May 8

June 6

1644 The Qing dynasty started on June 6, 1644 when the joint forces of Wu Sangui and Manchu prince Dorgon entered Beijing and proclaimed the six-year-old Shunzhi Emperor as Emperor of China. The Qing dynasty was the last imperial dynasty of China, ruling from 1644 to 1912.

1752 A devastating fire on June 6, 1752 destroyed one-third of Moscow. The fire started in a bakery near the Kremlin and quickly spread to other parts of the city. By the time the fire was extinguished, it had destroyed 18,000 homes and 4,000 shops. The fire also killed an estimated 15,000 people.

1804 Louis Antoine Godey, the publisher of Godey's Lady's Book, was born on June 6, 1804. The largest circulation magazine of its time, Godey's Lady's Book's illustrations not only influenced nineteenth century women's fashions, but would become documents for social historians and prized items for collectors. A publisher also of children's and music journals, Godey was among the first to copyright magazine contents.

Cover from June 1867 issue

1832 English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham died on June 6, 1832 aged 84 at his residence in Queen Square Place in Westminster, London. He had continued to write up to a month before his death. In his will, Bentham left instructions for his body to be dissected, then preserved at the University College London, where it remains The skeleton of Jeremy Bentham is present at all important meetings of the University College of London.

1833 On June 6, 1833 Andrew Jackson became the first US President to ride on the railway. He boarded a Baltimore & Ohio Railroad train in Ellicott’s Mills, Maryland for a pleasure trip to Baltimore. Jackson was not a fan of the train at first, but he eventually came to appreciate the convenience and speed of rail travel.

1844 London draper George Williams was appalled at the degradation of workingmen in London and began a work among his fellow drapery employees. Williams was motivated to form the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) by the terrible conditions and the consequent temptations for sin he perceived in London for young men. The first YMCA meeting was held in Williams’ drapery shop in St Paul’s Churchyard on June 6, 1844 and included 12 young men in total.


1868 English sailor and explorer Robert Falcon Scott was born on June 6, 1868, in Stoke Damerel, near Devonport, Plymouth, Devon to John Edward, a brewer and magistrate, and Hannah (née Cuming) Scott. Robert was educated from a young age for a career in the armed services He began his naval career in 1881, as a 13-year-old cadet. Scott attempted to be the first person to reach the South Pole, but Roald Amundsen  reached the location first and he perished on his return journey.

1889 The Great Seattle Fire destroyed the entirety of downtown Seattle, on June 6, 1889. It started with a woodworker who mishandled hot glue, and resulted in an estimated $8,000,000 of damage.
116 acres were reduced to ash and the city's opera house and 11 of its 23 churches were among the buildings destroyed by the blaze.

Looking south on 1st Ave. from Spring St. about one-half hour after the fire started.

1892 On June 6, 1892, Benjamin Harrison became the first president to attend a baseball game while in office. He attended the game on June 6, 1892, between the Washington Nationals and the Baltimore Orioles at the old National League Grounds in Washington, D.C, which The Nationals won 10-5. Harrison was a big fan of baseball and had attended games before becoming president. He was also a member of the Washington Nationals board of directors.

1907 The first household detergent, Persil, went on sale in Dusseldorf, Germany on June 6, 1907. In addition to soap, it contained both sodium PERborate and sodium SILcate, hence PERSIL. The invention of the first household detergent was a major turning point in the laundry industry. It made it possible for people to clean their clothes more effectively and more easily than ever before.

1912 The largest volcanic eruption of the 20th century took place on June 6, 1912 on the Alaska Peninsula. The 60-hour-long Novarupta eruption expelled 3.1 to 3.6 cubic miles (13 to 15 km3) of ash, thirty times as much as the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens and created the Novarupta lava dome.

1930 The retail of frozen foods was birthed in 18 stores in Springfield, Massachusetts on June 6, 1930. Birdseye made available 26 different vegetables, fruits, fish, and meats available to consumers in the "Springfield Experiment Test Market.” They were sold as "Birds Eye Frosted Foods."


