Behind History For June 23 – Today in History

Behind History For June 23

1913 – Second Balkan War: The Greeks defeat the Bulgarians in the Battle of Doiran.

1914 – Mexican Revolution: Pancho Villa takes Zacatecas from Victoriano Huerta.

1917 – In a game against the Washington Senators, Boston Red Sox pitcher Ernie Shore retires 26 batters in a row after replacing Babe Ruth, who had been ejected for punching the umpire.

1919 – Estonian War of Independence: The decisive defeat of the Baltische Landeswehr in the Battle of Cēsis; this date is celebrated as Victory Day in Estonia.

1926 – The College Board administers the first SAT exam.

1931 – Wiley Post and Harold Gatty take off from Roosevelt Field, Long Island in an attempt to circumnavigate the world in a single-engine plane.

1938 – The Civil Aeronautics Act is signed into law, forming the Civil Aeronautics Authority in the United States.

 

1940 – Adolf Hitler goes on a three-hour tour of the architecture of Paris with architect Albert Speer and sculptor Arno Breker in his only visit to the city.

1940 – Henry Larsen begins the first successful west-to-east navigation of Northwest Passage from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

1941 – The Lithuanian Activist Front declares independence from the Soviet Union and forms the Provisional Government of Lithuania; it lasts only briefly as the Nazis will occupy Lithuania a few weeks later.

1942 – World War II: Germany’s latest fighter aircraft, a Focke-Wulf Fw 190, is captured intact when it mistakenly lands at RAF Pembrey in Wales.

1946 – The 1946 Vancouver Island earthquake strikes Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada.

1947 – The United States Senate follows the United States House of Representatives in overriding U.S. President Harry S. Truman’s veto of the Taft–Hartley Act.

1951 – The ocean liner, SS United States, is christened and launched.

1956 – The French National Assembly takes the first step in creating the French Community by passing the Loi Cadre, transferring a number of powers from Paris to elected territorial governments in French West Africa.

1959 – Convicted Manhattan Project spy Klaus Fuchs is released after only nine years in prison and allowed to emigrate to Dresden, East Germany where he resumes a scientific career.

1960 – The United States Food and Drug Administration declares Enovid to be the first officially approved combined oral contraceptive pill in the world.

 

1961 – Cold War: The Antarctic Treaty, which sets aside Antarctica as a scientific preserve and bans military activity on the continent, comes into force 18 months after the opening date for signature was set for December 1, 1959.

1967 – Cold War: U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson meets with Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin in Glassboro, New Jersey for the three-day Glassboro Summit Conference.

1969 – Warren E. Burger is sworn in as Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court by retiring Chief Justice Earl Warren.

1969 – IBM announces that effective January 1970 it will price its software and services separately from hardware thus creating the modern software industry.

1972 – Watergate scandal: U.S. President Richard M. Nixon and White House Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman are taped talking about using the Central Intelligence Agency to obstruct the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s investigation into the Watergate break-ins.

1972 – Title IX of the United States Civil Rights Act of 1964 is amended to prohibit sexual discrimination to any educational program receiving federal funds.

1973 – A fire at a house in Hull, England, which kills a six-year-old boy is passed off as an accident; it later emerges as the first of 26 deaths by fire caused over the next seven years by serial arsonist Peter Dinsdale.

 

1985 – A terrorist bomb explodes at Narita International Airport near Tokyo. An hour later, the same group detonates a second bomb aboard Air India Flight 182, bringing the Boeing 747 down off the coast of Ireland killing all 329 aboard.

1991 – Sonic the Hedgehog is released to American audiences, then to PAL and Japanese audiences a month later, kickstarting the successful Sonic franchise.

1996 – The Nintendo 64 home video game console is released in Japan, ultimately selling 32.93 million units worldwide.

2001 – The 8.4 Mw  southern Peru earthquake shakes coastal Peru with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VIII (Severe). A destructive tsunami followed, leaving at least 74 people dead, and 2,687 injured.

2012 – Ashton Eaton breaks the decathlon world record at the United States Olympic Trials.

2013 – Nik Wallenda becomes the first man to successfully walk across the Grand Canyon on a tight rope.

 

2013 – Militants stormed a high-altitude mountaineering base camp near Nanga Parbat in Gilgit–Baltistan, Pakistan killing ten climbers, and a local guide.

2014 – The last of Syria’s declared chemical weapons are shipped out for destruction.

2016 – The United Kingdom votes in a referendum to leave the European Union, by 52% to 48%.

2017 – A series of terrorist attacks took place in Pakistan resulting in 96 deaths and wounded 200 others.

2018 – Violent clashes over several days between ethnic Berom farmers and Fulani herders in Plateau state, Nigeria, kill 86.

2018 – Explosion at a rally in Addis Ababa after speech by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed kills two and injures 150.

2019 – Biggest protests in Prague since the fall of communism against Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis, with estimated 250,000 in Letna Plain park.

2020 – Coronavirus death rate increases to 474K across the globe.