Category Archives: Today

June 24 is Swim a Lap Day
International Fairy Day
National Pralines Day
Deaf-Blindness Awareness Week

1374 – A sudden outbreak of St. John’s Dance caused people in the streets of Aachen, Germany, to experience hallucinations and begin to jump and twitch uncontrollably until they collapsed from exhaustion.
From toxipedia.org, “St. John’s Dance was the medieval name for a phenomenon which emerged during the time of the Black Death. It was considered a form of nervous system disorder (apraxia) expressing itself as “dancing rage,” as uncontrolled ecstatic body movements. In the eyes of the church, those suffering from St. John’s Dance were possessed by the devil.”

1497 – Italian explorer John Cabot, sailing in the service of England, landed in North America on what is now Newfoundland, on June 24, 1497. It was the first European exploration of the region since the Vikings.

1509 – Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon were crowned King and Queen of England.

New Jersey, named after the Isle of Jersey, was founded in 1664.

King Philip’s War began when Indians massacred colonists at Swansee, Plymouth colony on June 24, 1675.

The saxophone was patented by Adolphe Sax in Paris, France on June 24, 1846.

1908 – Death of Grover Cleveland (born Stephen Grover Cleveland), twenty-second and twenty-fourth President of the United States. He died at Princeton, New Jersey at age 71 of heart failure.

1922 – The American Professional Football Association took the name of The National Football League.

1948 – Start of the Berlin Blockade: the Soviet Union made overland travel between West Germany and West Berlin impossible.

The first television western, Hopalong Cassidy, was aired on NBC on June 24, 1949. It starred William Boyd.

1982 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that no president could be sued for damages connected with actions taken while serving as President of the United States.

1993 – Yale computer science professor Dr. David Gelernter lost the sight in one eye, the hearing in one ear, and part of his right hand after receiving a mailbomb from the Unabomber.

June 23 is National Columnists Day
National Pink Day
National Pecan Sandy Day
Laura Ingalls Wilder Pageant

1713 – The French residents of Acadia were given one year to declare allegiance to Britain or leave Nova Scotia, Canada. Those who left went to Louisiana and became “Cajuns”.

1860 – The United States Congress established the Government Printing Office and the Secret Service. They were established to arrest counterfeiters.

1887 – The Rocky Mountains Park Act created Canada’s first national park, Banff National Park, on June 23, 1887.

1917 – In a game against the Washington Senators, Boston Red Sox pitcher Ernie Shore retired 26 batters in a row. He had replaced Babe Ruth who had been ejected for punching the umpire. The umpire, Clarence “Brick” Owens, called the first four pitches balls, walking the batter. Ruth thought two of the pitches had been strikes. Ruth reportedly yelled at him, “If you’d go to bed at night, you *expletive*, you could keep your eyes open long enough in the daytime to see when a ball goes over the plate!”

As you might imagine, the umpire didn’t take too kindly to this and told Ruth that if he didn’t shut up and get back to the mound, he’d be thrown out of the game. Ruth then yelled at him, “Throw me out and I’ll punch ya right in the jaw!” Owens then threw him out; Ruth attempted to punch him in the jaw but missed and hit a glancing blow behind the umpire’s ear, knocking Owens down. Ruth was fined $100 (about $1600 today), given a 10 game suspension, and forced to give a public apology. See story at This Day in History.

What made this particularly attacking of an umpire important was that, when Ernie Shore came in to replace Ruth on the mound, the catcher, Sam Agnew, (who incidentally replaced catcher Chester “Pinch” Thomas who was also ejected with Ruth), threw out the runner on first trying to steal second. Shore then retired the next 26 batters in a row without giving up a hit or a walk, winning the game 4-0. As such, this was ruled to be a “perfect game” because Shore had been on the mound for all 27 outs, though in the 1990s, it was downgraded to simply a “combined no-hitter”.

*** Comment from viewer Christy Stone:
Linda-
I missed sending you a story of another baseball no-hitter that was pitched on June 23rd (1971).
Philadelphia right hander Rick Wise no-hit the Reds at Cincinnati’s former home, Riverfront Stadium by a score 4-0.
Two interesting items about this game:
Wise himself drove in three runs by hitting TWO home runs, one a solo and the other a two-run job. Wise hit 15 career home runs.
Last batter retired to complete the no-hitter?
Pete Rose, line drive out to third baseman, John Vukovich.
*** Thanks Christy!

