to protest South Africa's adoption of bilingual instruction in the Afrikaans language. The nonviolent march ends abruptly when police and soldiers open fire on the crowd, killing 600 and igniting days of rioting throughout the region.

Jun 16 1999

The founder of the United Kingdom's Monster Raving Loony Party, one Screaming Lord Sutch (real name David Edward Sutch, 3rd Earl of Harrow), is found hanged at his late mother's residence. Sutch was the longest lasting party leader in the UK at the time of his death, ruled a suicide. One of the Loony Party planks was to ask rhetorically, "Why is there only one Monopolies Commission?"

6/16/2008 1:47:10 PM

Jun 17 1939

In Versailles, Eugene Weidmann becomes the last person to be publicly guillotined.

Jun 17 1968

Ohio Express' "Yummy Yummy Yummy (I've got love in my tummy)" goes gold.

Jun 17 1972

The "plumbers" break into Democratic National Committee Headquarters in the Watergate complex, in the course of what President Nixon will later describe as a "third rate burglary." In actuality, it is an attempt by the Republican Party to illegally wiretap the opposition.

Jun 17 1994

O.J. Simpson fails to turn himself in to the LAPD at a prearranged time and is later spotted in a white Ford Bronco on a Los Angeles expressway. After a low-speed pursuit through the freeways and streets of Brentwood, O.J. is finally arrested live on television in the driveway of his mansion. According to one of the defense attorneys who served on O.J.'s "Dream Team," Simpson tried to kill himself in the car, but the gun misfired. The Juice allegedly told him: "I pulled the trigger and it didn't go off."

6/17/2008 6:08:08 AM

1 month left

6/17/2008 6:14:43 AM

can you imagine if he would have killed himself? I mean that whole deal was crazy enough, but if he'd had off'd himself, it would have been like "whoa".

6/17/2008 11:01:32 AM

Jun 18 1815

Napoleon is defeated in the Battle of Waterloo, partly because of an inability to properly survey the battlefield (due to a case of inflamed hemorrhoids).

Jun 18 1900

The Empress Dowager of China orders all foreigners killed. Among those meeting this fate are the foreign diplomats, their families, as well as hundreds of Christian missionaries and their Chinese converts.

Jun 18 1959

Based on his erratic behavior, the Governor of Louisiana, Earl K. Long, is committed to a state mental hospital. Long responds by arranging for the hospital's director to be fired, and the new director proclaims him perfectly sane. (It is no secret that the man was completely nuts.)

Jun 18 1967

Famed guitarist Jimi Hendrix burns his guitar on stage at the Monterey Pop Festival.

Jun 18 1984

Jewish talk show host Alan Berg is gunned down in the driveway of his Denver home by members of The Order, a neo-Nazi group partially inspired by the novel The Turner Diaries.

Jun 18 1996

Ted Kaczynski is indicted on ten criminal counts. He is suspected of being the Unabomber, who perpetrated 16 bomb attacks on people involved in technology.

6/18/2008 4:15:25 AM

first

[Edited on June 18, 2008 at 5:10 AM. Reason : fuck man he already got it]

6/18/2008 5:10:22 AM

the 90s kicked ass.

6/18/2008 10:39:14 AM

Jun 19 1312

Piers Gaveston, the disturbingly open homosexual lover of King Edward II of England, is beheaded after he attempted to return to Edward's side. For a time Gaveston was ward of the underage boy before the death of his father Edward I, to the great dismay of many important lords. After succession to king, Edward appointed Gaveston as Earl of Cornwall for no other reason than being the king's personal cornhole.

Jun 19 1867

Emperor Maximilian of Mexico is executed by firing squad. Although he bribed the seven riflemen to not shoot him in the head, one did anyway.

Jun 19 1934

The Federal Communications Commission, perhaps the most wicked body of do-gooders ever to exist in the United States, is created.

Jun 19 1953

Atomic spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are electrocuted at Sing-Sing Prison, becoming the first civilians ever executed for espionage in American history. Five jolts of electricity were required to kill Ethel. Her husband Julius was on the Soviet payroll, according to recently released archives. It is not clear whether Ethel had any involvement or how much Julius actually assisted the Soviet atomic bomb effort.

