June 8

Events

Pre-1600

* 218 – Battle of Antioch: With the support of the Syrian legions, Elagabalus defeats the forces of emperor Macrinus.
* 452 – Attila leads a Hun army in the invasion of Italy, devastating the northern provinces as he heads for Rome.
* 793 – Vikings raid the abbey at Lindisfarne in Northumbria, commonly accepted as the beginning of Norse activity in the British Isles.
*1042 – Edward the Confessor becomes King of England – the country's penultimate Anglo-Saxon king.
*1191 – Richard I arrives in Acre, beginning the Third Crusade.

1601–1900

*1663 – Portuguese Restoration War: Portuguese victory at the Battle of Ameixial ensures Portugal's independence from Spain.
*1772 – Alexander Fordyce flees to France to avoid debt repayment, triggering the credit crisis of 1772 in the British Empire and the Dutch Republic.
*1776 – American Revolutionary War: Continental Army attackers are driven back at the Battle of Trois-Rivières.
*1783 – Laki, a volcano in Iceland, begins an eight-month eruption which kills over 9,000 people and starts a seven-year famine.
*1789 – James Madison introduces twelve proposed amendments to the United States Constitution in Congress.
*1794 – Maximilien Robespierre inaugurates the French Revolution's new state religion, the Cult of the Supreme Being, with large organized festivals all across France.
*1856 – A group of 194 Pitcairn Islanders, descendants of the mutineers of , arrives at Norfolk Island, commencing the Third Settlement of the Island.
*1861 – American Civil War: Tennessee secedes from the Union.
*1862 – American Civil War: A Confederate victory by forces under General Stonewall Jackson at the Battle of Cross Keys, along with the Battle of Port Republic the next day, prevents Union forces from reinforcing General George B. McClellan in his Peninsula campaign.
*1867 – Coronation of Franz Joseph as King of Hungary following the Austro-Hungarian compromise (''Ausgleich'').
*1887 – Herman Hollerith applies for US patent #395,781 for the 'Art of Compiling Statistics', which was his punched card calculator.

1901–present

*1906 – Theodore Roosevelt signs the Antiquities Act into law, authorizing the President to restrict the use of certain parcels of public land with historical or conservation value.
*1912 – Carl Laemmle incorporates Universal Pictures.
*1918 – A solar eclipse is observed at Baker City, Oregon by scientists and an artist hired by the United States Navy.
*1928 – Second Northern Expedition: The National Revolutionary Army captures Peking, whose name is changed to Beijing ("Northern Capital").
*1929 – Margaret Bondfield is appointed Minister of Labour. She is the first woman appointed to the Cabinet of the United Kingdom.
*1940 – World War II: The completion of Operation Alphabet, the evacuation of Allied forces from Narvik at the end of the Norwegian Campaign.
*1941 – World War II: The Allies commence the Syria–Lebanon Campaign against the possessions of Vichy France in the Levant.
*1942 – World War II: The Imperial Japanese Navy submarines I-21 and I-24 shell the Australian cities of Sydney and Newcastle.
*1949 – Helen Keller, Dorothy Parker, Danny Kaye, Fredric March, John Garfield, Paul Muni and Edward G. Robinson are named in an FBI report as Communist Party members.
* 1949 – George Orwell's ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' is published.
*1953 – An F5 tornado hits Beecher, Michigan, killing 116, injuring 844, and destroying 340 homes.
* 1953 – The United States Supreme Court rules in ''District of Columbia v. John R. Thompson Co.'' that restaurants in Washington, D.C., cannot refuse to serve black patrons.
*1959 – and the United States Postal Service attempt the delivery of mail via Missile Mail.
*1966 – An F-104 Starfighter collides with XB-70 Valkyrie prototype no. 2, destroying both aircraft during a photo shoot near Edwards Air Force Base. Joseph A. Walker, a NASA test pilot, and Carl Cross, a United States Air Force test pilot, are both killed.
* 1966 – Topeka, Kansas, is devastated by a tornado that registers as an "F5" on the Fujita scale: The first to exceed US$100 million in damages. Sixteen people are killed, hundreds more injured, and thousands of homes damaged or destroyed.
* 1966 – The National Football League and American Football League announced a merger effective in 1970.
*1967 – Six-Day War: The USS ''Liberty'' incident occurs, killing 34 and wounding 171.
*1968 – James Earl Ray, the man who assassinated Martin Luther King Jr. is arrested at London Heathrow Airport.
*1972 – Vietnam War: Nine-year-old Phan Thị Kim Phúc is burned by napalm, an event captured by Associated Press photographer Nick Ut moments later while the young girl is seen running naked down a road, in what would become an iconic, Pulitzer Prize-winning photo.
*1982 – Bluff Cove Air Attacks during the Falklands War: Fifty-six British servicemen are killed by an Argentine air attack on two landing ships, and .
* 1982 – VASP Flight 168 crashes in Pacatuba, Ceará, Brazil, killing 128 people.
*1984 – Homosexuality is decriminalized in the Australian state of New South Wales.
*1987 – New Zealand's Labour government establishes a national nuclear-free zone under the New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act 1987.
*1992 – The first World Oceans Day is celebrated, coinciding with the Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
*1995 – Downed U.S. Air Force pilot Captain Scott O'Grady is rescued by U.S. Marines in Bosnia.
*2001 – Mamoru Takuma kills eight and injures 15 in a mass stabbing at an elementary school in the Osaka Prefecture of Japan.
*2004 – The first Venus Transit in well over a century takes place, the previous one being in 1882.
*2007 – Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia, is hit by the State's worst storms and flooding in 30 years resulting in the death of nine people and the grounding of a trade ship, the .
*2008 – At least 37 miners go missing after an explosion in a Ukrainian coal mine causes it to collapse.
* 2008 – At least seven people are killed and ten injured in a stabbing spree in Tokyo, Japan.
*2009 – Two American journalists are found guilty of illegally entering North Korea and sentenced to 12 years of penal labour.
*2014 – At least 28 people are killed in an attack at Jinnah International Airport, Karachi, Pakistan.