1931 – Wiley Post and Harold Gatty took off from Roosevelt Field, Long Island in an attempt to circumnavigate the world in a single-engine plane.

1947 – The United States Senate followed the United States House of Representatives in overriding U.S. President Harry Truman’s veto of the Taft-Hartley Act on June 23, 1947.

1960 – The United States Food and Drug Administration declared Enovid to be the first officially approved combined oral contraceptive pill in the world on June 23, 1960.

1972 – Sexual discrimination to any educational program receiving federal funds was prohibited by Title IX of the United States Civil Rights Act of 1964

2013 – Nik Wallenda walked across the Grand Canyon on a tight rope on June 23, 2013, becaming the first man to do so successfully .

June 22 is National Chocolate Eclair Day
National Onion Rings Day

English explorer Henry Hudson discovered the Hudson Strait and the immense Hudson Bay on his final expedition, while still searching for the Northwest Passage. On this date in 1611, after wintering on the shore of James Bay, Hudson wanted to press on to the west, but most of his crew mutinied. The mutineers cast Hudson, his son, and seven others adrift; the Hudsons and their companions were never seen again.

1633  Galileo Galilei was forced by the Inquisition to “abjure, curse, and detest” his Copernican heliocentric views. “I, Galileo…do swear that I have always believed, do now believe and, with God’s aid shall believe hereafter, all that which is taught and preached by the … church. I must wholly forsake the false opinion that the sun is the center of the world and moves not, and that the earth is not the center of the world and moves….” He was then condemned to the “formal prison of the Holy Office” for an undetermined amount of time which would be served at the pleasure of his judges, and required to repeat the seven penitential psalms once a week for three years. The next day the Pope specified the prison sentence should be house arrest. Galileo was the first person to reveal that the Milky Way galaxy was composed of stars.

1740 –  King Frederik II of Prussia ended torture and guaranteed religion & freedom of the press.

1774 – The British passed the Quebec Act on June 22, 1774, setting out rules of governance for the colony of Quebec in British North America.

1870 –  The U.S. Congress created the Department of Justice.

1933 – Germany became a one political party country when Hitler banned parties other than the Nazis on June 22, 1933.

A Japanese submarine shelled Fort Stevens at the mouth of the Columbia River in 1942.

U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt signed the “GI Bill of Rights” June 22, 1944 to provide broad benefits for veterans of the war.

From Today in Science
1969 – The Cuyahoga River caught fire, triggering a crack-down on pollution in the river. In Cleveland, Ohio, oil-sodden floating debris on the Cuyahoga River ignited (perhaps by sparks from a passing train) and burned with flames reported up to five stories high. Although fire-fighters extinguished the blaze in a half-hour or so, it caused $50,000 in damage. For a century the river had been an open sewer for industrial waste, through the times when factory production seemed more important than worrying about the environment. Several fires had happened in the prior hundred years, but attitudes changed to outrage as this time, national attention was aroused. It became one of several disasters that led to the Clean Water Act and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Determined remedial action for decades since has resulted in cleaner water, and improving aquatic life.

1970: U.S. President Richard Nixon signed an extension of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It required the voting age in the United States to be 18.

From Today in Science
In 1978, evidence of the first moon of Pluto was discovered by astronomer James W. Christy of the Naval Observatory in Flagstaff, Ariz. when he obtained a photograph of Pluto that showed the orb to be distinctly elongated. Furthermore, the elongations appeared to change position with respect to the stars over time. After eliminating the possibility that the elongations were produced by plate defects and background stars, the only plausible explanation was that they were caused by a previously unknown moon orbiting Pluto at a distance of about 19,600 kilometers (12,100 miles) with a period of 6.4 days. The moon was named Charon, after the boatman in Greek mythology who took the souls of the dead across the River Styx to Pluto’s underworld.

1992  – The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that hate-crime laws that ban cross-burning and similar expressions of racial bias violated free-speech rights.

1998 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that evidence illegally obtained by authorities could be used at revocation hearings for a convicted criminal’s parole.