Jun 19 1964

San Francisco's Condor Club becomes the first topless bar in the United States when dancer Carol Doda steps onstage in a bottom-only swimsuit designed by Rudi Gernreich. Other San Francisco clubs follow suit just days later.

Jun 19 1982

Roberto Calvi, chairman of Banco Ambrosiano, is found hanging from Blackfriar's Bridge in London. His death is initially ruled a suicide, though it is quite obviously murder; that assessment is later overturned. Calvi may have been killed because of his involvement in the laundering of drug money through the Vatican Bank.

6/19/2008 3:28:08 AM

Jun 20 1756

In Calcutta, 146 British prisoners are placed in a 18 foot by 14 foot cell known as The Black Hole by a Bengali, Siraj-ud-daula, and held there until the following morning. Of those imprisoned, only 23 survive.

Jun 20 1782

Congress adopts the Great Seal of the United States. Although several people on the were Masons, the Masonic institutions themselves deny that the Seal is Masonic; therefore, any resemblance is purely coincidental. Of course.

Jun 20 1893

Lizzie Borden is found innocent of giving her stepmother and father forty and forty-one whacks, respectively.

Jun 20 1947

Bugsy Siegel is shot to death at Virginia Hill's mansion, on orders from Meyer Lansky. Siegel gets it twice in the face, and his right eyeball ends up on the dining room floor. [We don't have a picture of the eyeball, but we do have his toe tag.]

Jun 20 1993

Vince Foster, Deputy White House Counsel for President Clinton, apparently commits suicide with an unnumbered pistol at Fort Marcy Park in Virginia. Foster's empty briefcase later turns up at the White House. But after it is searched again, it is miraculously found to contain his suicide note.

6/20/2008 8:56:40 PM

Jun 21 1877

The Molly Maguires, ten Irish immigrants who were labor activists, are hanged at Carbon County Prison in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania. Author and Judge John P. Lavelle of Carbon County said of this, "The Molly Maguire trials were a surrender of state sovereignty. A private corporation initiated the investigation through a private detective agency. A private police force arrested the alleged defenders, and private attorneys for the coal companies prosecuted them. The state provided only the courtroom and the gallows."

Jun 21 1942

A Japanese submarine surfaces near the Columbia River in Oregon, and fires 17 shells at nearby Fort Stevens. Nobody is injured. It is one of a handful of attacks by the Japanese during World War II against the U.S. mainland.

Jun 21 1982

Using an innovative Jodie Foster defense, John Hinckley is found not guilty by reason of insanity for the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan. Nobody is impressed by this verdict.

Jun 21 1989

The U.S. Supreme Court rules in Texas v. Johnson that flag burning is indeed protected speech under the Constitution, prompting Congress to put forth an endless series of amendments to ban the activity.

6/21/2008 2:27:14 PM

Jun 22 1633

The Holy Office in Rome forces Galileo Galilei to recant his scientific view that the Sun, not the Earth, is the center of the Universe: "I abjure with a sincere heart and unfeigned faith these errors and heresies, and I curse and detest them as well as any other error, heresy or sect contrary to the Holy Catholic Church."

Jun 22 1940

France surrenders; hilarity ensues. Adolf Hitler forces the instrument of surrender to be signed in the very railcar in which the French inflicted the humiliating World War I Treaty of Versailles upon the Germans.

Jun 22 1941

The German Army invades Russia, quickly destroying five Russian armies and one fourth of the Red air force. At completion of the war in 1945, nearly 27 million Soviets were dead. Thus ended the German-Soviet "Peace and Friendship" Treaty.

Jun 22 1969

Judy Garland dies of a barbiturate overdose in her London apartment, either by accident or suicide. Quote from Judy: "When I die I have visions of fags singing 'Over the Rainbow' and the flag at Fire Island being flown at half mast."

Jun 22 1993

Dr. Charles Epstein of Tiburon, CA is injured when he opens a padded manilla package containing a surprise gift from the Unabomber.

6/22/2008 2:19:51 PM

France surrenders; hilarity ensues. Adolf Hitler forces the instrument of surrender to be signed in the very railcar in which the French inflicted the humiliating World War I Treaty of Versailles upon the Germans.

france pwnt.

