June 4 - Events

Events

• 1039 – Henry III becomes Holy Roman Emperor.
• 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 the shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu take Osaka Castle in Japan.
• 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).
• 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 – French American Revolutionary War General Lafayette speaks at what would become Lafayette Square, Buffalo, during his visit to the United States.
• 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, California, 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 a few 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 – 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'etat establishing the short-lived Socialist Republic of Chile.
• 1939 – Holocaust: The MS St. Louis, a ship carrying 963 Jewish refugees, is denied permission to land in Florida, 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 300,000 troops from Dunkirk in France. To rally the morale of the country, Winston Churchill delivers his famous "We shall fight on the beaches" speech.
• 1942 – World War II: The Battle of Midway begins. Japanese Admiral Chuichi 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.
• 1957 – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his famous Power of Nonviolence speech at the University of California, Berkeley.
• 1961 – In the Vienna summit, 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 robbed the Farmers' State Bank of Big Springs, Nebraska, killing three people execution style and severely wounding a fourth. The crime landed Pope on the FBI Ten Most Wanted list.
• 1967 – Stockport Air Disaster: British Midland flight G-ALHG crashes in Hopes Carr, Stockport, killing 72 passengers and crew.
• 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 – 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.
• 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 the new Supreme Leader of Islamic republic of Iran by the Assembly of Experts after the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
• 1989 – The Tiananmen Square protests are violently ended in Beijing by the People's Liberation Army.
• 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.
• 2004 – Marvin Heemeyer's (eventually suicidal) protest rampage with an improvised bulletproofed bulldozer destroys 13 Granby, Colorado buildings including the town hall.
• 2010 – Falcon 9 Flight 1 was the maiden flight of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, which launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Space Launch Complex 40.
• 2012 – The Diamond Jubilee Concert was held outside Buckingham Palace on The Mall, London. Organised by Gary Barlow, the concert was part of Queen Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee celebrations.