On June 17, 1885, the Statue of Liberty arrives in New York Harbor after being shipped across the Atlantic Ocean in 350 pieces. A gift from the people of France intended to commemorate the USA 1876 centennial, construction was delayed 9 years by funding issues. On June 17, 1994, TV viewers across the nation watch a "low speed chase" by a fleet of LAPD squad cars in pursuit of a white Ford Bronco, a passenger of which is O.J. Simpson. He is to be arrested for the murder of his ex-wife and a friend. On June 17, 1775, British troops attack fortified positions on Breed’s Hill, just below Bunker Hill near Boston. British casualties will outnumber American 3 to 1 in the Battle of Bunker HIll, but the British will successfully drive the colonials out of their defenses, and Boston soon falls. On June 17, 2015, nine parishioners of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina are shot and killed during a Bible study by a white supremacist. The killer, 21-year old Dylan Roof, was convicted and awaits a death sentence. On June 17, 1940, Marshal Henri Petain is elevated to Prime Minister of France and immediately announces his intentions to sign an armistice with Germany. The post-war French government will try and convict Petain of high treason for his collaboration with the Germans throughout the war. On June 17, 1972, five men, including former CIA agent James McCord, are arrested and charged with breaking into the Democrat Party National Headquarters in DC's Watergate office-hotel complex. The five attribute their actions to "anti-communism." On June 17, 1943, Senator Harry Truman receives a phone call from Secretary of War Henry Stimson, who politely asks Truman to not make inquiries about a defense plant in Pasco, Washington. Truman had found undefined war-related expenditures to the plant earlier in the month and planned to call plant supervisors to testify before the Senate Committee on War Profiteering. The hawkish Truman fortunately read between the lines of Stimson's request and agreed to stop his inquiry about the plant, which was a key component in the top secret program to develop the atomic bomb.
On June 18, 1812, President James Madison signs a Declaration of War against Great Britain. The U.S. opposed the British practice of "impressing" Americans into the British navy, and their alliances with native American tribes in the Great Lakes region. On June 18, 1815, the French Grand Army personally commanded by emperor Napoleon Bonaparte is defeated by English (under the Duke of Wellington) and Prussian (Blucher) troops near the village of Waterloo, Belgium. The defeat spurs Napoleon to abdicate the throne in favor of his son a week later. On June 18, 1778, British troops, redeploying to counter the entrance of France into the American Revolution, abandon Philadelphia after a 9-month occupation. A week later, the Continental Congress re-enters its capital city. On June 18, 1960, Arnold Palmer shoots a 65 on the final day of the U.S. Open at Cherry Hills Country Club in Denver, coming from behind to win the only Open Championship of his career. Palmer will also win 4 Masters and 2 British Opens during one of the most celebrated careers in professional golf history. On June 18, 1983, mission specialist Dr. Sally Ride becomes America's first woman to go to space, during a mission aboard space shuttle Challenger to repair and deploy satellites. Ride's specialty is operating the shuttle's robotic arm. She would fly into space twice in her career.
On June 19, 1944, the US Navy scores a lopsided victory over the Japanese in the Philippines Sea. The seeds for what would be called the "Marianas Turkey Shoot" were planted the day before the 1942 Battle of Midway, during a diversionary attack on the Aleutian Island of Attu. At the opening of the war, Japanese air superiority was built around the Mitsubishi AM6 Zero, its top line fighter. The Zero was faster, more agile, and better armed than any fighter in the US inventory, including the F4F Wildcat, the navy's top of the line fighter. As Marine fighter pilot Joe Foss said when discussing dogfighting,"If its one Wildcat against one Zero, you're outnumbered." At Attu, a Zero pilot was forced to ditch in the tundra and was killed on impact. But the plane was nearly intact and recovered by the navy. Flying and studying the plane led to development of the Grumman F6F Hellcat, and in June, 1944, all 15 carriers supporting the Mariana Islands invasion fleet are equipped with the new fighter. Estimates of Japanese losses range from 550 to 650 planes lost, and 3 aircraft carriers sunk. American losses to Japanese fire are just 29 planes. On June19, 1865, Union troops arrive in Galveston, Texas with the news that the Civil War is over and slavery has been abolished in the United States. Today, June 19 is called "Juneteenth" and commemorates the end of slavery. (the emancipation memorial at the Texas state capitol in Austin) On June 19, 1867, Austrian Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian, installed as emperor of Mexico by the French 3 years earlier, is executed on the orders of Benito Juarez, the president of the Mexican Republic. Juarez had taken the reins of a financially strapped nation in 1861 and defaulted on loans from France. French emperor Napoleon III responded with an occupying army, which promptly attacked the city of Puebla de la Angeles and lost to a ragtag group of Mexican defenders (Cinco de Mayo). After 6 years of trying and failing to gain control of the Mexican people, Napoleon withdrew his army, abandoning Maximilian to his fate.