6/22/2008 2:47:23 PM

Jun 23 1611

Believing there to be a secret stash of food hidden aboard ship, the mutinous crew of Henry Hudson's fourth voyage sets Henry, his son, and seven loyal shipmates adrift in an open boat on the Atlantic Ocean. They are never heard from again.

Jun 23 1968

A soccer stampede towards a closed exit leaves 74 crushed to death and 150 injured in Buenos Aires.

Jun 23 1993

In the middle of the night, Lorena Bobbitt severs her husband John's penis and drives off, casually discarding the organ in a farm field. Surgeons successfully reattach the penis, allowing John to enter the porn industry. The media devotes 1.3 million column-inches of type to the story as both Lorena and John gain celebrity status; consequently, their last name becomes a verb.

Jun 23 1996

A story by Watergate reporter Bob Woodward in the Washington Post reveals to the world that First Lady Hillary Clinton employed psychic Jean Houston to help her get in touch with her inner "Eleanor Roosevelt." We elect freaks, people.

Jun 23 1997

Malcolm X's widow, Dr. Betty Shabazz, dies after three agonizing weeks in the hospital with third-degree burns covering 80% of her body. The injuries were sustained when her 12-year-old grandson set fire to the family home in Yonkers, New York.

6/23/2008 1:15:56 PM

Jun 23 1982

Thecycle23 born in Livingston, NJ

6/23/2008 1:28:14 PM

^ happy birthday, yankee!

6/23/2008 11:11:37 PM

Jun 24 1374

In a sudden outbreak of Dancing Mania (aka "St. John's Dance"), people in the streets of Aix-la-Chapelle, Prussia experience terrible hallucinations and begin to jump and twitch uncontrollably until they collapse from exhaustion. Many of the sufferers are afflicted with frothing at the mouth, diabolical screaming, and sexual frenzy. The phenomenon lasts well into the month of July. Nowadays, ergot madness is suspected as being the ultimate cause of the disorder.

Jun 24 1947

Businessman pilot Kenneth Arnold encounters a formation of nine flying saucers near Mt. Ranier, Washington, exhibiting unusual movements and velocities of 1,700 mph. No explanation is found for this first report of flying saucers in the recent era, but it does earn Mr. Arnold legions of skeptics and an eventual IRS tax audit.

Jun 24 1948

East Germany blockades the city of West Berlin.

Jun 24 1957

The U.S. Supreme Court rules that obscenity is not protected by the First Amendment, though a dissenting opinion included with the ruling notes the issue of prior restraint renders this a terrible decision.

Jun 24 1993

Yale computer science professor Dr. David Gelernter opens a padded envelope in his office when it suddenly explodes. Gelernter loses the sight in one eye, the hearing in one ear, and part of his right hand. In this condition he manages to walk down five flights of stairs and over to the university hospital a block away. It is the handiwork of the Unabomber.

Lots of Unabomber trivia lately.

6/24/2008 6:59:52 AM

Jun 25 1876

During the Battle of Little Big Horn, General George Armstrong Custer witnesses a large group of Indians fleeing their village, and decides to press his advantage. The cavalry officer shouts, "We've caught them napping, boys!" Then he splits his force of 210 men into three groups, in order to slaughter as many of the retreating noncombatants as possible. Which is right about the time Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse sweep in and kill the white men. Two days later, Custer's body is found amidst a cluster of 42 other corpses, the general entirely naked except for one boot, one sock, and an arrow stuck in his penis.

Jun 25 1910

The Mann Act, sometimes known as the White Slave Traffic Act of 1910, makes it a federal crime to convey or assist in transporting women across state lines for prostitution, debauchery, or "any other immoral purpose." Men convicted of this heinous (if vague) statute face up to five years and a $5,000 fine for each count. Penalties are doubled if the female is underage, but men and boys are apparently not covered. This is, by far, the biggest party pooper in legislative history. Unless you're into guys.

Jun 25 1949

Jimmy Walker's dyn-o-mite birthday.

