4 June 2023 (MIA)

 

1411 – King Charles VI granted a monopoly for the ripening of Roquefort cheese to the people of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon as they had been doing for centuries.

1615 – Siege of Osaka: Forces under Tokugawa Ieyasu take Osaka Castle in Japan.

1647 – Canonicus Grand Chief Sachem of the Narragansett Indian Tribe dies. He was Chief Sachem of the Narragansett Tribe (rivals to the Wampanoag) at the time of the Pilgrims landing in Plymouth.

1745 – Battle of Hohenfriedberg: Frederick the Great’s Prussian army decisively defeated an Austrian army under Prince Charles Alexander of Lorraine during the War of the Austrian Succession.

1760 – Great Upheaval: New England planters arrive to claim land in Nova Scotia, Canada, taken from the Acadians.

1783 – The Montgolfier brothers publicly demonstrate their montgolfière (hot air balloon).

1784 – Élisabeth Thible becomes the first woman to fly in an untethered hot air balloon. Her flight covers four kilometres in 45 minutes, and reached 1,500 metres altitude (estimated).

1792 – Captain George Vancouver claims Puget Sound for the Kingdom of Great Britain.

1794 – British troops capture Port-au-Prince in Haiti.

1802 – Grieving over the death of his wife, Marie Clotilde of France, King Charles Emmanuel IV of Sardinia abdicates his throne in favor of his brother, Victor Emmanuel.

1812 – Following Louisiana’s admittance as a U.S. state, the Louisiana Territory is renamed the Missouri Territory.

1825 – General Lafayette, a French officer in the American Revolutionary War, speaks at what would become Lafayette Square, Buffalo, during his visit to the United States.

1855 – Major Henry C. Wayne departs New York aboard the USS Supply to procure camels to establish the U.S. Camel Corps.

1859 – Italian Independence wars: In the Battle of Magenta, the French army, under Louis-Napoleon, defeat the Austrian army.

1862 – American Civil War: Confederate troops evacuate Fort Pillow on the Mississippi River, leaving the way clear for Union troops to take Memphis, Tennessee.

1876 – An express train called the Transcontinental Express arrives in San Francisco, via the First Transcontinental Railroad only 83 hours and 39 minutes after leaving New York City.

1878 – Cyprus Convention: The Ottoman Empire cedes Cyprus to the United Kingdom but retains nominal title.

1896 – Henry Ford completes the Ford Quadricycle, his first gasoline-powered automobile, and gives it a successful test run.

1912 – Massachusetts becomes the first state of the United States to set a minimum wage.

1913 – Emily Davison, a suffragette, runs out in front of King George V’s horse, Anmer, at the Epsom Derby. She is trampled, never regains consciousness and dies four days later.

1916 – World War I: Russia opens the Brusilov Offensive with an artillery barrage of Austro-Hungarian lines in Galicia.

1917 – The first Pulitzer Prizes are awarded: Laura E. Richards, Maude H. Elliott, and Florence Hall receive the first Pulitzer for biography (for Julia Ward Howe). Jean Jules Jusserand receives the first Pulitzer for history for his work With Americans of Past and Present Days. Herbert B. Swope receives the first Pulitzer for journalism for his work for the New York World.

1919 – Women’s rights: The U.S. Congress approves the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which guarantees suffrage to women, and sends it to the U.S. states for ratification.

1920 – Hungary loses 71% of its territory and 63% of its population when the Treaty of Trianon is signed in Paris.

1928 – The President of the Republic of China, Zhang Zuolin, is assassinated by Japanese agents.

1932 – Marmaduke Grove and other Chilean military officers lead a coup d’état establishing the short-lived Socialist Republic of Chile.

1939 – The Holocaust: The MS St. Louis, a ship carrying 963 Jewish refugees, is denied permission to land in Florida, in the United States, after already being turned away from Cuba. Forced to return to Europe, more than 200 of its passengers later die in Nazi concentration camps.

