Author: Editor

Seeking a westward route to the Indies, Christopher Columbus on this day in 1492 set sail on his first transatlantic voyage, departing from Palos, Spain, with three small ships — the Niña, Pinta, and Santa María.

On August 3, 2008, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn died at age 90.

Solzhenitsyn’s novels, such as One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and Cancer Ward, explored life under totalitarian Communism, and remain classics of modern literature. His huge survey of Soviet concentration camps, The Gulag Archipelago, was an important contribution to the demise of Communism as a popular ideology, showing just how horrifying the repression in the Soviet Union had become.

“Juneteenth” (a portmanteau of June and nineteenth) also known as Freedom Day, Jubilee Day, Liberation Day and Emancipation Day, is a holiday celebrating the emancipation of those held as chattel slaves in the United States. Originating in Galveston, Texas, it has been celebrated annually on June 19 throughout the United States, and on June 17, 2021, it was made into an official national holiday when President Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act into law. It is commemorated on the anniversary date of the June 19, 1865, announcement of General Order No. 3 by Union Army general Gordon Granger, proclaiming freedom from slavery in Texas.

In June, 1941, Czech economist and politician Václav Klaus was born on the 19th (he died in 2011); other June 19 births include Salman Rushdie in 1947, Kathleen Turner in 1954, and Laura Ingraham in 1964.

The Oregon Treaty, signed June 15, 1846, established the boundary between Great Britain’s Canadian territory and the United States of America, from the Rocky Mountains to the Strait of Juan de Fuca, using the 49th Parallel as the handy marker. However, the treaty was not exactly clear on the territorial status of the San Juan Islands, so exactly 13 years later, to the day, a war erupted . . . over a shot pig.

An American farmer shot a pig rooting through his garden. The pig belonged to an Irishman. The two did not agree upon compensation, and “the authorities” were called in, with infantry mustering from the south and the Governor of Vancouver Island instructing marines to land on San Juan Island — though the rear admiral in charge refused to comply with the order, on the reasonable grounds that war over a pig was not worth it. Local troops from both sides lined up against each other, but under command to defend themselves only and not shoot first. All that was exchanged in this war were insults. It turned out to be a bloodless war, discounting the pig, so it might qualify as the best war in American history.

Born on this day: historian, jazz critic and civil libertarian Nathan Irving Hentoff (1925); children’s writer Maurice Sendak (1929); scientist and pioneer of “sociobiology,” E. O. Wilson (1929).

Hentoff wrote several works on the history and nature of free speech in America, including The First Freedom (1980). Sendak is most famous for Where the Wild Things Are (1963). Wilson’s many books include Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (1998).

Apple shipped the first Apple II computer on June 10, 1977. It was typographically styled as the “Apple ][” and the series continued long after the specific II model was superseded by the Apple II Plus and was discontinued in 1981. The last II-series Apple in production, the IIe card for Macintoshes, was discontinued on October 15, 1993.

Sendak died in 2012, Hentoff in 2017, while Wilson died on December 26, 2021.

On May 31, 455 A.D., Emperor Petronius Maximus was stoned to death by an angry mob while fleeing Rome.

On that date in 1578, King Henry III laid the first stone of the Pont Neuf (New Bridge), the oldest bridge of Paris, France.

In other rock history, May 31, 2013, marked the closest approach to Earth that the asteroid 1998 QE2 and its moon will get until two centuries hence.

On May 29, 1790, Rhode Island became the last of North America’s original Thirteen Colonies-turned-states to ratify the Constitution.

On the same in 1913, Igor Stravinsky’s ballet score The Rite of Spring received its premiere performance in Paris, France, provoking a riot.