Births

Pre-1600

* 862 – Emperor Xizong of Tang (d. 888)
*1508 – Primož Trubar, Slovenian Protestant reformer (d. 1586)
*1552 – Gabriello Chiabrera, Italian poet and author (d. 1638)
*1593 – George I Rákóczi, prince of Transylvania (d. 1648)

1601–1900

*1625 – Giovanni Domenico Cassini, Italian-French mathematician and astronomer (d. 1712)
*1671 – Tomaso Albinoni, Italian violinist and composer (d. 1751)
*1717 – John Collins, American lawyer and politician, 3rd Governor of Rhode Island (d. 1795)
*1724 – John Smeaton, English engineer, designed the Coldstream Bridge and Perth Bridge (d. 1794)
*1745 – Caspar Wessel, Norwegian-Danish mathematician and cartographer (d. 1818)
*1757 – Ercole Consalvi, Italian cardinal (d. 1824)
*1788 – Charles A. Wickliffe, American politician, 14th Governor of Kentucky (d. 1869)
*1810 – Robert Schumann, German composer and critic (d. 1856)
*1829 – John Everett Millais, English painter and illustrator (d. 1896)
* 1831 – Thomas J. Higgins, Canadian-American sergeant, Medal of Honor recipient (d. 1917)
*1842 – John Q. A. Brackett, American lawyer and politician, 36th Governor of Massachusetts (d. 1918)
*1851 – Jacques-Arsène d'Arsonval, French physician and physicist (d. 1940)
*1852 – Guido Banti, Italian physician and pathologist (d. 1925)
*1854 – Douglas Cameron, Canadian politician, 8th Lieutenant Governor of Manitoba (d. 1921)
*1855 – George Charles Haité, English painter and illustrator (d. 1924)
*1858 – Charlotte Scott, English mathematician (d. 1931)
*1859 – Smith Wigglesworth, English evangelist (d. 1947)
*1860 – Alicia Boole Stott, Irish-English mathematician and theorist (d. 1940)
*1867 – Frank Lloyd Wright, American architect, designed the Price Tower and Fallingwater (d. 1959)
*1868 – Robert Robinson Taylor, American architect (d. 1942)
*1872 – Jan Frans De Boever, Belgian painter and illustrator (d. 1949)
*1875 – Ernst Enno, Estonian poet and author (d. 1934)
*1876 – Alexandre Tuffère, Greek-French triple jumper (d. 1958)
*1878 – Evan Roberts, Welsh Revivalist minister (d. 1951)
*1885 – Karl Genzken, German physician (d. 1957)
*1891 – William Funnell, Australian public servant (d. 1962)
*1893 – Ernst Marcus, German zoologist (d. 1968)
* 1893 – Gaby Morlay, French actress (d. 1964)
*1894 – Erwin Schulhoff, Czech composer and pianist (d. 1942)
*1895 – Santiago Bernabéu Yeste, Spanish footballer and manager (d. 1978)
*1897 – John G. Bennett, English mathematician and technologist (d. 1974)
*1899 – Eugène Lapierre, Canadian organist, composer and arts administrator (d. 1970)
* 1899 – Ernst-Robert Grawitz, German physician (d. 1945)
*1900 – Lena Baker, African-American maid executed for capital murder, later pardoned posthumously (d. 1945)

1901–present

*1903 – Ralph Yarborough, American lawyer and politician (d. 1996)
* 1903 – Marguerite Yourcenar, Belgian-French author and poet (d. 1987)
*1910 – John W. Campbell, American journalist and author (d. 1971)
* 1910 – Fernand Fonssagrives, French-American photographer, sculptor, and painter (d. 2003)
*1911 – Edmundo Rivero, Argentinian singer-songwriter (d. 1986)
*1912 – Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, British abstract painter (d. 2004)
* 1912 – Maurice Bellemare, Canadian lawyer and politician (d. 1989)
* 1912 – Harry Holtzman, American painter (d. 1987)
*1915 – Kayyar Kinhanna Rai, Indian journalist, author, and poet (d. 2015)
*1916 – Francis Crick, English biologist, biophysicist, and neuroscientist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2004)
* 1916 – Luigi Comencini

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