6/25/2008 6:51:23 AM

Jun 26 1945

The United Nations Charter is signed at San Francisco's War Memorial Opera House, paving the world for the New World Order. Aim for the blue helmets, everyone!

Jun 26 1961

John F. Kennedy tells the German nation and pastry lovers everywhere "Ich bin ein Berliner"; whether or not he is, in fact, a jelly donut remains a matter of speculation to this day.

Jun 26 1968

Pope Paul VI declares that the bones of Apostle and first Pope, Saint Peter, were found underneath St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. The bones are now housed in plexiglass containers near where they were found, but some of them are clearly those of domesticated animals.

Jun 26 1990

Irish Republican Army bombs the Carlton Club, an exclusive conservative gentleman's cabal in London. (It is a well known fact that Margaret Thatcher was denoted an "honorary man" in order to become a member. It is not clear what surgical modifications, if any, were necessary.)

Jun 26 1992

G O N A V Y
Secretary of the Navy H. Lawrence Garrett resigns over the handling of the Tailhook Scandal, in which 26 women were sexually abused. Some of the women, including 14 Navy officers, had been forced to run through a "gauntlet" where they were groped by Navy personnel.

6/26/2008 1:38:38 PM

^lol

6/26/2008 2:53:35 PM

Jun 27 1844

Mormon leader Joseph Smith, along with his brother Hyrum, are shot and killed by a mob while in jail at Carthage, Illinois. According to church legend, after Smith is shot a man raises a knife to decapitate him, but is thwarted by a thunderbolt from heaven.

Jun 27 1988

Hillel Slovak, original guitarist from sock-friendly rock band Red Hot Chili Peppers dies of a smack overdose in Hollywood.

Jun 27 1995

The LAPD arrests streetwalker Divine Brown on Hawthorn Ave. where she is discovered giving British movie star Hugh Grant a blowjob in his white BMW. To be fair, they also arrest Grant for procuring said blowjob.

Jun 27 2001

Police arrest comedian Paula Poundstone in Malibu, California on charges of lewd conduct with a minor. Poundstone's pending criminal trial remains front page news for the next three months, until it is overshadowed by the World Trade Center attacks in September. Soon thereafter, she pleads guilty to a lesser charge, and the details of her indictment are never disclosed to the public.

6/27/2008 1:30:21 PM

Jun 28 1905

Dr. Beaurieux picks up the freshly-severed head of Henri Languille just after it drops into the guillotine basket and shouts the man's name three times. According to the doctor's report: "Languille's eyes very definitely fixed themselves on mine and the pupils focused themselves. ... I was dealing with undeniably living eyes which were looking at me."

Jun 28 1914

During a parade in Sarajevo, Nedjelko Cabrinovic tosses a grenade into the automobile carrying Archduke Franz Ferdinand and wife Sofia. But Ferdinand knocks the bomb away with his arm and his driver speeds away from the would-be assassin. A short while later, during the return drive, Gavrilo Princip pulls out an automatic pistol and kills both Ferdinand and his pregnant wife. Five weeks later, the continent of Europe erupts into World War I.

Jun 28 1969

The three-day Stonewall Riots, triggered by the police raid of a New York City gay bar, begin the gay rights movement.

Jun 28 1997

Mike Tyson is disqualified from a championship boxing bout after biting off a large portion of Evander Holyfield's ear. Tyson is later banned from boxing and fined $3 million for the incident. Tastes like chicken.

Jun 29 1603

The Globe Theater, William Shakespeare's original theatrical venue, burns to the ground.

Jun 29 1967

Actress Jayne Mansfield is decapitated in a car crash, when her convertible collides with a parked tractor-trailer. To downplay the gruesome death, sources spread the falsehood that only her wig flew off in the accident.

Jun 29 1971

When Soyuz 11 disengages from the Salyut space station, cosmonauts Georgi Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov, and Viktor Patsayev are killed by a faulty pressurization valve. All the oxygen leaks out of the Soyuz cabin before Patsayev can close the valve by hand, and the crew is asphyxiated.

Jun 29 1978

The body of Bob Crane is discovered in bed with an electric cord wrapped around his neck and his head smashed in. When Scottsdale police search the apartment belonging to the former star of television's Hogan's Heroes, they discover a video camera and a large library of amateur porn starring Crane and a parade of random women.

