Today in Your History — June
A look at the people, events and popular culture that shaped our lives
AARP Members Only Access, June 2022
- |
- Photos
-
- 1 of
PHOTO BY: Brendan Smilowski/AFP via Getty Images
June 30: Donald Trump enters North Korea (2019)
On June 30, 2019, Donald Trump became the first sitting American president to step on North Korean soil — although it was a decidedly short stay. While meeting with Kim Jong-un in the Demilitarized Zone to discuss restarting nuclear talks, Trump crossed over a concrete border at 3:46 p.m. and took 20 steps into North Korea for a controversial photo op. “It is good to see you again,” Kim said, with a big smile. “I never expected to meet you in this place.” The commander in chief replied succinctly: “Big moment. Big moment.” While on enemy soil for about a minute, Trump shook Kim’s hand and patted him on the back before heading back to the DMZ. Kim later called Trump’s stroll across the border “a very courageous and determined act,” and Trump said he was “proud to step over the line.” Many American politicians weren’t thrilled with the chummy display. But the pope said that the meeting “constitutes a step further in the walk of peace — not only on that peninsula but in the entire world.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
-
- 2 of
PHOTO BY: Jerry Cooke/Getty Images
June 29: Baryshnikov escapes Soviet Union (1974)
One of the most renowned ballet dancers of his generation, Mikhail Baryshnikov began to feel oppressed by the artistic restrictions imposed by the Soviet regime, including a ban on performing contemporary foreign ballets. At the age of 26, while touring Toronto with the Bolshoi Ballet, Baryshnikov made the daring decision to defect from the Soviet Union, disappearing into the crowd outside the theater after a performance on June 29. As he later told People magazine: “It was arranged secretly through friends. I was running; the getaway car was waiting a few blocks away as we were boarding on the group’s bus. KGB was watching us. It was actually funny. Fans are waiting for me outside the stage door, and I walk out and I start to run. And they start to run after me for autograph. They were laughing; I was running for my life. It was very emotional moment, I tell you.” He was soon granted asylum by the Canadian government and eventually moved to New York to perform with the American Ballet Theatre. For Baryshnikov, the defection was more about art than politics. “When I was in Toronto, I finally decided that if I let the opportunity of expanding my art in the West slip by, it would haunt me always,” he told The Globe and Mail newspaper. “What I have done is called a crime in Russia.… But my life is my art, and I realized it would be a greater crime to destroy that. I want to work with some of the West’s great choreographers if they think I am worthy of their creations.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
-
- 3 of
PHOTO BY: Carol T. Powers/Bloomberg via Getty Images
June 28: Bald eagle off endangered list (2007)
The bald eagle may be the national bird of the United States, but the country hasn’t always treated its feathered friend with great respect. In fact, thanks to DDT pesticide poisoning, habitat destruction and hunting, there were only 417 mating pairs in the lower 48 states by 1963. As a result, the bald eagle was one of the first animals to be added to the endangered species list in 1967. Forty years later, in June 2007, Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne made the exciting announcement that the bald eagle population had rebounded so dramatically that it no longer would be federally protected under the Endangered Species Act. Biologists recorded an astonishing 10,000 mating pairs, with at least one per each of the contiguous 48 states, a recovery that John Flicker, president of the National Audubon Society, said “ranks among the greatest victories of American conservation.” Much of that success could be attributed to the banning of DDT in 1972. Today, the population has only continued to grow: In 2019, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reported 316,700 individual bald eagles and 71,400 nesting pairs. “This is truly a historic conservation success story,” current Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland has said in a statement. “The bald eagle has always been considered a sacred species to American Indian people, and similarly, it’s sacred to our nation. The strong return of this treasured bird reminds us of our nation’s shared resilience and the importance of being responsible stewards of our lands and waters that bind us together.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
-
- 4 of
PHOTO BY: Cynthia Johnson/Getty Images
June 27: Thurgood Marshall retires (1991)
On June 27, 1991, 82-year-old Thurgood Marshall — the first and, at that time, only Black justice on the Supreme Court — announced his intention to retire from the nation’s highest court in a letter to President George H.W. Bush. “The strenuous demands of court work and its related duties required or expected of a justice appear at this time to be incompatible with my advancing age and medical condition,” he wrote, saying that he would stay on the court until his successor was named. “He grew up under segregation to achieve the highest office to which a lawyer can aspire,” Bush said in a statement. “His accomplishments on the bench will long be remembered. We wish him the best in his retirement. I intend to nominate a successor very soon.” Marshall’s departure left the Supreme Court with only one member (Justice Byron R. White) who had been appointed by a Democratic president, thus cementing a conservative majority that has persisted to this day. Asked during a press conference what he planned to do during his retirement, Marshall replied, “Sit on my rear end.” Early that July, Bush nominated his replacement, Clarence Thomas, and while he followed in Marshall’s footsteps as the second Black justice to serve on the Supreme Court, the two couldn’t have been more different philosophically. —Nicholas DeRenzo
