June 8
Today is
World Oceans Day.
793 Vikings raid the abbey at
Lindisfarne in Northumbria, commonly accepted as the beginning of
Norse activity in the British Isles.
1042
Edward the Confessor becomes King of England, one of the last Anglo-Saxon kings of England.
1783
Laki, a volcano in Iceland, begins an eight-month eruption which kills over 9,000 people and starts a seven-year famine. The Laki eruption and its aftermath caused a drop in global temperatures, as sulfur dioxide was spewed into the Northern Hemisphere. This caused crop failures in Europe and may have caused droughts in India. The eruption has been estimated to have killed over six million people globally.
1856 A group of 194
Pitcairn Islanders, descendants of the mutineers of HMS Bounty, arrives at
Norfolk Island, commencing the Third Settlement of the Island.
1861 American Civil War: Tennessee secedes from the Union.
1912 Carl Laemmle incorporates
Universal Pictures.
1948 Milton Berle hosts the debut of
Texaco Star Theater.
1949 George Orwell's
"Nineteen Eighty-Four" is published.
1953 An
F5 tornado hits Beecher, Michigan, killing 116, injuring 844, and destroying 340 homes.
The United States Supreme Court rules that restaurants in Washington, D.C., cannot refuse to serve black patrons.
1966 An
F-104 Starfighter collides with
XB-70 Valkyrie prototype no. 2, destroying both aircraft during a photo shoot near Edwards Air Force Base. Joseph A. Walker, a NASA test pilot, and Carl Cross, a United States Air Force test pilot, are both killed.
1967 Six-Day War: The U
SS Liberty incident occurs, killing 34 and wounding 171.
1982
Bluff Cove Air Attacks during the Falklands War: Fifty-six British servicemen are killed by an Argentine air attack on two landing ships,
RFA Sir Galahad and
RFA Sir Tristram.
1984 Homosexuality is declared legal in the Australian state of New South Wales.
1992 The first
World Ocean Day is celebrated, coinciding with the Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
1995 The downed U.S. Air Force pilot
Captain Scott O'Grady is rescued by U.S. Marines in Bosnia.
2004 The first
Venus Transit in well over a century takes place, the previous one being in 1882.
2007 Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia, is hit by the State's worst storms and flooding in 30 years resulting in the death of nine people and the grounding of a trade ship, the
MV Pasha Bulker.
2008 -
Rolling Stone Magazine published a list of the Top 50 guitar songs of all time. No.5 was 'Brown Sugar' by The Rolling Stones, No.4 , You Really Got Me by The Kinks, No.3, Crossroads, by Cream, No.2 Purple Haze, by Jimi Hendrix and No.1 Johnny B Goode, Chuck Berry.
2009 Two American journalists are
found guilty of illegally entering North Korea and sentenced to 12 years of penal labour.
Births
1810 Robert Schumann; 1867 Frank Lloyd Wright; 1910 C. C. Beck (cartoonist, co-creator
Captain Marvel); 1918 Robert Preston; 1921 LeRoy Neiman; 1924 Lyn Nofziger; 1925 Barbara Bush; 1927 Jerry Stiller ('Frank Costanza' on "Seinfeld"); 1933 Joan Rivers; 1936 James Darren; 1939 Bernie Casey; 1940 Nancy Sinatra; 1942 Chuck Negron; 1944 Boz Scaggs; 1951 Bonnie Tyler; 1955 Tim Berners-Lee, Griffin Dunne; 1957 Scott Adams (creator 'Dilbert'); 1958 Keenen Ivory Wayans; 1965 Rob Pilatus (lip syncer); 1966 Julianna Margulies; 1970 Kwame Kilpatrick; 1977 Kanye West (Sixth Magnitude Asshole); 1978 Maria Menounos; 1979 Derek Trucks
Deaths
632 Muhammad; 1809 Thomas Paine; 1845 Andrew Jackson; 1874 Cochise; 1876 George Sand; 1924 George Mallory; 1969 Robert Taylor; 1982 Satchel Paige; 2000 Jeff MacNelly )cartoonist, creator of
"Shoe"); 2006
Robert Donner; 2013 Angus MacKay