Jun 29 1989

Under the headline "Homosexual Prostitution Probe Ensnares Official of Bush, Reagan" the Washington Times reports that "a homosexual prostitution ring is under investigation by federal and District authorities and includes among its clients key officials of the Reagan and Bush administrations, military officers, congressional aides and U.S. and foreign businessmen with close ties to Washington's political elite." The story alleges that homosexual call boys had been given tours of the White House, under the aegis of Republican Craig Spence. Spence's body is later found at the Ritz-Carlton in Boston, an apparent suicide.

Jun 29 1992

Mohammed Boudiaf is assassinated by one of his own bodyguards less than six months after becoming President of Algeria. A former hero in the war of independence, Boudiaf had been chosen by the Islamic Salvation Front to serve as figurehead for their regime. More than 100,000 Algerians will later die in political bloodshed in the following decade.

6/29/2008 2:00:23 PM

awesome

6/30/2008 2:08:20 AM

Jun 30 1520

After looting Tenochtitlan, Spaniards are attacked by an angry Aztec mob. Tied down by armor and treasure, they are no match for the natives and nearly half of Cortes' men lose their lives.

Jun 30 1837

England outlaws the use of the pillory.

Jun 30 1882

Charles Guiteau, the assassin of President Garfield, is hanged. Tickets for the event went for as much as $300.

Jun 30 1908

A huge airburst explodes over Podkamennaya Tunguska at 7:30 am. The blast flattens thousands of square miles of trees, and is now believed to have been caused by an asteroid or comet impact.

Jun 30 1934

Acting on behalf of the Fuhrer, SS troops around Germany arrest hundreds of loyal SA stormtroopers under the charge of treason in order to eliminate the group. One squad descends on a Bavarian resort, where it interrupts a contingent of SA men engaged in homosexual festivities. Lieutenant Edmund Heines is caught in bed with a teenaged boy, and shot to death on the spot. The rest are taken into custody. The event will come to be known as The Night of the Long Knives.

Jun 30 1999

Two members of the Old Order Amish, Abner Stoltzfus and Abner Stoltzfus, are sentenced to one year in prison for trafficking cocaine to other Amish folk in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. The men had scored their drugs from a Philadelphia motorcycle gang.

6/30/2008 6:57:42 AM

lol I can't imagine buying tickets to an execution.

6/30/2008 7:11:57 AM

Jul 1

Feast of the Most Precious Blood, celebrating the blood shed during Christ's Passion and reassumed into His body at Resurrection. Yum!

Jul 1 1945

The date proposed by Churchill for the start of WWIII, where U.S. and British forces were to meet Russian forces in Poland with a two pronged attack, using 47 divisions. It would have been a terrible mistake to attempt what both Napoleon and Adolf Hitler failed to accomplish.

Jul 1 1946

Atomic Bomb testing begins, using the Nagasaki-type implosion bomb, at Bikini Atoll.

Jul 1 1951

Mary Reeser spontaneously combusts in St. Petersburg, Florida, after taking a couple of sleeping pills and settling down with a lit cigarette.

Jul 1 1991

Michael Landon, star of I Was a Teenage Werewolf, dies of pancreatic cancer just three months after its initial diagnosis.

Jul 1 1993

Gian Luigi Ferri steps into the San Francisco law offices of Pettit & Martin at 101 California Street with two full-auto TEC-DC9s and a .45 semiauto pistol. In the span of four minutes, Ferri kills 8 and wounds 6 others before blowing his brains out. Almost as quickly, the victims' families file suit against Intratec, the manufacturer of the TEC-9, as well as the owner of the Las Vegas pawn shop where he bought one of them.

Jul 1 1996

The body of Margeaux Hemingway is found in her Santa Monica, California apartment after the actress apparently overdosed on Phenobarbital.

7/1/2008 2:59:47 PM

July 1, 1997 U.K. returns Hong Kong to China

July 1, 1966 Medicare goes into effect

July 1, 1930 Great-Britain signs accord for Independence of Iraq

July 1, 1862 Congress outlaws polygamy

7/1/2008 3:57:44 PM