June 26
1917: U.S. troops entered World War I as the first troops of the American Expeditionary Force landed in Saint-Nazaire, France.
1945: The charter of the United Nations was signed by 50 countries in San Francisco.
1948: The Berlin Airlift began in earnest after the Soviet Union cut off land and water routes to the isolated western sector of Berlin.
1963: President John F. Kennedy visited West Berlin, where he delivered his famous speech expressing solidarity with the city’s residents, declaring: “Ich bin ein Berliner” (“I am a Berliner”).
June 27
1844: Mormon leader Joseph Smith and his brother, Hyrum, were killed by a mob in Carthage, Illinois.
1950: The U.N. Security Council passed a resolution calling on member nations to help South Korea repel an invasion from the North.
1991: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first Black jurist to sit on the nation’s highest court, announced his retirement.
June 28
1914: In an act that sparked World War I, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife, Sophie, were shot to death in Sarajevo by Serb nationalist Gavrilo Princip.
1919: The Treaty of Versailles was signed in France, ending the First World War.
1940: President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Alien Registration Act, also known as the Smith Act, which required adult foreigners residing in the U.S. to be registered and fingerprinted.
June 29
1613: London’s original Globe Theatre, where many of Shakespeare’s plays were performed, was destroyed by a fire sparked by a cannon shot during a performance of Henry VIII.
1767: Britain approved the Townshend Revenue Act, which imposed import duties on glass, paint, oil, lead, paper, and tea shipped to the American colonies.
1776: The Virginia state constitution was adopted, and Patrick Henry was made governor.
2007: The first version of the iPhone went on sale to the public; over 2.3 billion iPhones have been sold since.
June 30
1918: Labor activist and socialist Eugene V. Debs was arrested in Cleveland, charged under the Espionage Act of 1917 for a speech he’d made two weeks earlier denouncing U.S. involvement in World War I.
1934: Adolf Hitler launched his “blood purge” of political and military rivals in Germany in what came to be known as the “Night of the Long Knives.”
1936: Margaret Mitchell’s novel Gone With the Wind was released.
July 1
1863: The pivotal, three-day Civil War Battle of Gettysburg, resulting in a Union victory, began in Pennsylvania.
1867: Canada became a self-governing dominion of Great Britain as the British North America Act took effect. The national holiday is now known as Canada Day. 1903: The first Tour de France began.
July 2
1776: The Continental Congress passed a resolution saying that “these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States.”
1881: President James A. Garfield was shot by Charles J. Guiteau. 1964: President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law a sweeping civil rights bill passed by Congress, prohibiting discrimination and segregation based on race, color, sex, religion, or national origin.
