Today In History
Today is Monday, June 4, the 155th day of 2018. There are 210 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT
› 1940: During World War II, the Allied military evacuation of some 338,000 troops from Dunkirk, France, ended. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill declared: “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”
ON THIS DATE
› 1783: The Montgolfier brothers first publicly demonstrated their hotair balloon, which did not carry any passengers, over Annonay, France.
› 1784: Opera singer Elisabeth Thible became the first woman to make a non-tethered flight aboard a Montgolfier hot-air balloon, over Lyon, France.
› 1812: The Louisiana Territory was renamed the Missouri Territory, to avoid confusion with the recently admitted state of Louisiana. The U.S. House of Representatives approved, 79-49, a declaration of war against Britain.
› 1919: Congress approved the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, guaranteeing citizens the right to vote regardless of their gender, and sent it to the states for ratification.
› 1939: The German ocean liner MS St. Louis, carrying more than 900 Jewish refugees from Germany, was turned away from the Florida coast by U.S. officials.
› 1942: The World War II Battle of Midway began, resulting in a decisive American victory against Japan and marking the turning point of the war in the Pacific.
› 1943: The president of Argentina, Ramon Castillo, was overthrown in a military coup.
› 1967: In the second air disaster to strike a British carrier in as many days, a British Midland Airways jetliner crashed in Stockport, England, killing 72 of the 84 people aboard. (A day earlier, a British charter crashed in France, killing 88.)
› 1972: A jury in San Jose, California, acquitted radical activist Angela Davis of murder and kidnapping for her alleged connection to a deadly Marin County courthouse shootout in 1970.
› 1986: Jonathan Jay Pollard, a former U.S. Navy intelligence analyst, pleaded guilty in Washington to conspiring to deliver information related to the national defense to Israel. (Pollard, sentenced to life in prison, was released on parole on Nov. 20, 2015.)
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
Sex therapist and media personality Dr. Ruth Westheimer is 90. Actor Bruce Dern is 82. Musician Roger Ball is 74. Actress-singer Michelle Phillips is 74. Jazz musician Anthony Braxton is
73. Rock musician Danny Brown (The Fixx) is 67. Actor Parker Stevenson is 66. Actor Keith David is 62. Blues singer-musician Tinsley Ellis is 61. Actress Julie Gholson is
60. Singer-musician El DeBarge is 57. Actress Julie White is 57. Actress Lindsay Frost is 56. Actor Sean Pertwee is 54. Tennis player Andrea Jaeger is 53. Opera singer Cecilia Bartoli is 52. Rhythm and blues singer Al B. Sure! is 50. Actor Scott Wolf is 50. Actor-comedian Rob Huebel is 49. Comedian Horatio Sanz is 49. Actor James Callis is 47. Actor Noah Wyle is 47. Rock musician Stefan Lessard (The Dave Matthews Band) is 44. Actress Angelina Jolie is 43. Actor Theo Rossi is 43. Alt-country singer Kasey Chambers is 42. Rock musician JoJo Garza (Los Lonely Boys) is 38. Country musician Dean Berner (Edens Edge) is 37. Model Bar Refaeli is 33. Olympic gold medal figure skater Evan Lysacek is 33. Americana singer Shakey Graves is 31. Rock musician Zac Farro is 28.