Category: Today

On June 16, 1961, dancer Rudolf Nureyev defected from the Soviet Union.

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The great Scottish moral philosopher, political economy pioneer, and Enlightenment intellectual Adam Smith (1723-1790), best known for authoring the 1776 masterwork The Wealth of Nations, was born on June 16.

On June 16, 1858, Abraham Lincoln delivered his “House Divided” speech in Springfield, Illinois.

On this date in 1963, the Soviet Space Program achieved a first with the Vostok 6 mission, placing Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova into orbit as the first woman in space.

June 16th is Bloomsday, a celebration of the life and work of Irish expatriate author James Joyce (1882-1941). The date was selected because June 16, 1904, was the date in which Joyce’s 1922 novel Ulysses was set. The ceremonial day is named after the character Leopold Bloom.

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, so “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, each commanded to defend themselves only, not shoot first. All that resulted? Insults. It turned out to be a bloodless war, discounting the pig, so it might qualify as the best war in American history.

On June 14, 1777, U.S. Congress adopted the Stars and Stripes as the United States Flag.

On June 13, 1774, Rhode Island became the first British colony in the Americas to prohibit the importation of slaves.

In 1776, on June 12, the Fifth Virginia Convention at Williamsburg, Virginia, unanimously adopted a Declaration of Rights, several weeks prior to the adoption of the state’s constitution. George Mason, who drafted the document, stated clearly in the preamble that rights must be “the basis and foundation of Government.”

The first four planks run as follows:

I. That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.

II. That all power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the people; that magistrates are their trustees and servants, and at all times amenable to them.

III. That government is, or ought to be, instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security of the people, nation or community; of all the various modes and forms of government that is best, which is capable of producing the greatest degree of happiness and safety and is most effectually secured against the danger of maladministration; and that, whenever any government shall be found inadequate or contrary to these purposes, a majority of the community hath an indubitable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to reform, alter or abolish it, in such manner as shall be judged most conducive to the public weal.

IV. That no man, or set of men, are entitled to exclusive or separate emoluments or privileges from the community, but in consideration of public services; which, not being descendible, neither ought the offices of magistrate, legislator, or judge be hereditary.

On June 11, 1776, the Continental Congress appointed John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Robert R. Livingston, and Roger Sherman to draft a declaration of independence from Great Britain.

On the same date in 1963, Thich Quang Duc, a Buddhist monk, doused himself with gasoline and set himself aflame in a busy Saigon intersection as a protest against South Vietnam’s lack of religious freedom.

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.

Born on this day (June 10th): 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).

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

In A.D. 68, on the Ninth of June, Roman emperor Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus quoted the Aeneid (by Publius Vergilius Maro, known as Virgil), and then committed suicide (with the help of his secretary, Epaphroditus). With this act, Nero ended the Julio-Claudian dynasty and started the civil war known as the Year of the Four Emperors, which concluded under the rule of Vespasian.

On June 8, 1949, George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four was published.

On June 7, 1776, Richard Henry Lee presented the “Lee Resolution” to the Continental Congress. The motion was seconded by John Adams, but was tabled for several weeks. The motion was finally passed on July 2, 1776.

During the 1916 Republican National Convention (June 7 – 10), Senator Warren G. Harding used the phrase “Founding Fathers” in his keynote address . . . and would go on using it in speeches thereafter. It caught on as a eulogistic way to refer to figures such as Thomas Jefferson and, yes, Richard Henry Lee, who orchestrated the American colonies’ break from England’s imperial monarchy.