-
- 5 of
PHOTO BY: Bettman/Getty Images
June 26: Elvis makes final public performance (1977)
On the night of June 26, 1977, Elvis Presley took the stage at Market Square Arena in Indianapolis for what would be his final public performance. In front of a modest crowd of some 18,000 fans, he performed in a white-and-gold jumpsuit and white boots, and, according to Indianapolis Star critic Rita Rose, “[bounded] on stage with energy that was a relief to everyone.” She continued, “At 42, Elvis is still carrying around excess baggage on his midsection, but it didn’t stop him from giving a performance in true Presley style.” Over the course of 80 minutes, the King performed a set that included both classics (“Jailhouse Rock,” “Hound Dog”) and covers (“Bridge Over Troubled Water”). He closed out the show with his ballad “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” reportedly telling the crowd, “We’ll meet you again, God bless, adios.” Sadly, audiences wouldn’t have a chance to meet him again. Later that summer, on Aug. 16, at the age of 42, Presley died of a heart attack. While the arena was demolished in 2001, there’s still a memorial marker on the site of what is now a parking lot, and it includes the following inscription: “Former site of Market Square Arena where on June 26, 1977 Elvis Aaron Presley performed his final concert. A scarf given by Elvis at the concert and words of remembrance from his fans have been encased in this marker so that a future generation may choose to reveal the memories 100 years from this date, June 26, 2002.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
-
- 6 of
PHOTO BY: Charley Gallay/Getty Images
June 25: Michael Jackson dies of an overdose (2009)
The controversy-plagued King of Pop was in the midst of rehearsing for a big comeback tour when he was found unresponsive in his Beverly Hills home on the morning of June 25, 2009. Paramedics arrived and administered CPR before transporting Jackson to the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, where he died of cardiac arrest at 2:26 p.m. He was 50 years old. “For his legions of fans, he was the Peter Pan of pop music: the little boy who refused to grow up,” Brooks Barnes wrote in The New York Times. “But on the verge of another attempted comeback, he is suddenly gone, this time for good.” On July 7, a public memorial service was held at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, and more than 20,000 fans attended, with an estimated 30 million viewers tuning in from home. In August, the Los Angeles County coroner ruled that Jackson’s death was a homicide and that he had overdosed on a cocktail of drugs, including the powerful anesthetic propofol and three anti-anxiety drugs (lorazepam, midazolam and diazepam), which Jackson’s personal physician, Dr. Conrad Murray, had given him to help him fall asleep. Murray was ultimately found guilty of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to four years in prison. —Nicholas DeRenzo
-
- 7 of
PHOTO BY: Suzanne Plunkett/Reuters/POOL/Press Association via AP Photo
June 24: Longest pro tennis match concludes (2010)
The average three-set tennis match takes about 90 minutes to complete, but at Wimbledon in 2010, American John Isner and Frenchman Nicolas Mahut endured a much longer battle: Their face-off lasted an astonishing 665 minutes — 11 hours, 5 minutes — spread over three days! According to the rules at the time (they have since been changed), the final set in a Grand Slam tournament would continue until one of the players had won two more games than their opponent, which meant the set could just keep going and going … and going. The match went on for 183 games, which far exceeded the existing record of 112, and the scoreboard stopped keeping score after 47-47 because it hadn’t been programmed to go any higher. After Isner eventually came out on top, he said of his opponent in an on-court interview, “The guy’s an absolute warrior. It stinks someone had to lose. To share this with him was an absolute honor.” The match was so dramatic that it loosely inspired an HBO mockumentary called 7 Days in Hell, starring Andy Samberg and Kit Harington as rivals, though the similarities end at the insanely long match length. As Dave Schilling wrote of the comedy in Grantland, “It’s Isner/Mahut if Isner had just escaped from a Swedish prison and Mahut had the IQ of a potato.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
-
- 8 of
PHOTO BY: Michael Kappeler/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images
June 23: U.K. voters choose to ‘Brexit’ the EU (2016)
On June 23, 2016, voters in the United Kingdom faced what seemed to some a very simple question: Should the country remain part of the European Union or cut ties with the international organization, which it had been a part of since 1973. Much like the 2016 presidential election across the pond, the polarizing race divided the country, though in the U.K., the split didn’t happen neatly across party lines. Backing the “remain” side were Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron; supporting “leave” were former London mayor (and fellow Conservative) Boris Johnson and fringe U.K. Independence Party leader Nigel Farage. Polling indicated a pretty even split, but when the votes were counted, the decision, by 52 to 48 percent, was to leave the European Union. Scotland, Northern Ireland and the London area all voted to stay in the EU, while the rest of England and Wales voted to make Brexit official. Cameron, who had called for the referendum vote even though he didn’t support it, resigned the next day, saying, “I was absolutely clear about my belief that Britain is stronger, safer and better off inside the EU. I made clear the referendum was about this and this alone, not the future of any single politician, including myself. But the British people made a different decision to take a different path. As such, I think the country requires fresh leadership to take it in this direction.” Six years later, the U.K. is still in the process of, for lack of a better phrase, finalizing its divorce. —Nicholas DeRenzo
