This Week In History
June 17, 1928
Amelia Earhart embarked on the first ever trans-Atlantic flight by a woman. She was one of three people aboard the Fokker tri-motor aircraft, Friendship
1993: Jurassic Park broke box-office records in its first week, taking $81.7m
2008: President Nicolas Sarkozy announced that France would return to the military structure of NATO for the first time since 1966
2008: According to the UN, the number of refugees had risen to 11.4 million in 2007 from 9.9m in 2006
2015: Nine people died in a mass shooting at a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina
June 18, 1983
Astronaut Sally Ride became the first American woman in space when she was launched into orbit aboard the space
shuttle Challenger
2003: U.S. forces captured Abid Hamid Mahmoud al-Tikriti, a key adviser to Saddam Hussein
2003: Italy granted immunity from prosecution to top government officials, blocking Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s corruption trial
2006: A Gustav Klimt portrait looted during World War II was sold for a then record price of $135m
2006: Catalonia won autonomy from Madrid following a referendum
June 19, 1978
Garfield, now the world’s most widely syndicated comic strip, first appeared. Garfield, an overweight cat, is shown above as a balloon in a Thanksgiving Day parade
1983: Li Xiannian was chosen as China’s first president since
1969, a largely ceremonial post at that time
2003: McDonald’s instructed its suppliers to cut back on the use of antibiotics in stock raising
2008: Arctic sea ice was reported to have shrunk to 4.2 million sq km, compared to 7.8m in 1980 2017: French President Emmanuel Macron’s new centrist party won the parliamentary election by a landslide
June 20, 1963
The White House and the Kremlin agreed to establish a hot-line telephone link, enabling rapid communication between U.S. and Soviet leaders in a crisis
1983: U.S. tennis star John McEnroe began arguing with an umpire on the first day of Wimbledon
1993: A high-speed train made a first trial run from France to England via the newly-built Channel Tunnel
2001: Pakistan’s military leader, General Pervez Musharraf, consolidated his grip on power by declaring himself president
2009: The new Acropolis Museum opened in Athens
June 21, 2017
Mohammad bin Salman, son of King Salman of Saudi Arabia, was appointed as Crown Prince after King Salman demoted his nephew, Muhammad bin Nayef
2003: The Eiffel Tower was illuminated with 20,000 new lights at a festive ceremony in Paris
2006: Two newly discovered moons of Pluto were named Nix and Hydra, taking its total to five
2008: Chevron ceased production in Nigeria’s oil-rich Delta State when militants blew up a pipeline
2017: Islamic State militants blew up the Grand al-Nuri Mosque of Mosul, famous for its leaning minaret
June 22, 1633
The Papal Inquisition forced astronomer Galileo Galilei to recant his then-heretical theory that the Earth and other planets revolved around the sun
2004: A South Korean translator was beheaded by kidnappers in Iraq
2007: Inflation in Zimbabwe rose to 11,000 percent
2008: A breakaway summit of 280 conservative Anglican bishops opposed to gay priests and same-sex unions, opened in Jerusalem
2009: President Sarkozy called for the burqa to be banned in France, saying the all-covering garment reduced women to servitude
June 23, 1868
Christopher Latham Sholes, a newspaper publisher, received a patent for an invention called the “Type-Writer”. He also invented the QWERTY keyboard, still in use
1960: The first oral contraceptive pill, Enovid, was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
1991: The first video game featuring Sonic the Hedgehog was released in North America, Europe and Australia
1993: A British professor solved Fermat’s Theorem, which had puzzled mathematicians for 350 years
2016: The UK referendum vote to leave the European Union sent shockwaves around the globe