A Blast from the Past

Today is June 2.

The bloody, four-year Civil War ended formally on this date in 1865. When Confederate Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith, commander of Southern forces west of the Mississippi, signed the surrender terms offered by Union negotiators the last Confederate army ceased to exist.

A federal jury in Denver, on this date in 1997, convicted Gulf War veteran Timothy McVeigh in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people. McVeigh was mad at the federal government -- specifically, the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms -- for the Branch Davidian tragedy at Waco, Texas, in which ATF agents participated. He was later executed.

Air Force Captain Scott O'Grady made headlines on this date in 1995 when a Serb-launched missile shot down his F-16 fighter-jet while on patrol over Bosnia. O'Grady bailed out and landed safely, although behind Serbian lines. He managed to evade the Serb troops looking for him for six days before he was rescued -- and became a hero.

It was on this date in 1953 that Queen Elizabeth II was crowned in London's Westminster Abbey by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Princess Elizabeth Alexandra Mary had succeeded her father, George VI, upon his death on Feb. 6, 1952.

In 1886, in an intimate ceremony held in the Blue Room of the White House, President Grover Cleveland, 49, married Frances Folsom, the 21-year-old daughter of his late law partner and friend, Oscar Folsom. The bride became the youngest first lady in U.S. history.

Pope John Paul II arrived in his native country of Poland on this date in 1979 for the first-ever visit by a pope to a communist nation.

And it was on this date in 1964 that the Rolling Stones opened the group's first U.S. tour with a show at a high school football stadium in Lynn, Mass.

We now return you to the present, already in progress.

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Today is June 3.

He did it for the woman he loved. It was on this date in 1937 that the Duke of Windsor, the former King Edward VIII, married divorcee Wallis Warfield Simpson of Baltimore, Md. The Duke had abdicated the British throne the previous December because British law wouldn't allow him to wed the divorced American commoner. After their marriage, the couple made their home in France and had little contact with the royal family.

The Battle of Midway began on this date in 1942. It raged for four days and was the turning point for the United States in the World War II Pacific campaign against Japan.

Astronaut Ed White became the first American to "walk" in space on this date in 1965. The 20-minute space walk took place during the Gemini 4 mission, during which White and fellow astronaut James McDivitt made 66 orbits of Earth.

The largest meeting on the environment in history opened on this date in 1992 amid tight security in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Ghali and the leaders of many nations attended, but not President Bush -- although the United States did have delegates at the gathering.

We now return you to the present, already in progress.

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Today is June 4.

It became known as the Tiananmen Square massacre. On this date in 1989 -- after a month and a half of student protests calling for democracy -- armed Chinese troops swept the demonstrators from the square in Beijing, killing at least hundreds of people. In the following months, thousands more were rounded up and jailed.

The World War II evacuation of Dunkirk, France, was completed on this date in 1940. A flotilla of small boats spent nearly a week crossing and re-crossing the English Channel to rescue nearly 350,000 British, French and Belgian troops from advancing German forces.

The world met "Dr. Death" Jack Kevorkian on this date in 1990 when an Oregon woman, Janet Adkins, killed herself in Michigan using a "suicide machine" developed by the euthanasia advocate and retired pathologist. She was Kevorkian's first "medicide" patient. She would not be the last.

It was on this date in 1896 that Henry Ford wheeled his first car from a brick shed and drove it around the darkened streets of Detroit on a trial run.

And in 1992, U.S. Postal officials announced that the young, 1950s-era Elvis Presley portrait was chosen overwhelmingly over the older, Las Vegas-style Elvis in a nationwide vote for a new postage stamp honoring "The King." The stamp would be issued Jan. 8, 1993, on the anniversary of Presley's birth.

We now return you to the present, already in progress.

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Today is June 5.

Another Kennedy was assassinated on this date in 1968. Robert F. Kennedy -- the younger brother of the late President John F. Kennedy -- was campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination when he was gunned down in Los Angeles. Kennedy, 42, died the next day. A Palestine-born man, Sirhan Sirhan, was convicted in his murder.

The Six Day War between Israel and the Arab states of Egypt, Syria and Jordan began on this date in 1967. It lasted, as the name implies, six days. Israel won -- taking control of Syria's Golan Heights and Egypt's Gaza Strip -- and emerged as a major power in the region.

Disaster in Idaho: on this date in 1976, the Teton River Dam collapsed as the lake behind it was filling for the first time. 14 people were killed and 300 square miles were flooded, causing an estimated $1 billion damage.