-
- 9 of
PHOTO BY: Bob Thomas Sports Photography via Getty Images
June 22: Maradona scores ‘hand of God’ goal (1986)
Just a few short years after the Falklands (Islas Malvinas) War, England and Argentina squared off again in the 1986 World Cup quarterfinals. In one of the most controversial plays in the history of the sport, Diego Maradona scored the game’s first goal with his hand — an obviously illegal move that was missed by the referee, who thought he had headed the ball instead. After the game, Maradona said that he had scored the goal “a little with the head of Maradona and a little with the hand of God.” He also explicitly called the goal “symbolic revenge” for the British victory in the Falklands. Later in the game, Maradona scored his second, the game-winning goal, by dribbling and snaking through a score of English defenders; FIFA voted it the “goal of the century” in 2002. After the game, English midfielder Steve Hodge had asked Maradona to swap shirts, and this spring Hodge put it up for auction at Sotheby’s. It ultimately pulled in $9.3 million, the highest amount ever paid for a piece of sports memorabilia, besting the $8.8 million paid for the original manifesto that launched the modern Olympics. —Nicholas DeRenzo
-
- 10 of
PHOTO BY: Anwar Hussein/WireImage/Getty Images
June 21: Princess Diana gives birth to William (1982)
Forty years ago today, Princess Diana gave birth to her and Prince Charles’ first son, William, at 9:03 p.m., after more than 13 hours in labor. He had the distinction of being the first heir to the British throne to be born in a hospital. A few minutes after his arrival, a Palace spokeswoman announced, “The baby weighs 7 pounds, one-half ounce. He cried lustily. The Prince of Wales was present. We have no names which we can announce at the moment.” Charles telephoned his mum, who was said to be “absolutely delighted,” and upon leaving the hospital he was met with cheers from the surrounding crowd, which chanted, “Nice one, Charlie, let’s have another one!” His reply: “Bloody hell, give us a chance.” Upon his birth, William leapfrogged his aunts and uncles to become second in line for the British throne, just behind his father. Before his name was announced, oddsmakers hadn’t even included William in their top seven choices. As The Guardian reported at the time, “George was the name which bookmakers William Hill last night chose as even-money favorite, followed by James at 7-2, Charles at 9-2, Edward at 5-1, David at 10-1, Philip at 10-1, and Louis (the late Lord Mountbatten's name) at 12-1.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
-
- 11 of
PHOTO BY: Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images
June 20: ‘Jaws’ becomes summer blockbuster (1975)
On this date in 1975, up-and-coming director Steven Spielberg released his bloody good shark flick, Jaws, which would almost single-handedly go on to birth the summer blockbuster. “It’s a noisy, busy movie that has less on its mind than any child on a beach might have,” wrote Vincent Canby in The New York Times. “It has been cleverly directed by Steven Spielberg (Sugarland Express) for maximum shock impact and short-term suspense, and the special effects are so good that even the mechanical sharks are as convincing as the people.” Audiences ate it up like, well, a great white shark scarfing down residents of an East Coast beach town. During its opening weekend, Jaws broke records by pulling in more than $7 million, and it passed the $100 million mark faster than any film in history, on day 59. It stayed at the top of the box office for an astonishing 14 weeks straight, and by day 78 it had toppled The Godfather as the highest-grossing movie of all time, with eventual domestic earnings of $260 million. At the next year’s Oscars, Jaws would go on to earn four nominations, including best picture, winning a trio for best sound, film editing and, of course, original score for that iconic John Williams “da-dum da-dum.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
-
- 12 of
PHOTO BY: Marcio Jose Sanchez/Pool/AP Photo
June 19: James leads Cavs to championship (2016)
The 2016 NBA Finals will be remembered as one of the most dramatic in league history. After being beaten by Stephen Curry’s Golden State Warriors the previous year, the Cleveland Cavaliers — led by LeBron James — returned with something to prove. The city of Cleveland hadn’t taken home a major sports title since the Browns won the pre–Super Bowl NFL championship back in 1964, and the Cavs, since being established in 1970 as an expansion team, had never won a championship. In 2016, the Warriors won three out of the first four games of the series, but the Cavs won Game 5 in dominating fashion, 112-97, and their Game 6 victory gave the Warriors the unique opportunity of becoming the first NBA team to blow a 3-1 lead in the finals. On June 19, after a dramatic Game 7 in which King James finally helped the Cavs break their curse with a 93-89 win, he shouted, “Cleveland! This is for you!” When NBA Commissioner Adam Silver presented the trophy after the game, he echoed James’ sentiments: “To Northeast Ohio and Cleveland: The curse is over. The 52-year drought has come to an end.” That night, thousands of fans streamed into the streets of Cleveland, with some climbing atop a fire engine to celebrate; The Guardian even reported that bars ran out of alcohol. Three days later, more than a million people celebrated the Cavs with a citywide party and a two-mile parade, with James telling the crowd, “I’m nothing without this city. I’m nothing without you all. Let’s get ready for next year.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
-
- 13 of
PHOTO BY: Space Frontiers/Getty Images
