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780 BCE The first historic solar eclipse was recorded in China.

1039 Death of Conrad II, Holy Roman Emperor. Henry III became King of Germany.

1070 Today is traditionally held to be the day that Roquefort cheese was first made, Roquefort-sur-Soulzon, France, when a young shepherd, eating his lunch of curds, saw a beautiful girl in the distance.

Abandoning his meal in a nearby cave, he set off to meet her. When he failed to catch her after some days, he returned to his now mouldy lunch and ate it out of pure hunger, but it turned out to be delicious.

The mould (Penicillium roqueforti) which gives Roquefort its distinctive character is found in the soil of the local caves. European law ensures that only those cheeses aged in the natural Cambalou caves of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon may bear the name Roquefort, as it has a Protected designation of origin. June 4 is often called Cheese Day because of the Roquefort connection.

1615 "The Tokugawa Shogun captured Osaka Castle and eliminated Hide-yoshi's heirs. The fortress of Osaka, Japan, fell to shogun Leyasu after a six month siege."   Source

1629 The Dutch ship Batavia was wrecked on a reef near Houtman Abrolhos off the Western Australian coast. Following a mutiny in which 125 of the 300 on board were massacred, Captain Pelsaert regained control and executed the surviving mutineers, except for two who were put off on the mainland.

1647 The English army seized King Charles I as a hostage.

1703 English diarist Samuel Pepys (1633 - 1703) was buried at St Olav's church in London.

1717 The Freemasons established their Grand Lodge in London.

1760 Great Upheaval: New England planters arrived to take land in Nova Scotia Canada taken from the Acadians.

1763 At what is now Mackinaw City, Michigan, Chippewas captured Fort Michilimackinac by diverting the garrison's attention with a game of lacrosse, then chasing a ball into the fort.

1784 The first woman to fly: opera singer Madame Thible went aloft in a French hot-air balloon

1787 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart buried with great pomp and ceremony the starling that he had purchased on May 27, three years earlier.

"Heavily veiled mourners marched in a procession, sang hymns, and listened to a graveside recitation of a poem Mozart had composed for the occasion ..."   Source

Source of date

1789 Death of the seven-year-old Dauphin Louis, son of Louis XVI and heir to the throne of France.

1789 Australia: The first play in the New South Wales colony, The Recruiting Officer, was performed, commemorating the birthday of King George III.

1792 Captain George Vancouver claimed Puget Sound for Great Britain.

1794 British troops captured Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

1798 The Italian adventurer and lover, Giacomo Casanova, died at his Castle of Dux, Bohemia.

1812 War of 1812: The United States Congress voted for war against Britain.

1819 Australia: The convict barracks at Hyde Park, Sydney, able to hold 600 prisoners, were opened by Governor Lachlan Macquarie.

1831 Prince Leopold, of the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, became King Leopold I, the first king of independent Belgium.

1832 England's Great Reform Bill was passed by Parliament.

1841 USA: Capture of Seminole chief Coacoochee (Wildcat) during peace talks.

1859 "The French army under Napoleon III took Magenta from the Austrian army after a bloody battle in northern Italy."   Source

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

1864 USA: General Ulysses S Grant's military tactics during his first month in command of the Union Armies resulted in the deaths of 60,000 Union soldiers – more Americans than were killed in the entire Vietnam War.

1876 An express train arrived in San Francisco, California in record time: only 83 hours after having left New York City.

1877 The first school in Darwin, Australia, opened, with 34 pupils.

1877 A tornado picked up a church spire from Mount Carmel, Illinois, USA, and carried it 30 km.

1878 The Ottoman Empire ceded Cyprus to the United Kingdom.

1888 "… the New York Legislature passed a law establishing electrocution as the state's method of execution, but since two potential designs (AC and DC) of the electric chair existed, it was left to a committee to decide which form was better. Edison actively campaigned for the selection of the Westinghouse chair, expecting that the consumer would not want the same type of electrical service in their homes.