Joe Foss was a Congressional Medal of Honor winner. After the war he wad elected governor of South Dakota. Or maybe it was North Dakota. He later became the first Commissioner of the AFL before they merged with the NFL. Foss was once not allowed on a plane because he triggered the metal detector. The metal was his Medal of Honor which he was carrying to show a veterans group where he was supposed to give a speech.
On June 21, 1788, New Hampshire becomes the 9th state to ratify the U.S. Constitution, making it the official governing document of the nation. On June 21, 1982, John Hinckley, Jr is found not guilty by reason of insanity in the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan 15 months earlier. Defense attorneys successfully demonstrated that Hinckley was obsessed with the 1976 film Taxi Driver, and was attempting to recreate one of the movie's key plot points - the assassination of a fictional senator - in order to impress the film's star actress, Jodie Foster. Hinckley was committed to a DC area mental institution, but his defense began lobbying that he was rehabilitated in the mid 90's. In 1999, authorities began allowing Hinckley short trips off the hospital grounds, and he was permanently released from custody in 2018. On June 21, 1964, civil rights activists Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney are murdered by members of the Ku Klux Klan near Meridian, Mississippi. The FBI investigates and charges 18 area Klansmen with conspiracy; seven, including local KKK Grand Wizard Sam Bowers, and Cecil Price, a deputy sheriff, are convicted.
On June 22, 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Servicemen's Readjustment Act into law. Better known as the G.I. Bill, the legislation is designed to prevent an economic relapse into the Great Depression when hundreds of thousands of veterans begin returning home from war. Among its benefits, the G.I. Bill provides funding for education, access to low interest home and business loans, and unemployment compensation. The educational funding will have the biggest impact on America in general; by 1947, half of all college enrollees in the country will be veterans. On June 22, 1945, the island of Okinawa is declared secure, as U.S. troops overwhelm the last pockets of Japanese resistance, and the enemy commander, Lieutenant General Mitsuru Ushijima, commits suicide. In nearly 3 months of fighting for Okinawa, American army and navy forces suffered 12,500 dead and 35,000 wounded. Thirty-six ships of the naval support fleet are lost, many due to the new Japanese strategy of suicide aircraft dives, known as kamikaze. It is the bloodiest campaign of the war - Pacific or Europe - for America. Japanese losses are around 120,000. On June 22, 1611, after spending a winter trapped by ice in what is now Hudson Bay, the starving crew of the Discovery mutinies against its captain, English navigator Henry Hudson, and sets him, his teenage son, and seven supporters adrift in a small, open boat. It is Hudson's fourth expedition to the New World. The Discovery returns to England, where its crew is arrested for mutiny. Hudson and the eight others are never seen again. On June 22, 1969, sparks from a passing freight train ignite oil soaked debris floating in the Cuyahoga River at Cleveland. Its hardly the first time the river itself has supposedly caught fire; in fact, its happened so often it barely makes the local news. But this time, Time Magazine publishes a photo of the fire along with a dramatic story of a river so polluted, "it oozes rather than flows." It also reports that the river is virtually devoid of life. Time is indulging in sensationalism to some extent; the fire it writes about was put out so quickly, no one had a chance to photograph it, and the photo it published (below) is in fact from a 1952 fire. But the national publicity is the tipping point in an environmental revolution that will lead to Congress passing the first Clean Water Act (1972).
I thought the old Cleveland Municipal Stadium, former home of the Browns and Indians, was the mistake by the lake.