June 18: Sally Ride travels in space on shuttle (1983)
One of six women selected to join NASA Astronaut Group 8 in 1978, Sally Ride officially became the first American woman to travel to space on June 18, 1983, when she blasted off aboard the space shuttle Challenger on mission STS-7. While she was the first American woman to perform the feat, Ride took her historic ride almost exactly 20 years after Soviet cosmonaut Valentina V. Tereshkova became the first woman to go to space, on June 16, 1963. Ride, born in Encino, California, on May 26, 1951, left behind a promising career as a tennis phenom to attend Stanford University, and she eventually went on to earn both a Ph.D. in astrophysics and a pilot’s license. To see her launch, more than 250,000 supporters showed up at Cape Canaveral, many wearing T-shirts printed with the slogan “Ride, Sally Ride.” During that history-making 1983 mission, Ride and the rest of the crew spent six days in orbit, launching two commercial communications satellites. For her part, Ride also operated the robotic arm that released and then retrieved the Shuttle Pallet Satellite (SPAS-01). Despite her achievement, Ride wasn’t safe from sophomoric sexism: Johnny Carson, for instance, joked that the launch would be delayed so Ride could find a purse to match her shoes. “It’s too bad that this is such a big deal,” she told reporters at a NASA press conference. “It’s too bad our society isn’t further along.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
-
- 14 of
PHOTO BY: Bettmann/Getty Images
June 17: Five men break into Watergate (1972)
Americans going to bed on June 16 could never have guessed that a seemingly simple burglary at a D.C. complex that night would alter the course of American politics and culture for decades to come. At 2:30 a.m. on June 17, police arrested five men who were caught breaking into the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate complex. One was James W. McCord Jr., the security chief of the Committee to Re-elect the President (or CREEP); the four others had worked with the CIA to try to take down Fidel Castro in Cuba. The next day, The Washington Post published an article titled, “5 Held in Plot to Bug Democrats’ Office Here,” and two of the staff writers who contributed reporting — Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein — would eventually have a hand in dismantling the Nixon administration. “All wearing rubber surgical gloves, the five suspects were captured inside a small office within the committee’s headquarters suite,” the Post reported. “Police said the men had with them at least two sophisticated devices capable of picking up and transmitting all talk, including telephone conversations. In addition, police found lock-picks and door jimmies, almost $2,300 in cash, most of it in $100 bills with the serial numbers in sequence. The men also had with them one walkie-talkie, a short wave receiver that could pick up police calls, 40 rolls of unexposed film, two 35 millimeter cameras and three pen-sized tear gas guns.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
-
- 15 of
June 16: Monterey International Pop Festival (1967)
The three-day Monterey International Pop Festival started with a bang on the night of June 16, 1967, kicking off the country’s first commercial rock festival. More broadly, it would also serve as an unofficial starting point for that year’s culture-shifting Summer of Love. The festival was organized by John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas and record executive Lou Adler, who modeled the event after the Monterey Jazz Festival, including holding it at the same venue, the Monterey County Fairgrounds. At 9:15 that night, Phillips welcomed the crowd of roughly 8,000 ticketed fans (plus hundreds more outside the gates), and the first performers, The Association, sang a trio of hits, including “Windy.” David Crosby next introduced The Paupers, who were followed by Lou Rawls and then Paul Simon’s ex-girlfriend, the English folk singer Beverley. Next up was Johnny Rivers, who sang such covers as “Help Me, Rhonda” and “Help!,” and then Eric Burdon and the Animals. Simon & Garfunkel closed out the night with a set list that included “Homeward Bound,” “The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy)” and “The Sound of Silence.” Performances for the rest of that weekend included Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Otis Redding and The Who. As Art Garfunkel explained, “Here I may sound arrogant, but we invited the people we knew were the princes of rock ’n’ roll. These were what we called the really musical cats. They were not record company darlings.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
-
- 16 of
PHOTO BY: Damian Dovarganes/ AP Photo
June 15: Barker leaves 'The Price Is Right' (2007)
After a string of game-show-hosting gigs that included Your Big Moment and Truth or Consequences, Bob Barker joined CBS’ The Price Is Right on Sept. 4, 1972 — a post he would go on to hold for an astonishing 35 years. Barker finally hung up his skinny microphone on June 15, 2007, after 6,586 episodes. He had announced his pending retirement in October 2006, quipping, “I will be 83 years old on December 12, and I’ve decided to retire while I’m still young.” For that final show, fans traveled across the country and camped outside CBS Television City for the opportunity to attend the taping. In the episode’s final moments, Barker addressed the audience at home: “Now, folks, I want to thank you very, very much for inviting me into your homes for the last 50 years. I am deeply grateful. And please remember, help control the pet population — have your pet spayed or neutered. Goodbye, everybody!” Just a few days later, the retired host attended the Daytime Emmy Awards, where Ellen DeGeneres announced his 18th Emmy win by using the show’s trademark phrase: “Bob Barker, come on down!” After a roaring standing ovation, he joked, “This proves that the judges have sympathy for an old man who doesn’t have a job.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
