This day in history...

An all-time great movie line, adlibbed by Scheider.

 

The Sugarland Express (1974) was his first theatrical film. In 1971 he did a TV movie called Duel. Close Encounters was his 3rd theatrical, in 1977.

 

On June 21, 1956, famed playwright Arthur Miller defies the House Un-American Activities Committee, refusing to name friends who were suspected communists. Miller was one of the premier American playwrights of the mid-20th century, winning a Pulitzer Prize in 1949 for Death of a Salesman. His was among the names given to the HUAC by theater producer Elia Kazan in 1952, and he was subpoenaed by the committee in '56. Miller agreed to appear on the condition that he not be asked to provide names himself; committee chairman Francis Walter agreed to the terms and promptly reneged when he got Miller before the microphone. Standing his ground, Miller was charged with contempt of Congress, fined and sentenced to prison. The charge was overturned in appeals court a year later. Miller continued to write successfully for another 20 years after his committee appearance; the experience led to him becoming even more active in left wing politics in his later years. He died in 2005.


On June 21, 1916, U.S. troops searching for the renegade Pancho Villa in northern Mexico are attacked by Mexican troops. Villa had been launching raids into New Mexico to protest U.S. support of Vestuciano Carranza, who had defeated Villa in a struggle to claim the presidency. President Woodrow Wilson ordered General John Pershing (below) to take an expedition into Mexico to capture Villa. They never found him, but Carranza responded to the uninvited military intrusion with troops of his own. 22 American and 30 Mexican soldiers died at the clash near Carrizal. It was only the growing unrest in Europe that convinced Wilson to order Pershing to withdraw, avoiding an escalation that likely would have led to war.


On June 21, 1965, Mr. Tambourine Man, the debut album of The Byrds, is released by Columbia Records. Jim McGuinn, Gene Clark and David Crosby had formed the nucleus of The Byrds in early 1964, experimenting with a style that was a cross between The Beatles and Bob Dylan. Michael Clark and Chris Hillman joined them later in the year, and during a series of studio rehearsals acquired a copy of "Mr. Tambourine Man", an unreleased single by Dylan. They reworked it to their style, and when Dylan gave them an enthusiastic review of the result, released it as the title song for their debut album. (Dylan would release his own recording later, but it was The Byrds' version that went to number one on the pop chart). Mr. Tambourine Man and their second album, Turn! Turn! Turn!, are considered the birth of the folk rock genre of the 60's.

 

On June 22, 1945, Lieutenant General Mitsuru Ushijima, commander of the Japanese troops defending Okinawa, commits ritual suicide, effectively ending Japanese resistance on the island. Okinawa was considered the ideal island from which the U.S. would stage an invasion of the Japanese home islands. Sixty thousand U.S. Marines and soldiers came ashore on April 1, meeting stiff resistance as expected. Some of the fiercest fighting of the Pacific Campaign followed, as the Japanese fought to the death both on land and in the air, launching about 2,000 kamikaze attacks against the U.S. support fleet. Lt. General Simon B. Buckner, commanding the invasion force, was killed on June 19, the highest ranking of more than 12,000 Americans killed and 35,000 wounded. Japanese losses exceeded 120,000. (Buckner is the figure at right in the photo, taken the same day he was killed by artillery fire)



On June 22, 1783, the King's Bench makes plain the inhumanity of the African slave trade. Great Britain's highest court of the day, the King's Bench was hearing the case of the Zong, a ship that sailed from Africa for Jamaica in April 1781 with more than 400 people destined for slavery in her hold. As was common for slave ships, she was grossly overloaded, and over several weeks, her captain and crew solved the problem of short supplies and near foundering by throwing nearly half of the souls in her hold overboard. But the case that came before the King's Bench was not an investigation of an atrocity, but a simple insurance claim over lost property. Ultimately, the judges held the insurance company liable for the damages, and in doing so, stated that the mass murder "was the same as if horses had been thrown overboard." The Zong case would spark the organization of several abolitionist groups that would eventually see the Atlantic slave trade outlawed 20 years later. (This French tall ship below represented the Zong in a 200th anniversary commemoration of abolition in 2007)


On June 22, 1963, "Fingertips Pt. II" by Little Stevie Wonder hits number one on the Billboard pop charts. A jazz instrumental (on which he played accordian and bongos) from his first album, the 13-year old Wonder performed the song earlier in the year at a Motown musical review at the Regal Theater in Chicago. Wonder added several "call and response" moments to his performance, and also improvised a vocal encore. The total performance ran nearly 7 minutes. Motown divided it into two parts for its release on 45 rpm discs; it is Part II that topped the charts. Wonder remains the youngest solo performer to hit number one, and "Fingertips" is the first non-studio live recording to reach number 1. Little known fact: on both the studio and live recording of the song, an unknown but up-and-coming Motown artist named Marvin Gaye played the drums.

 

On June 23, 1961, the Antarctic Treaty System takes effect. Negotiated by the U.S. and 11 other nations that had established research stations on the continent at the time, the ATS established Antarctica as a scientific research region and banned military activity on the land mass and any ice shelves south of 60 degrees latitude. The agreement is governed from the ATS Secretariat in Buenos Aires and has since grown to 54 nations.