1933 Richard Hollingshead opened the world's first drive-in movie theater on 10 acres off Wilson Boulevard, Camden, New Jersey on June 6, 1933, with a screen of 40 by 30 feet. The charge was 0.25 ¢ per person, with a maximum of $1.00. The first film shown was the Adolphe Menjou movie Wife Beware. The Camden drive-in theater was advertised with the slogan, "The whole family is welcome, regardless of how noisy the children are."

1941 Swiss businessman and race car driver Louis Chevrolet and ousted General Motors founder William C. Durant started the Chevrolet Motor Car Company in 1911. Within a few years Chevrolet had shifted into the racing car industry, partnering with Howard E. Blood of Allegan, Michigan, to create the Cornelian racing car. Chevrolet died on June 6, 1941 bankrupt working as a mechanic for the company he started.

1944 156,000 Allied US, British, and Canadian troops landed on the Normandy beaches of occupied France on D-Day, June 6, 1944. The allied soldiers quickly broke through the Atlantic Wall and pushed inland in the largest amphibious military operation in history. Many felt the hand of God was involved in providing the crucial weather break needed to launch the invasion, which was a turning point in World War II.


1944  General Dwight Eisenhower, as commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, agonized on the date to launch the invasion. Several days of bad weather made aircraft reconnaissance impossible and seas too rough for the landing craft. Although the D-Day landings turned out to be a resounding success, Eisenhower hedged his bets by keeping in his pocket a communiqué announcing the failure of the landings and accepting full responsibility.

1944 A pigeon, Gustav, carried the first word of the Normandy invasion on June 6, 1944 back to the British mainland, as the fleet underwent radio silence at that time. He flew 150 miles in 5 hours 16 minutes and was awarded the Dickin Medal for bravery. Gustav died after the war by being accidentally stepped on.

1962 The first Beatles recording session took place at Abbey Road studios on June 6, 1962. The group recorded four tracks, one of which was "Love Me Do." The four musicians received payments for the session of £7.10 ($12.07) each.

1984 Tetris is a Soviet tile-matching puzzle video game originally designed and programmed by Alexey Pajitnov. It was released on June 6, 1984, while he was working for the Dorodnicyn Computing Centre of the Academy of Science of the USSR in Moscow. Pajitnov derived its name from the Greek numerical prefix tetra- (all of the game's pieces contain four segments) and tennis, Pajitnov's favorite sport.


1995 Former UK prime minister Harold Wilson was buried at St Mary's Old Church, St. Mary's, Isles of Scilly, on June 6, 1995, a fortnight after his death from colon cancer and Alzheimer's Disease. Wilson's epitaph is "Tempus Imperator Rerum" ("Time Commands All Things").

2004 During a joint sitting of both houses of the Indian Parliament on June 6, 2004, President A. P. J. Abdul Kalam announced that Tamil was to be made the first legally recognized classical language of India. This followed a political campaign supported by several Tamil associations.

2005 June 6 is the National Day of Sweden celebrating the foundation of modern Sweden with the election of Gustav I, later known as Gustav Vasa as king on June 6, 1523 and the adoption of a new constitution on June 6, 1809. June 6 has been an official public holiday since 2005.

2013 Vladimir Putin married Lyudmila Shkrebneva, a flight attendant for the Kaliningrad branch of Aeroflot in July 1983. After Putin's rise to political power, Lyudmila maintained a low profile on the Russian political stage, generally avoiding the limelight except as required by protocol and restricting her public role to supportive statements about her husband. On June 6, 2013, Vladimir Putin and Lyudmila publicly announced their divorce based on a mutual decision.

Lyudmila Shkrebneva with Vladimir Putin after his inauguration on 7 May 2000

2018 Mary Baldwin married civil service employee Harold Wilson in 1940. While her husband rose the political ranks to become prime minister, Mary became a published poet when her volume Selected Poems was published in 1970. The only prime ministerial spouse to become a centenarian, Mary Wilson died at the age of 102 years, 145 days on June 6, 2018.

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