-
- 17 of
PHOTO BY: Ron Sachs/CNP/Getty Images
June 14: President Clinton nominates RBG (1993)
It was 1993, and the Democratic Party hadn’t had the opportunity to nominate a Supreme Court justice in 26 years, since all the way back in 1967, when Lyndon B. Johnson chose the groundbreaking Thurgood Marshall. On this date, Bill Clinton announced that his selection to replace retiring Justice Byron R. White would be Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a former women’s rights activist and current appeals court judge for the District of Columbia. In his nomination speech, Clinton hailed Ginsburg as a “moderate” and a “healer,” saying, “Time and again, her moral imagination has cooled the fires of her colleagues’ discord, ensuring that the right of jurists to dissent ennobles the law without entangling the court.” He continued: “Many admirers of her work say that she is to the women’s movement what former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall was to the movement for the rights of African-Americans.” Indeed, despite her moderate reputation, RBG’s nomination was revolutionary in many ways. She would become the first Jewish justice to serve since 1969, and she would be only the second woman on the court, after Sandra Day O’Connor. “The announcement the President just made is significant, I believe, because it contributes to the end of the days when women, at least half the talent pool in our society, appear in high places only as one-at-a-time performers,” Ginsburg said in her acceptance speech. After a summer of hearings, RBG was easily confirmed on Aug. 3, with a vote of 96 yeas, 3 nays and 1 not voting. —Nicholas DeRenzo
-
- 18 of
PHOTO BY: Thierlein/ullstein bild via Getty Images
June 13: Pentagon Papers are published (1971)
On this day in 1971, The New York Times began publishing an earthshaking series of articles about the decades of U.S. involvement in Indochina and then Vietnam, from World War II until May 1968. Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara had commissioned the reports in 1967, and though they were classified as top secret, an MIT senior research associate named Daniel Ellsberg, after offering them to antiwar senators, handed them over to the Times to be published. In that first article, titled “Vietnam Archive: Pentagon Study Traces 3 Decades of Growing U.S. Involvement,” Neil Sheehan wrote: “A massive study of how the United States went to war in Indochina, conducted by the Pentagon three years ago, demonstrates that four administrations progressively developed a sense of commitment to a non-Communist Vietnam, a readiness to fight the North to protect the South, and an ultimate frustration with this effort — to a much greater extent than their public statements acknowledged at the time.” Although President Richard Nixon reportedly didn’t care about the report’s publication at first (it hurt the Democrats more, he thought), Henry Kissinger eventually convinced him that it made America look weak, and Attorney General John Mitchell accused the paper of violating the Espionage Act. After the third day of reports, the U.S. Department of Justice obtained a temporary restraining order, but the Times and The Washington Post fought back, taking the case all the way to the Supreme Court. On June 30, in a 6-3 decision, the newspapers officially gained permission to resume publication of the materials. —Nicholas DeRenzo
-
- 19 of
PHOTO BY: Thierlein/ullstein bild via Getty Images
June 12: ‘Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall’ (1987)
When the reform-minded Mikhail Gorbachev became general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1985, the West began to see a light at the end of the Cold War tunnel: Could he be the man to finally thaw relations and put an end to decades of tension? On June 12, 1987, President Ronald Reagan traveled to Berlin to celebrate the 750th anniversary of the city’s founding, and he delivered a speech that would go on to become one of the most famous of his presidency. Standing in front of the Brandenburg Gate, Reagan gave an impassioned, 26-minute speech, and at the 12-minute mark, he hit its emotional climax: “General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” According to Reagan speechwriter Peter M. Robinson, the famous passage was almost cut when State Department and National Security Council advisers deemed it too provocative and unpresidential, but Reagan won out in the end. At the time, the speech didn’t make much of a splash, and Gorbachev later said, “We really were not impressed. We knew that Mr. Reagan’s original profession was actor.” But history moved rapidly, and when the Berlin Wall began to crumble in November 1989, Reagan’s words took on newfound importance. “The speech became retroactively prophetic, if that makes sense,” Robinson later said. “Once the wall fell, the speech seemed to have summed up and even predicted the final phase of the Cold War.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
-
- 20 of
June 11: ‘American Idol’ premieres on Fox (2002)
On this date exactly two decades ago, Fox premiered its new singing competition, American Idol: The Search for a Superstar, which was based on the British reality show Pop Idol. The first season was hosted by Ryan Seacrest and Brian Dunkelman (who disappeared after the first year), and the original hosting panel had pop star Paula Abdul, record producer Randy Jackson and sarcastic British music executive Simon Cowell. Twenty-year-old Kelly Clarkson tried out for the show in Dallas, and she remains the only eventual winner not to have at least part of her audition shown during her season’s first episode. (For the record, she sang Madonna’s “Express Yourself” and then showed off her sense of humor when she swapped places with Jackson and sat behind the judges’ table.) That first episode of auditions pulled in an estimated 9.85 million viewers, and Idol ended that first season in September with a whopping 22.8 million viewers tuning in to the finale, making it the most-watched show of the summer. In his B+ review for Entertainment Weekly, Ken Tucker wrote, “As TV, American Idol is crazily entertaining; as music, it’s dust-mote inconsequential. Whoever survives the show’s grueling winnowing-down process (the finale airs Sept. 4) will doubtless be so eager to sell out, his or her recording debut will likely be another piece of corporate product.” He might never have guessed that Clarkson would go on to earn 11 Top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100, three Grammys and two Daytime Emmys for her namesake talk show. —Nicholas DeRenzo
