Also on this day
American Revolution
1776
On this day in 1776, Edward Rutledge, one of South Carolina’s representatives to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, expresses his reluctance to declare independence from Britain in a letter to the like-minded John Jay of New York.
Contrary to the majority of his Congressional colleagues, Rutledge advocated patience with regards to...
Automotive
1967
Blonde bombshell actress Jayne Mansfield is killed instantly on this day in 1967 when the car in which she is riding strikes the rear of a trailer truck on Interstate-90 east of New Orleans, Louisiana.
Mansfield had been on her way to New Orleans from Biloxi, Mississippi, where she had been...
Civil War
1862
On this day in 1862, at the Battle of Savage’s Station, Virginia, Confederate General Robert E. Lee attacks Union General George McClellan as he is pulling his army away from Richmond, Virginia, in retreat during the Seven Days’ Battles. Although the Yankees lost 1,000 men–twice as many as the Rebels–they...
Cold War
1989
In yet another reaction to the Chinese government’s brutal massacre of protesters in Tiananmen Square in Beijing earlier in the month, the House of Representatives unanimously passes a package of sanctions against the People’s Republic of China. American indignation, however, was relatively short-lived and most of the sanctions died out...
Crime
2001
On June 29, 2001, Boston doctor Dirk Greineder, 60, is found guilty of first-degree murder in the death of Mabel Greineder, 58, his wife of more than 30 years.
Dirk Greineder was a distinguished allergist. His wife, known as May, worked for him as a nurse and was pursuing an advanced...
Disaster
1995
The Sampoong department store in Seoul, South Korea, collapses on this day in 1995, killing more than 500 people. The tragedy in the upscale store occurred due to a series of errors made by the designers and contractors who built the store and the criminal negligence of the store’s...
General Interest
1941
One week after launching a massive invasion of the USSR, German divisions make staggering advances on Leningrad, Moscow, and Kiev.Despite his signing of the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin knew that war with Nazi Germany–the USSR’s natural ideological enemy–was inevitable. In 1941, he received reports that German...
1966
During the Vietnam War, U.S. aircraft bomb the major North Vietnamese population centers of Hanoi and Haiphong for the first time, destroying oil depots located near the two cities. The U.S. military hoped that by bombing Hanoi, the capital of North Vietnam, and Haiphong, North Vietnam’s largest port, communist forces...
1972
In Furman v. Georgia, the U.S. Supreme Court rules by a vote of 5-4 that capital punishment, as it is currently employed on the state and federal level, is unconstitutional. The majority held that, in violation of the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution, the death penalty qualified as “cruel and...
1974
With Argentine President Juan Peron on his deathbed, Isabela Martinez de Peron, his wife and vice president, is sworn in as the leader of the South American country. President Isabela Peron, a former dancer and Peron’s third wife, was the Western Hemisphere’s first female head of government. Two days later,...
Hollywood
2003
On this day in 2003, Katharine Hepburn–a four-time Academy Award winner for Best Actress and one of the greatest screen legends of Hollywood’s golden era–dies of natural causes at the age of 96, at her home in Old Saybrook, Connecticut.
Hepburn was born into a well-to-do New England family, the daughter...
Literary
1613
The Globe Theater, where most of Shakespeare’s plays debuted, burned down on this day in 1613.
The Globe was built by Shakespeare’s acting company, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, in 1599 from the timbers of London’s very first permanent theater, Burbage’s Theater, built in 1576. Before James Burbage built his theater, plays...
Music
1967
On June 29, 1967, Keith Richards sat before magistrates in Chichester, West Sussex, England, facing charges that stemmed from the infamous raid of Richards’ Redlands estate five months earlier. Though the raid netted very little in the way of actual drugs, what it did net was a great deal of...
Old West
1835
Determined to win independence for the Mexican State of Texas, William Travis raises a volunteer army of 25 soldiers and prepares to liberate the city of Anahuac.
Born in South Carolina and raised in Alabama, William Travis moved to Mexican-controlled Texas in 1831 at the age of 22. He established...
Presidential
1943
On this day in 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt writes a letter marked “secret” to leading Manhattan Project physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer. In the letter, Roosevelt sought to smooth over the growing antagonism between Oppenheimer and General Leslie Groves, the military leader in charge of the project.
Roosevelt began by congratulating...
Sports
1958
On June 29, 1958, Brazil defeats host nation Sweden 5-2 to win its first World Cup. Brazil came into the tournament as a favorite, and did not disappoint, thrilling the world with their spectacular play, which was often referred to as the “beautiful game.”
The star of the tournament was an...
Vietnam War
1964
Twenty-four New Zealand Army engineers arrive in Saigon as a token of that country’s support for the American effort in South Vietnam. The contingent was part of the Free World Military Forces, an effort by President Lyndon B. Johnson to enlist other nations to support the American cause in South...
1970
U.S. ground combat troops end two months of operations in Cambodia and return to South Vietnam. Military officials reported 354 Americans had been killed and 1,689 were wounded in the operation. The South Vietnamese reported 866 killed and 3,724 wounded. About 34,000 South Vietnamese troops remained in Cambodia.
U.S. and South...
World War I
1915
On June 29, 1915, Foreign Minister Istvan von Burian of Austria-Hungary sends a note to the United States protesting the U.S. sale and shipment of munitions in enormous quantities to Britain and its allies for use against the Central Powers–Austria-Hungary and Germany–on the battlefields of World War I.
When war broke...
World War II
1941
On this day in 1941, the Germans, having already launched their invasion of Soviet territory, invade and occupy Lvov, in eastern Galicia, in Ukraine, slaughtering thousands.
The Russians followed a scorched-earth policy upon being invaded by the Germans; that is, they would destroy, burn, flood, dismantle and remove anything and everything...