1940 – World War II: The Dunkirk evacuation ends: British forces complete evacuation of 338,000 troops from Dunkirk in France. To rally the morale of the country, Winston Churchill delivers, only to the House of Commons, his famous “We shall fight on the beaches” speech.

1942 – World War II: The Battle of Midway begins. The Japanese Admiral Chūichi Nagumo orders a strike on Midway Island by much of the Imperial Japanese Navy.

1943 – A military coup in Argentina ousts Ramón Castillo.

1944 – World War II: A hunter-killer group of the United States Navy captures the German submarine U-505: The first time a U.S. Navy vessel had captured an enemy vessel at sea since the 19th century.

1944 – World War II: Rome falls to the Allies, the first Axis capital to fall.

1961 – In the Vienna summit, the Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev sparks the Berlin Crisis by threatening to sign a separate peace treaty with East Germany and ending American, British and French access to East Berlin.

1965 – Duane Earl Pope robs the Farmers’ State Bank of Big Springs, Nebraska, killing three people execution-style and severely wounding a fourth. The crime later puts Pope on the FBI Ten Most Wanted list.

1970 – Tonga gains independence from the United Kingdom.

1974 – During Ten Cent Beer Night, inebriated Cleveland Indians fans start a riot, causing the game to be forfeited to the Texas Rangers.

1975 – The Governor of California Jerry Brown signs the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act into law, the first law in the U.S. giving farmworkers collective bargaining rights.

1979 – Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings takes power in Ghana after a military coup in which General Fred Akuffo is overthrown.

1982 – Four Iranian diplomats were kidnapped in Lebanon after they were stopped at a check point in northern Lebanon by Lebanese Phalange forces. None of them have been seen since.

1986 – Jonathan Pollard pleads guilty to espionage for selling top secret United States military intelligence to Israel.

1988 – Three cars on a train carrying hexogen to Kazakhstan explode in Arzamas, Gorky Oblast, USSR, killing 91 and injuring about 1,500.

1989 – Ali Khamenei is elected as the new Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran by the Assembly of Experts after the death and funeral of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

1989 – The Tiananmen Square protests are violently ended in Beijing by the People’s Liberation Army, with at least 241 dead.

1989 – Solidarity’s victory in the first (somewhat) free parliamentary elections in post-war Poland sparks off a succession of peaceful anti-communist revolutions in Eastern Europe, leads to the creation of the so-called Contract Sejm and begins the Autumn of Nations.

1989 – Ufa train disaster: A natural gas explosion near Ufa, Russia, kills 575 as two trains passing each other throw sparks near a leaky pipeline.

1996 – The first flight of Ariane 5 explodes after roughly 37 seconds. It was a Cluster mission.

1998 – Terry Nichols is sentenced to life in prison for his role in the Oklahoma City bombing.

2001 – Gyanendra, the last King of Nepal, ascends to the throne after the massacre in the Royal Palace.

2010 – Falcon 9 Flight 1 is the maiden flight of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, which launches from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Space Launch Complex 40.

2012 – The concert for Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee takes place outside Buckingham Palace in London.

2015 – An explosion at a gasoline station in Accra, Ghana, killing over 200 people.

2018 – US President Donald Trump tweets “I have the absolute right to PARDON myself.”

2018 – Former US President Bill Clinton in interview with NBC says he hasn’t and doesn’t need to apologize to Monica Lewinsky.

2019 – Over 100,000 people mark the 30th anniversary of Beijing’s Tiananmen Square Massacre in Hong Kong and around the world.

2020 – Memorial for George Floyd led by Rev. Al Sharpton, killed in police custody, in Minneapolis, as 10th night of protests at his death held around the country.

2021 – Nepalese Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli makes a desperate plea for vaccines amid his country’s devastating COVID-19 second wave, reporting nearly 9,000 daily cases late May.