-
- 21 of
PHOTO BY: HBO/Courtesy Everett Collection
June 10: Series finale of ‘The Sopranos’ airs (2007)
After six Emmy-winning seasons on HBO, the critically adored Mafia drama The Sopranos went out with a bang during its 2007 series finale — well, actually, it went out with a Journey song. In those final minutes of “Made in America,” Tony (James Gandolfini) sits down in a diner and plays Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’ ” on the tabletop jukebox. He’s joined by his wife Carmela (Edie Falco) and son A.J. (Robert Iler). A menacing guy sitting at the bar walks to the bathroom, as Tony’s daughter Meadow (Jamie-Lynn Sigler) parallel parks outside. The Sopranos snack on onion rings, and then, just as Meadow walks in the door, the scene abruptly cuts to black. Audiences wondered: Did my cable go out? Did that random guy in the bathroom kill Tony? Reactions were mixed, with some critics bemoaning a lack of finality and others celebrating the episode’s audacity. “As someone who thought it was one of the greatest moments I’d ever seen on television,” wrote Owen Gleiberman in Entertainment Weekly, “I reveled in those final seconds, stoked by the Life Ends/Life Goes On shock of that cut to black, the marvelous way it got you to roll the scene over, again and again, in your mind’s eye. Rather than bringing the series to a close, that blackout made The Sopranos live forever.” Some 11.9 million viewers tuned in to the finale, which went on to win the Emmy for outstanding writing in a drama series. For what it’s worth, series creator David Chase later seemed to confirm that Tony had, in fact, been killed in that final scene. “[The] scene I had in my mind was not that scene,” Chase told The Hollywood Reporter in 2021. “Nor did I think of cutting to black. I had a scene in which Tony comes back from a meeting in New York in his car ... and the last scene could be him coming from New Jersey back into New York for a meeting at which he was going to be killed. Yeah. But I think I had this notion — I was driving on Ocean Park Boulevard near the airport and I saw a little restaurant. It was kind of like a shack that served breakfast. And for some reason I thought, Tony should get it in a place like that. Why? I don’t know. That was, like, two years before.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
-
- 22 of
PHOTO BY: AP Photo
June 9: Secretariat wins the Triple Crown (1973)
One of America’s greatest athletes of the 20th century was only three years old when he pulled off his stunning triumph. Born at Virginia’s Meadow Stables on March 30, 1970, Secretariat seemed almost supernaturally speedy. At the Kentucky Derby on May 5, 1973, he set a track record with a time of 1 minute and 59.4 seconds — a record that still stands. One race down, two to go. Two weeks later, the chestnut thoroughbred, nicknamed “Big Red,” racked up his second win, at the Preakness Stakes in Baltimore. Secretariat, by now a national sensation, appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated, Newsweek and Time as excitement built for the third leg of the Triple Crown. And then, on June 9, in front of a crowd of nearly 100,000, he blew the competition out of the water during the Belmont Stakes near New York City. He completed the 1.5-mile race in 2 minutes and 24 seconds, winning by a record-breaking 31 lengths. He became America’s ninth Triple Crown winner and the first since Citation in 1948. His jockey, Ron Turcotte, later told CNN, “Riding him was like flying a fighter jet compared to an ordinary airplane.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
-
- 23 of
PHOTO BY: AP Photo/Richard Drew
June 8: Frelich first deaf actor to win a Tony (1980)
On this date in 1980, Phyllis Frelich made history when she won the Tony Award for best actress in a play for Children of a Lesser God. Born to deaf parents and the eldest of nine hearing-impaired siblings, Frelich starred as Sarah Norman, a custodian at a school for the deaf who strikes up a relationship with a speech therapist who tries to teach her how to speak and read lips. For the role, Frelich communicated almost exclusively in American Sign Language. Commenting on her performance, New York Times critic Walter Kerr observed, “Using no words at all, Miss Frelich — who is herself one of the founders of the National Theater of the Deaf — creates a character of challenging complexity: severely private, sharply outspoken, wry… sensually responsive, firmly determined to lead a life that is specifically hers.” The part of Sarah Norman has proved to be an awards magnet. When the play was adapted into a film in 1986, Marlee Matlin became the first deaf performer to win an Oscar, and when the show was revived in 2018, Lauren Ridloff earned a Tony nomination for her debut stage performance. —Nicholas DeRenzo
-
- 24 of
PHOTO BY: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
June 7: Graceland is opened to the public (1982)