And it was on this date in 1986 that former National Security Agency employee Ronald Pelton was convicted in Baltimore, Md., of spying for the Soviet Union. The verdict came one day after former Navy intelligence analyst Jonathan Jay Pollard pleaded guilty to espionage on behalf of Israel.

We now return you to the present, already in progress.

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Today is June 6.

President George W. Bush proposed creation of a cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security on this date in 2002. Twenty-two existing federal agencies would be combined in the new department whose main responsibility would be prevention of terrorist attacks.

It was called "Operation Overlord," but we know it as "D-Day." It was on this date in 1944 that hundreds of thousands of Allied troops crossed the English Channel and began landing on the beaches of Normandy on the northern coast of France. The invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe was the largest in history, and opened the long-awaited second front of World War II.

Israel invaded Lebanon on this date in 1982 in a bid to get rid of the Palestinian guerrillas who had been using southern Lebanon as a base of operations to shell Israel's northern towns and in general make life miserable for the Tel Aviv government. Israeli forces drove as far north as Beirut.

James Meredith, who in 1962 became the first African American to attend the University of Mississippi, was shot and wounded by a sniper on this date in 1966. during a civil rights march through the South.

On this date in 1991, the Soviet KGB released secret documents from 1941 that showed the British had lured Rudolph Hess, Hitler's deputy, to the Duke of Hamilton's estate. Hess had surprised the world on May 10, 1941, by flying alone to Scotland and parachuting out of his plane on what he called a "mission of humanity," offering peace to Britain if it would join with Germany in attacking the Soviet Union. He was immediately imprisoned.

And it was on this date in 1933 that the first drive-in movie theater opened in Camden, N.J., offering teen-agers a new place to go to make out. Today, drive-in theaters are a dying breed.

We now return you to the present, already in progress.

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Today is June 7.

Twenty-seven years after the slaying, on this date in 2002, a Norwalk, Conn., jury convicted Michael Skakel, 41, nephew of Sen. Robert Kennedy, in the 1975 murder of Martha Moxley, his 15-year-old neighbor.

Martin Burnham, a U.S. missionary captured in the Philippines by a Muslim group more than a year earlier, was fatally shot during a rescue attempt on this date in 2002.

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Two of Alaska's Aleutian Islands were overrun by Japanese forces on this date in 1942. The islands of Attu and Kiska were occupied by the Japanese for about a year until U.S troops retook the islands a year later.

It was on this date in 1864 that Republican delegates -- meeting in Baltimore, Md. -- re-nominated Abraham Lincoln as the GOP presidential candidate. His running mate would be Andrew Johnson.

A British newspaper reported on this date in 1992 that Princess Diana, in despair over her failed marriage to Prince Charles, had tried to kill herself five times and was suffering from depression-linked illnesses. The royal couple would separate later in the year and divorce in 1996.

The first videocassette recorders went on sale to the public on this date in 1975. The Sony Corp.'s Betamax sold for $995. Eventually, another VCR format, VHS, proved more successful and Sony stopped making the Betamax. Then, in the late '90s the digital video disc, or DVD, appeared and showed early signs of replacing the VCR as the instrument of choice.

We now return you to the present, already in progress.

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Today is June 8.

In 1968, James Earl Ray, an escaped convict, was arrested in London and charged with the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. King was shot as he stood on a motel balcony in Memphis, Tenn., where he had gone to aid in a sanitation department dispute. Ray confessed, then spent the rest of his life denying that he killed King and died in prison.

Oliver North's former secretary, Fawn Hall, testified on Capitol Hill on this date in 1987 as congressional hearings into the Iran-Contra scandal continued. Hall told lawmakers that, to protect her boss, she helped him alter and shred sensitive documents and smuggle papers out of the White House. She did so by stuffing them into her clothing and boots.

It was on this date in 1999 that the case of 5 New York City police officers accused in the 1997 torturing of Haitian immigrant ended with the conviction of one of the officers by a federal court jury in Brooklyn. A second officer had pleaded guilty; 3 others were acquitted. The case focused national attention on the issue of police brutality.

Tennessee seceded from the Union to join the Confederacy on this date in 1861. The Civil War was less than two months old.

And it was on this date in 1869 that Ives McGaffney of Chicago obtained a patent for a "sweeping machine." It was the first vacuum cleaner.

We now return you to the present, already in progress.