“A generation which ignores history has no past — and no future.” —Robert Heinlein
June 21
1377 – King Edward III, who led England into the Hundred Years’ War with France, dies.
1527 – Niccolò Machiavelli, an Italian Renaissance diplomat, philosopher, advocate of tyranny, and author of The Prince, dies.
1631 – English adventurer John Smith dies. “John Smith was an English soldier, explorer, and historian. He is most famous for his role in helping stabilize Jamestown, the first permanent English colony in America, and his legendary encounter with the Powhatan princess, Pocahontas.”
1788 – The U.S. Constitution goes into effect, as New Hampshire is the ninth state to ratify it. Read my piece.
1832 – Joseph H. Rainey is born into slavery. A remarkable man, first a barber, then forced to work on Confederate Charleston’s fortifications during the Civil War, he escaped to the West Indies but returned to enter politics in his native South Carolina. In 1870, he became the first black U.S. congressman, and went on to serve four terms as a member of the Republican Party, more than any other black member of the House in the Reconstruction era. He championed the civil rights of black, native Indian, and Chinese Americans against racist Democrats and complacent Republicans. He was later a U.S. internal revenue agent and a banker.
1834 – American inventor Cyrus McCormick patents his reaping machine.
1876 – Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, the crazed and vicious Mexican president, general, and dictator infamous for massacring the American, European, and Mexican defenders of the Alamo, dies.
June 22
217 BC – At the Battle of Raphia, Egypt’s Ptolemy IV defeats Antiochus III, King of Syria, in the “battle of elephants.”
168 BC – The Battle of Pydna occurs, a “decisive military engagement in the Roman victory over Macedonia in the Third Macedonian War.” Roman general Lucius Aemilius Paullus outsmarted and defeated Macedonian King Perseus. “Perseus fled, allowing the Romans to end the Macedonian monarchy and divide Macedonia into four republics.”
431 – St. Cyril of Alexandria opens the Church Council of Ephesus, which will condemn the heresy of Nestorianism.
1535 – Cardinal—now St.—John Fisher is taken from the Tower of London and executed for refusing to recognize heretic King Henry VIII as the Head of the Church in England. Now celebrated as the feast day of him and fellow martyr St. Thomas More.
1865 – The CSS Shenandoah, a Confederate raider, fires the last shot of the U.S. Civil War—a blank—at a New Bedford whaling ship in the Bering Sea off Siberia.
1941 – Operation Barbarossa, the surprise Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union/Russia and the biggest such operation of all time, begins. “With some 3.5 million German and nearly 700,000 German-allied troops (Romanians, Finns, Hungarians, Italians, Slovaks, and others) facing off against a Red Army that numbered some 5.5 million men, the opening phase of Barbarossa saw nearly 10 million human beings locked in mortal combat from the outset. And Soviet mobilization wasn’t finished by a long shot—soon there would be more than 14 million men and women called up for the war against the Germans.” It became a deadly disaster for the Germans, and a costly victory for the Soviets.
1945 – U.S. forces have secured Japanese island Okinawa, a costly victory due to the entrenched and warped Japanese attitude that they must fight to the death rather than surrender. “The battle for Okinawa [was dragged] out over nearly three months and included some of the worst kamikaze attacks of the war. By the time Okinawa was secured by American forces on June 22, 1945, the United States had sustained over 49,000 casualties including more than 12,500 men killed or missing. Okinawans caught in the fighting suffered greatly, with an estimate as high as 150,000 civilians killed. Of the Japanese defending the island, an estimated 110,000 died. Some of the most well-known stories from the long fight include the heroics of conscientious objector Private Desmond Doss and the death of Ernie Pyle [at] Ie Shima. Twenty-four American military personnel we[re] awarded the Medal of Honor for going above and beyond the call of duty. In American hands, the island provided a vital airfield in the final drive on Japan, as the Allies finally brought about Japanese surrender less than three months later.”
1987 – Fred Astaire, one of the greatest and most innovative dancers of the Golden Age of Hollywood, dies.
June 23
930 – Reported date on which the Althing (or Alþingi) is first convened in Iceland; the world’s oldest parliament.
1534 – Oda Nobunaga, the daimyo and innovative military leader who unified Japan, is born.
1763 – Joséphine de Beauharnais, first wife and empress of Napoleon, is born.
1775 – “General Washington leaves Philadelphia for Boston on June 23, 1775, the same day of a newspaper report from a Boston hospital of soldiers being shot with old nails.
‘General Washington and General Lee set off from Philadelphia to take command of the American army at Massachusetts Bay’… One of the surgeons attending the military hospital at Boston, has written home, that the provincials in the late engagement, ‘had either exhausted their ball, or were determined that every wound should prove fatal. Their muskets were charged with old nails and angular pieces of iron, and from most of the men being wounded in the legs, I am inclined to believe it was their design, not wishing to kill the men, to leave them as burdens on us, to exhaust the provisions, as well as to intimidate the rest of the soldiery.’”
1948 – Clarence Thomas, influential constitutionalist U.S. Supreme Court Justice, is born.
2016 – The UK votes to leave the globalist European Union, “Brexit,” a major victory for Nigel Farage and the British people.
June 24
79 – Vespasian, Roman emperor who built the Colosseum and founded the Flavian dynasty, dies. His famous last words, referring to the postmortem deification of emperors, were, “Vae, puto deus fio”, often translated as “Alas, I think I’m becoming a god.”
1398 – Hongwu, Chinese emperor who founded the Ming dynasty, dies.
1497 – Venetian John Cabot, “bearing letters patent from Henry VII” and seeking a western sea passage to Asia, lands on what is now the Canadian coast. “From this, the first official English voyage of exploration in the Western Ocean, derived Britain’s subsequent claims in the New World and the beginnings of her overseas empire.”