After Elvis Presley died on Aug. 16, 1977, at the age of 42, his palatial Memphis estate, Graceland, turned into a major financial burden. His daughter, Lisa Marie, officially inherited the property, but it was Elvis’ ex-wife, Priscilla, who became the estate executor. Faced with $500,000 in taxes that she’d have to pay, Priscilla was advised to sell Graceland, but she came up with a different plan: turn it into a tourist attraction. She started researching similar ventures, including Will Rogers’ home and Hearst Castle, and hired businessman Jack Soden to help cofound Elvis Presley Enterprises. Priscilla later told the Los Angeles Times that she was most impressed by Hearst Castle, because there was nothing commercial on the grounds. “It was kept exactly the same as when people had lived there,” she explained. “That’s what I wanted, too, so that if Lisa wanted to move in right now, she could go in with a toothbrush and that’s it.” With an initial investment of $560,000, Soden and Priscilla decided to rush the opening to early June to take advantage of summer tourism. “We had no idea whether 30 people were coming, or 300, or 3,000 that first day,” Soden told Billboard. “Fortunately, it was the latter.” On opening day, Graceland sold out of its 3,042 tickets, which were going for $5 a pop. The risk paid off, and they made back their investment in only 38 days! —Nicholas DeRenzo
-
- 25 of
PHOTO BY: Richard Drew/AP Photo
June 6: The video game Tetris is released (1984)
It was 1984, and Soviet software engineer Alexey Pajitnov was assigned to figure out a way to test a new computer called the Electronika 60. To do so, he invented a video game called Tetris, which drew inspiration from a children’s puzzle he used to play. His invention, which was released on June 6, was a thing of simple beauty: Players had to rotate and maneuver falling blocks to clear rows before they reached the top of the screen. Pajitnov was inspired by a game called Pentomino, which involved arranging differently shaped, five-tile puzzle pieces on a board. He simplified the design by reducing the number to four tiles, and then came up with the name by combining the Greek prefix tetra (“four”) with the ending of “tennis.” Even for its inventor, the game was instantly addictive. After he created the first prototype in about two weeks, he told Digital Trends, “I couldn’t stop playing, even if it was just core mechanics. So it took me a long time to get myself out of playing and put [in more] stuff. So basically, all together, I think it was ready in five, six weeks.” Four years later, video game designer and publisher Henk Rogers found Tetris at a trade show in Las Vegas, and helped with its rapid spread. “The universe is about entropy,” Rogers later said of the game’s appeal. “If you just let the pieces fall, it’s entropy; they just float away. But, in fact, what Tetris does is, you are creating order out of chaos. That is kind of our basic function as an organism — to take random molecules or proteins and build them into complex chains.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
-
- 26 of
PHOTO BY: Frank Carroll/NBC NewsWire/Getty Images
June 5: Robert F. Kennedy is shot in L.A. (1968)
During the bruising 1968 Democratic primary fight, Robert F. Kennedy had a particularly strong showing on the night of June 4, when he won both California and South Dakota. As the official returns trickled in after midnight, he addressed his supporters at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. He thanked everyone from his dog Freckles to Cesar Chavez, his Black supporters to the students who campaigned for him, concluding with the line: “Mayor Yorty has just sent me a message that we’ve been here too long already. So my thanks to all of you, and on to Chicago and let’s win there.” Accompanied by journalists George Plimpton and Pete Hamill, and his unofficial bodyguards, Olympic gold medalist Rafer Johnson and NFL legend Rosey Grier, RFK made his way through the hotel’s kitchen, when shots rang out: Palestinian immigrant Sirhan Sirhan fired at Kennedy at close range with a .22 caliber revolver, mortally wounding him and injuring five other people at the scene. As Kennedy’s companions tackled the shooter to the ground and wrestled the weapon away from him, Sirhan reportedly said, “I did it for my country.” RFK stayed alive for almost 26 more hours, ultimately succumbing to his wounds on June 6 at 1:44 a.m. The issue of Life magazine after his death contextualized his assassination as follows: “The nation in less than six years has watched the violent deaths of two Kennedys and a King. If Robert Kennedy, a complex man, ambitious and fatalistic, did not inspire so universal an admiration as his brother, he had shown himself capable of growing and deepening. He died too young; the Kennedy family has paid dearly for its ardor for public service. Almost instinctive in the recoil at his murder was the sense that it was a part of a climate of violence.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
-
- 27 of
PHOTO BY: Bob Riha Jr./Getty Images
June 4: Springsteen drops ‘Born in the U.S.A.’ (1984)
On this date in 1984, Bruce Springsteen released his seminal album Born in the U.S.A., which cemented his status as a rock god, selling some 30 million copies and spawning seven top 10 singles on the Billboard Hot 100, including “Glory Days” and “Dancing in the Dark.” In his A+ review, rock critic Robert Christgau wrote: “Imperceptible though the movement has been to many sensitive young people, Springsteen has evolved. In fact, this apparent retrenchment is his most rhythmically propulsive, vocally incisive, lyrically balanced and commercially undeniable album.” Rolling Stone included Born in the U.S.A. at number 142 on its updated 2020 list of “The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time,” and it went on to be nominated for album of the year at the next Grammys in a crowded lineup with a surprise winner: Lionel Richie’s Can’t Slow Down took down Born in the U.S.A. plus immortal fellow also-rans Private Dancer by Tina Turner, She’s So Unusual by Cyndi Lauper and Purple Rain by Prince and the Revolution. Over the years, the title track has gone down in history as one of pop’s great misunderstood songs; Ronald Reagan tried to position is at as a patriotic anthem filled with hope, while the Boss originally intended it as an indictment of an American public that mistreated its returning Vietnam War veterans. —Nicholas DeRenzo