"Later in 1888, the Edison research facility hired inventor Harold P. Brown. Brown had recently written a letter to the New York Post describing a fatal accident where a young boy died after touching an exposed telegraph wire running on AC current. Brown and his assistant Dr. Fred Peterson began designing an electric chair for Edison. They conducted cruel experiments using dogs, horses and cows to research AC electrocution, publicly experimenting with DC voltage to show that it left the poor lab animals tortured but not dead, then testing AC voltage to demonstrate how AC killed swiftly."   Source

1892 The Sierra Club was incorporated in San Francisco, California.

1896 "Henry Ford made a successful pre-dawn test run of his horseless carriage, called a quadricycle, through the streets of Detroit. The quadricycle consisted of a simple motor mounted on a buggy frame. Before Ford began to produce the automobiles that made him famous, he had been an unimpressive student from a Michigan farming family. But he began to demonstrate skill and interest in mechanical work, and left farming and business school behind to work with machines. He learned about steam engines at his job with Westinghouse, and later worked as an engineer for Edison Electric Illuminating Company. As Ford Motors developed, he hoped to emulate Edison. Ford died in 1947 a fabulously wealthy and influential businessman."   Source

1913 Emily Davison, British suffragette and member of the Women's Social and Political Union, tried to grab the reins of King George V's horse, Anmer, as it rounded Tattenham Corner at the Epsom Derby. Film footage of the incident still survives. She fell beneath the horse and was trampled, receiving critical injuries and died on June 8, never having regained consciousness. Her very large funeral was held on June 14 (qv).

From Wikipedia: The known facts and newsreel footage do not support the popular belief that she intended to kill herself. She may have been trying to pin the suffragette colours onto the horse ... Davison's purpose in attending the Derby of 1913 is unclear. Much has been made of the fact that she purchased a return rail ticket, suggesting that suicide was not, on this occasion, her intention. Film of the incident shows her stepping out in front of the horse, Anmer, carrying the banner of the WSPU, but she appears to expect the horse to stop or swerve around her, rather than to trample her as it inevitably did.

Davison became a martyr for the suffragette movement, which turned radical around the beginning of the 20th century. Not all, however, idealised her actions: Queen Mary later wrote to the jockey, Jones that she was sorry to hear of his accident caused by "the abominable behaviour of a brutal lunatic woman".

A memorable Derby    Benn's secret tribute to suffragette martyr    More

Aussie suffragette who brought a Police Commissioner off his horse in 1912

A world chronology of women's electoral rights

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

1919 American women got the vote.

1919 Marxism vs. the working classes: the Fourth (Ukrainian) Congress of Free Soviets, to which rank and file members of the Red Army had been invited to send representatives, was banned by Leon Trotsky. Bolshevist troops were sent to destroy the Rosa Luxemburg Commune near Provkovski and Ukrainian anarchist insurgent Nestor Makhno was declared an outlaw.

Source: The Daily Bleed

1920 The Treaty of Trianon was signed in Paris.

1920 Eugene O'Neill was awarded the Pulitzer Prize.

1931 In the Barossa Valley, South Australia, eight grape growers formed a co-operative which in 1958 formed the now-prestigious Kaiser Stuhl label.

1936 Léon Blum became Prime Minister of France.

1937 Seventeen-year-old Timothy Leary (1920 - 1996), later the leader of the US psychedelia movement, was announced editor of The Recorder, magazine of Classical High School, Springfield, Massachusetts, USA.

1937 The first supermarket shopping cart went into operation, Oklahoma, USA.

1938 Australia: The Westland Express began its Kalgoorlie-Perth service.

1939 Australian aviation pioneer PG Taylor flew a Catalina flying boat across the Indian Ocean, the first person to fly between Australia and South Africa.

1939 The Voyage of the Damned

"During what became known as the "Voyage of the Damned," the SS St. Louis, carrying more than 900 Jewish refugees from Germany, was turned away from the Florida coast. Also denied permission to dock in Cuba, the ship eventually returned to Europe. The passengers were divided among England, France, Belgium and Holland and a number of the refugees later died in Nazi concentration camps."   Source

"The United States, which also turned away refugees, has yet to be strongly criticized. Its policy on Jewish refugees during the war seems to have been swept under the rug.