1509 – Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon are crowned monarchs of England at Westminster Abbey.
1519 – The infamous Renaissance Italian noblewoman Lucrezia Borgia dies.
1812 – Napoleon’s Grande Armée invades Russia in what would prove to be a disastrous campaign.
1908 – Grover Cleveland, who served as 22nd and 24th US president, dies.
1948 – The Soviets blockade West Berlin in an ultimately unsuccessful Cold War standoff with America.
2022 – Anti-constitutional Roe v. Wade is overturned by the US Supreme Court, ending federal protections for abortion. Between the original Roe decision and its overturn, more than 63 million unborn babies were aborted in the US.
June 25
841 – The bloody Battle at Fontenay, part of the civil war between Charlemagne’s grandsons, happens.
1139 – The Battle of Ourique is a victory for Portuguese Prince Afonso Henriques over the Muslim Almoravid Moors.
1876 – The Battle of Little Bighorn occurs, also famously known as “Custer’s Last Stand” since Gen. Custer and his men were massacred during the battle by the victorious Indians. “268 7th cavalry soldiers, civilians, and Indian scouts will be killed along with an estimated 60-100 Lakota and Cheyenne. Major Reno and Captain Benteen’s forces, along with the pack train, will remain under siege through that evening into the following day.”
1903 – English writer George Orwell, famous for his dystopian novels 1984 and Animal Farm, is born.
1947 – Holocaust victim Anne Frank’s diary is published. Read my full piece.
1950 – Communist North Korean forces invade the republic of South Korea, launching the Korean War that soon involved Americans too, in support of South Korea.
1976 – Talented and iconic songwriter Johnny Mercer dies. His hits include “Laura,” “Moon River,” and “Ac-cent-tchu-ate the Positive.”
2009 – Pop music star Michael Jackson dies.
June 26
363 – Emperor Julian the Apostate dies after being speared during his failed invasion of the Persian Empire. He was a Christian who apostatized, tried to revive paganism, and martyred faithful Christians. The attempt to revive Roman imperial paganism died with him.
1541 – Francisco Pizarro, the Spanish founder of Lima and conqueror of the Incan Empire, dies.
1794 – The Battle of Fleurus “was the climax of the Flanders Campaign of 1792-95 and was one of the most decisive battles in the War of the First Coalition(1792-1797). A French victory, Fleurus ensured French ascendency for the rest of the war, leading to France’s conquest of Belgium and to the destruction of the Dutch Republic.”
1917 – The first U.S. troops arrive in France during World War I.
1925 – Charlie Chaplin’s iconic silent film “The Gold Rush” premieres.
June 27
1458 – Alfonso V of Aragon “the Magnanimous,” key Renaissance patron of the arts and scholarship and king of both Aragon and Naples, dies.
1743 – The Battle of Dettingen, between the French and allied Hanoverian, Austrian, and British troops (the latter won). It marked the last time a reigning British monarch—George II—personally led soldiers into battle.
1858 – The Treaties of Tianjin ending first part of the second Opium War between the British and Chinese are signed.
1872 – Black American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar is born.
1950 – U.S. President Truman, responding to a UN plea for aid to the South Koreans against Communist North Korean invasion, orders U.S. Navy and Air Force military intervention in the Korean War.
2001 – Oscar-winning American actor Jack Lemmon dies.
June 28
1491 – King Henry VIII of England is born. He would eventually have six wives—some of them he divorced, two he killed, one predeceased him, and one outlived him—in his quest for a male heir. He would also institute a persecution of Catholics faithful to the Church and opposed to Henry’s adulterous marriages, costing the lives of more than 400 Catholics. The victims of this bloody tyrant, including thousands who participated in uprisings against his reign, were as many as 57,000.
1519 – Charles of Spain becomes Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.
1776 – During the American Revolution: ‘Colonel WILLIAM MOULTRIE was the real “Hero of Charleston” for defending Fort Sullivan in Charleston, South Carolina from the onslaught by the British forces on June 28, 1776. Moultrie was under the command of General Charles Lee, who did not believe the fort, built of palmetto logs would stand up to the British artillery. General Charles Lee had actually recommended evacuating Fort Sullivan. Well, it turns out the fort that William Moultrie believed would hold up, did!’
1778 – The Battle of Monmouth occurs during the American Revolution. It included a serious tactical mistake and retreat on Gen. Charles Lee’s part, sparking a furious rebuke from Gen. George Washington. Washington did arrive in time to rally his troops again and fight the British, who then escaped under cover of darkness. Read my full piece for more details on the battle and Washington’s “superb” leadership (as Lafayette described it).
1836 – Death of Founding Father James Madison. “[History] James Madison (1751-1836) was a Founding Father of the United States and the fourth American president, serving in office from 1809 to 1817. An advocate for a strong federal government, the Virginia-born Madison composed the first drafts of the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights and earned the nickname ‘Father of the Constitution.’”
1838 – Young Queen Victoria is crowned monarch of Britain.
1914 – The assassination that sparked WWI. The “heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian empire, fifty-year old Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was assassinated [with his wife] in Sarajevo by a 19-year-old Bosnian-Serb nationalist. The assassination began an at first slow-moving diplomatic crisis which would result a month later, July 28th, in Austria-Hungary declaring war on Serbia.” Soon multiple countries were involved in the conflict. Franz Ferdinand’s tragic last words to his dying wife were, “Sophie, Sophie! Don’t die! Live for our children!”
1919 – World War I ends as the Treaty of Versailles is signed. Unfortunately, some of its more shortsighted provisions ended up causing intense German resentment and sparking the second World War.
Did I miss any important events? Let me know in the comments.
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Author: Catherine Salgado
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