-
- 28 of
PHOTO BY: Jeffrey Markowitz/Sygma via Getty Images
June 3: ‘Larry King Live’ premieres on CNN (1985)
On this date in 1985, Brooklyn-born interviewer Larry King officially transitioned from radio — his The Larry King Show was the first national talk radio show — to television, when Ted Turner brought him over to his cable news network, CNN. Larry King Live premiered on the fifth anniversary of CNN, or as King later liked to describe it, “Whenever the network celebrates a birthday, so do I.” His first guest that night was New York Governor Mario Cuomo, and in their wide-ranging discussion, they touched on such topics as whether or not Cuomo would ever run for president, the NRA, the death penalty and the future of American cities. Over the years, King has been accused of delivering softball questions to his guests, and it was clear from that first episode that he and Cuomo already had a strong relationship. As Howard Kurtz wrote in his 2012 book Hot Air: All Talk, All the Time, King and Cuomo had become friends years earlier, with the host even spending a few weekends at the governor’s mansion in Albany. But King never saw his chumminess with his guests as a conflict of interest: As he told Kurtz, “I’m not a journalist. I’m a feature interviewer. I’m not Mary Poppins, but I’m not Sam Donaldson. I’m the Style section of CNN.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
-
- 29 of
PHOTO BY: Jeopardy Productions via Getty Images
June 2: Ken Jennings starts ‘Jeopardy!’ streak (2004)
On June 2, 2004, a 30-year-old software engineer from Salt Lake City named Ken Jennings set off on what would become a record-breaking Jeopardy! run. But that first outing almost had a very different outcome: Jennings went into Final Jeopardy with an even $20,000, and the category was “The 2000 Olympics.” Alex Trebek read the clue, “She’s the first female track & field athlete to win medals in 5 different events at a single Olympics,” and Jennings answered with, “Who is Jones?” The correct answer was, in fact, Marion Jones, but because Jennings provided only her surname, Trebek had to confirm with the fact checkers; after a brief pause, Trebek gave it to Jennings because, as he explained, “in terms of female athletes, there aren’t that many.” Jennings wagered $17,201, propelling him to his first of 74 consecutive wins, with eventual earnings of $2.52 million. Over the span of his six months on the show, Jennings had to think of 75 unique anecdotes for his contestant interviews. In his debut, he and Trebek discussed the time that he ran out of gas in the Nevada desert and had to hitchhike, and he later admitted to Vulture that he made up some of his stories. “It went OK,” Jennings said of his first go-round. “That was the other thing I wanted to do — to not look like a tool in my interview. Because they can be dumb.” Jennings became a popular recurring figure on the game show over the years, appearing in future championship tournaments and racking up even more winnings. And upon Alex Trebek’s death, he was announced as one of two replacement hosts alongside The Big Bang Theory star Mayim Bialik. —Nicholas DeRenzo
-
- 30 of
PHOTO BY: Gene Arias/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Images
June 1: Heimlich publishes new maneuver (1974)
It might be hard to remember a time before the Heimlich maneuver, as this lifesaving strategy has become a ubiquitous form of first aid. But before 1974, nobody knew about that bear-hug-with-a-squeeze technique! In 1972, The New York Times reported that choking ranked sixth among accidental causes of death, with more than 3,000 Americans dying annually. At that point, a swift thwack on the back was seen as the preferred solution, though it often had the opposite effect of lodging the item farther down the airway. On June 1, 1974, Cincinnati surgeon Henry J. Heimlich published an informal essay — not a scientific study — in Emergency Medicine called “Pop Goes the Café Coronary,” which took its title from the not infrequent occurrence when a person was choking in a restaurant but appeared to be having a heart attack. Upon reading that earlier study, Heimlich began experimenting at Cincinnati’s Jewish Hospital with a unique patient: an anesthetized beagle! He started by placing a balloon inside the dog’s airway and quickly discovered that he could press below the dog’s rib cage, on its diaphragm — not its chest — to force the object out. He repeated experiments with meat from the hospital cafeteria and found that he had uncovered a replicable process. “I found that even with a partially obstructing object like a chicken bone, the flow of air past the object was enough to push it upward and out of the mouth,” he later wrote. “It was the flow of air, as in a small hurricane, not pressure, that carried the object away.” The maneuver was easy to learn and had almost guaranteed results. Need proof? Within a month of his Emergency Medicine article, the Seattle Times published a news story about a local man who had used the technique to save the life of a woman who was choking on a piece of chicken in a neighboring cabin! —Nicholas DeRenzo
Members Only Access content
Find exclusive interviews, smart advice, free novels, full documentaries, fun daily features and much more — all a benefit of your AARP membership — on Members Only Access.
Find exclusive interviews, smart advice, free novels, full documentaries, fun daily features and much more — all a benefit of your AARP membership — on Members Only Access.
Not a member? Join
Already a member? Link Your Membership
Renew your membership today and save 25% on your next year when you sign up for Automatic Renewal. Get instant access to discounts, programs, services, and the information you need to benefit every area of your life.