Only 29 percent of all Americans know that the US did not admit all European Jews who sought refuge before or during the war, according to a survey of the American public conducted for the museum and released last spring,

The survey found that 34 percent were unaware of the American refugee policy, while 37 percent thought the US admitted or probably admitted the Jewish refugees."   Source

Wilson's Blogmanac is dedicated to The SievX Disaster of October 19, 2001 (qv): Australia's 'voyage of the damned' and the deaths of 353 asylum seekers

1940 World War II: The Dunkirk evacuation. – The evacuation of Dunkirk and St Valéry (commenced May 26, qv) ended. The allies evacuated 338,226 British and French troops who were cornered by Hitler's armies. More than 1,200 British vessels, including pleasure craft, were involved in this, the greatest evacuation in military history.

1940 German forces entered Paris.

1940 Carson McCullers, 23, published The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter to great critical acclaim.

1941 Abdicated German emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II died in exile in the Netherlands.

1942 World War II: The Battle of Midway began.

"It was Japan's first major defeat in World War II. Four Japanese carriers were lost. The carrier USS Yorktown was hit by 3 Japanese bombs and put on tow to Pearl Harbor. It was torpedoed three days later and sank in waters 16,650 deep. The Yorktown was found in 1998 by a team led by oceanographer Robert Ballard, who had also found the Titanic and the Bismarck. The story of the Battle of Midway was told by Walter Lord in 'Incredible Victory.' In 2005 Alvin Kernan authored 'The Unknown Battle of Midway.'"   Source

1946 Juan Perón was elected president of Argentina.

1949 The photo-finish camera was used for the first time at the Epsom Derby, England.

1958 The first Duke of Edinburgh Awards were presented, at Buckingham Palace.

1968 Students occupied the University of Belgrade, Yugoslavia, demanding university reform.

1970 Tonga gained independence from the United Kingdom and became independent and a member of the British Commonwealth, having been a British Protectorate since 1900.

1972 Angela Davis, African-American communist leader and activist, was acquitted after a 13-week trial for crimes associated with the murders of four people.

1973 A Russian Concorde-style aircraft exploded at the Paris Air Show, killing 33.

1974 The International Commission of Jurists accused Field Marshall Idi Amin of having committed a "reign of terror" in Uganda.

1974 "Mrs Candelaria Villanueva, 52, had been in the sea with a lifejacket for more than twelve hours after the ship she was on, the Aloha, caught fire and sank 600 miles south of Manila, Philippines. A giant sea turtle appeared beneath her and supported her until her rescue by the navy vessel Kalantia. A smaller turtle climber on her back and bit her every time she felt drowsy and was in danger of submerging her head in the water. After the rescue, the bigger turtle circled the area twice before taking off."   Source

1975 USA: Bernie Cornfield, controversial millionaire, was charged in California with making unlawful free telephone calls with the aid of an electronic device called a 'blue box'.

1976 The Teton Dam in Idaho, USA, burst, killing 11 and leaving 30,000 homeless.

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

1986 The Catawba tribe of South Carolina, USA, lost a Supreme Court case to reclaim their aboriginal lands, due to expiration of the statute of limitations.

1989 Tiananmen Square protests (Tiananmen Square Massacre): As many as 2,600 people were killed and 10,000 injured in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, when the Chinese Communist government cracked down on pro-democracy protesters, covered live on television worldwide.

It has been contended that the massacre actually happened outside the square ('The Myth of Tiananmen And the Price of a Passive Press', by Jay Mathews, Columbia Journalism Review). There are Tienanmen Massacre deniers, just as there are Holocaust deniers -- see Spinning the Battle for Beijing.

"In China hundreds – possibly thousands – of people died as Chinese army troops stormed Beijing to crush the pro-democracy movement. A surge in imports and loose money supplied fuel for a potent mix of corruption and double-digit inflation. Hundreds of thousands of discontented Chinese took to the streets of Beijing, demanding more reform – but the military crushed the protests in the Tiananmen Square crackdown. Zhao Ziyang was ousted. The West and Japan cut off aid. Bao Tong was the only Communist Party official arrested in the Tianamen Square uprising. He was released with ill-health in 1996. Han Dongfang, leader of China's first independent trade union spent 22 months behind bars for his role in the pro-democracy uprising. Ren Wanding was also again jailed for giving speeches in the pro-democracy protests."   Source

Statue of the Goddess of Democracy
"Students from the Central College of Fine Arts are credited with creating the goddess statue, that was destined to stand only five days in Beijing, at which point it was run over by a tank from the People's Liberation Army as the army retook Tiananmen Square while killing 3,000 civilians in the infamous 'June 4' massacre."   Source

 

Sequence of events at Tiananmen Square

June 4

1:00 a.m. a second group of tanks appears at Tiananmen Square. Demonstrators jump on the tanks and throw stones and Molotov cocktails.