On June 23, 1980, English police rule a fire that killed 3 boys (ages 15, 12 and 6) of the Hastie family in the community of Hull the previous December to be an accident. That went down just fine with the neighbors, who considered the Hastie's to be a "troubled" family. In fact, police knew they were trouble enough that there was no end of suspects who may have started the fire out of spite or revenge. Sure enough, one soon stepped forward, 20-year old Bruce Dinsdale, a simpleton who accused Mr. Hastie of taking sexual liberties with him. Then the case took a sobering turn; Dinsdale confessed to starting nine fatal fires in Hull over the previous seven years. Arson was never considered in any of the cases, and Dinsdale would eventually be convicted of 26 counts of manslaughter (he claimed to be fascinated by fire; in most of the cases he never even considered that someone may have been in the building), making him one of Great Britain's most prolific, if unknown, serial killers. He remains confined to a mental health institution to this day.


On June 23, 1951, the ocean liner SS United States is christened and launched at Newport News, VA. Designed and built by Unites States Lines in cooperation with the U.S. Navy, the United States was designed to be easily converted into a troop transport in time of war. In this secondary capacity, she was never needed, but in her primary role she was outstanding. On her maiden voyage the ship claimed the Blue Riband, the award for the vessel holding the record for fastest crossing of the Atlantic. The record remains unbroken to this day. The United States plied the Atlantic passenger routes until taken out of service in 1969. She remains at dock in Philadelphia today, several efforts to raise funds to restore having failed over the decades. Another such effort is currently underway.

 

On June 24, 1947, what is often considered to be modern day's first UFO sighting is reported near Mt. Rainier, Washington. Private pilot Kenneth Arnold was on an in-state flight when, as he later reported, he saw nine "saucer-shaped" objects flying in a line that stretched out for about 5 miles. Questioning and comparisons with aircraft of the day would determine that the objects would have had to be anywhere from 150 to 280 feet in length, and flying at a speed approaching 1,200 mph. Arnold's was the first of several UFO sightings in the region over the next two weeks, and one newspaper account of his sighting originated the term "flying saucer." A wide variety of explanations for the sighting have appeared through the years, ranging from a flight of Air Force jets to a flock of pelicans.


On June 24, 1973, 32 people are killed and 15 injured when the Upstairs Lounge, a New Orleans gay bar on the 2nd floor of a 3-story building, is burned in an apparent arson. It was the largest loss of life in an attack on a gay bar in U.S. history until the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, but the Upstairs fire may not have been a homophobic attack. The only suspect, a gay man who was kicked out of the bar earlier in the day for fighting with another patron, was never charged, and the fire to this day is officially listed as "undetermined origin." (2019 photo of the Upstairs Lounge building)


On June 24, 1374, the residents of the German town of Aachen dance until they drop. At least seven incidents of "dancing plague" are chronicled throughout Europe of the Middle Ages, episodes in which anywhere from a single individual to hundreds at a time threw themselves into fits of dance-like jumping and gyrations, until they fell from exhaustion, and even then, continued to twitch and tremble on the ground. The Aachen "plague" is perhaps the most well-documented. Modern scholars can not agree on a cause for these incidents.

 

On June 27, 1957, Hurricane Audrey strikes the west coast of Louisiana. Audrey developed in the southwest portion of the Gulf of Mexico starting June 24 and traveled almost straight north, striking Cameron Parish west of Lake Charles as a Category 3 hurricane, with top recorded winds around 125 mph. The estimated death toll exceeded 430, making it the deadliest June hurricane on record. Most of the dead were victims of storm surge, measured at 12 feet. Damage costs were in the neighborhood of $150 million, the fifth most costly storm in U.S. history at the time. The name Audrey has since been retired as a storm identifier by the National Weather Service.


On June 27, 1946, the Parliament of Canada passes the Canadian Citizenship Act. Prior to this law, Canadian citizenship was defined by legislation from 1910 and 1921 as a "subclass" of British subjects. The Citizenship Act (it actually came into effect on January 1, 1947 and is often referred to as the Act of 1947) defined Canadian nationality as separate from British citizenship, though the nation itself remained part of the British Commonwealth.


On June 27, 1905, the crew of the Russian battleship Potemkin mutinies. The Russian navy had suffered significant losses in its war with Japan, and with morale horribly low, talk of a general mutiny of the Black Sea Fleet was rampant. The mutiny on the Potemkin, a pre-Dreadnought battleship, was the only one that came to pass, and was sparked by a delivery of inedible rations from the Ukraine. When executive officer Ippolit Gilliarovsky threatened to shoot any sailor who refused to eat, the crew rebelled, killing Gilliarovsky, Captain Evgeny Golikov and five other officers. The mutineers sailed the ship to Odessa, where a general strike was underway, and supported the strike until loyal ships arrived to quell the mutiny. The Potemkin fought off the fleet and sailed for Constanta, Romania, where they were granted asylum on July 7 on the condition they disarm and surrender the ship. The government turned the ship back over to the Russians two days later. The Potemkin mutiny is considered the first major event leading to the 1917 Russian Revolution. (Mutineers photographed in Romania)