2:00 a.m. Tiananmen Square is totally surrounded by tanks. Automatic rifles start shooting, killing people on the square. The students' loudspeakers claim 50 deaths.

3:00 a.m. the official loudspeakers shout: "Beijing is victim of a counter-revolutionary insurrection." All the tanks target the 5,000 students remaining around the Monument to the People's Heroes.

4:00 a.m. the lights on the square turn off and official loudspeakers call on the students to return to campuses.

5:00 a.m. several thousand students and supporters exit the square, leaving behind a group of hard core protesters, mostly workers, who refuse to leave and decide to stay on as martyrs.

6:00 a.m. a tank kills seven more students.

Throughout the afternoon more reports come in of civilians shot in all districts. There are also reports of foreigners being injured. The first signs of a struggle emerge between the different army units, with soldiers actually fighting each other. The 27th Army, commanded in 1979 by Gen. Yang Shangkun in the Sino-Vietnamese war, uses snipers to shoot people in the head and the heart.
Source

Like This

for 6.4

Tu Ya

Quietly, the fall of petals is like this
Death is being expressed like this
The world is a colorful tragedy this world
I read history –
Like going through a graveyard in darkness

1991

Source

 

"I am a surgeon at the PLA Number 301 Hospital. When the June 4th Incident took place in 1989, I was the director of the hospital's department of routine surgery. On the evening of 3 June, I heard repeated radio broadcasts urging people not to go to the streets. At about 2200 when I was in my dormitory, I heard continuous gunshots from the north. Several minutes later, my pager beeped. It was the emergency room's call. So I rushed there. I could not believe my eyes--lying on the floor and the examination tables were seven young people with blood all over their faces and bodies. Two of them were later confirmed dead after an EKG test. My brain buzzed and I almost passed out. I have been a surgeon for more than 30 years ...

"Of course I have considered the consequences that I might encounter after writing this letter. But I have decided to tell you all the facts."
Dr Jiang Yanyong's letter to the Party, Feb 24, 2004

1998 USA: Duke University geneticists announced that they could now change sickled blood cells into normal cells.

1998 "In Taiwan it was reported that an airborne virus had killed 26 children in the last 6 weeks. Another 132 were hospitalized and as many as 9,000 were infected. Efforts to fight the disease were being centralized. Enterovirus 71 soon claimed 7 more children."   Source

1998 UK: A tradition dating back to the 19^th century died when the House of Commons decided that collapsible top hats no longer need be worn in parliament.

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

1999 Hong Kong: To commemorate the tenth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, tens of thousands of people held a candlelight vigil.

2000 New York, NY, USA: About150 people posed naked beneath the Williamsburg Bridge for a shoot by American photographer, Spencer Tunick. Tunick is best known for his photographs that feature large numbers of nude people posed in artistic formations situated in urban locations.

2000 West Papua: separatists made a declaration of independence from Indonesia. Thaha Alhamid read the declaration before thousands gathered in Jayapura.

2001 Nepal: Allegedly cocaine-addled King Dipendra (b. June 27, 1971) died, three days after allegedly shooting the royal family and himself. Prince Gyanendra became king.

The intelligent and well-liked Dipendra was thought to have a good future ahead of him, but disagreements with his mother about his marriage apparently caused him to kill many members of his family at a royal dinner on June 1, 2001. Among the dead were his father, King Birendra, his mother, Queen Ayswari, his brother, Prince Nirigin and his sister. He also shot himself, but survived for three days. Although in a comatose state, he was proclaimed king in his hospital bed. He died of his injuries in June 4, 2001. He was succeeded by his uncle, Gyanendra, who had been third in line to the throne before the massacre and was the closest surviving member of the royal family.

Tomorrow: 8498 BCE, Atlantis destroyed

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Wikipedia and David Brown's prodigious Daily Bleed are both excellent resources that aid my research.
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