The court-martial of Benedict Arnold convenes in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After a relatively clean record in the early days of the American Revolution, Arnold was charged with 13 counts of misbehavior, including misusing government wagons and illegally buying and selling goods. Although his notorious betrayal was still many months away, Arnold’s resentment over this order and the […]

Norma Jeane Mortenson—who will become better known around the world as the glamorous actress and sex symbol Marilyn Monroe—is born on June 1, 1926, in Los Angeles, California. She was later given her mother’s name, and baptized Norma Jeane Baker. After a tumultuous childhood—both maternal grandparents and her mother were committed to mental institutions, and […]

On June 1, 1967, the Beatles release their eighth album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, a concept album that marked a new creative peak for the Liverpudlian superstars and that would become a critical favorite in the history of rock ‘n’ roll. When Paul McCartney brought the recently completed album by Bob Dylan’s London […]

On June 1, 1968, Helen Keller dies in Easton, Connecticut, at the age of 87. Blind and deaf from infancy, Keller became a world-renowned writer and lecturer. Helen Adams Keller was born on June 27, 1880, on a farm near Tuscumbia, Alabama. A normal infant, she was stricken with an illness at 19 months, probably […]

At a superpowers summit meeting in Washington, D.C., U.S. President George H.W. Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev sign a historic agreement to end production of chemical weapons and begin the destruction of both nations’ sizable reserves of them. According to the agreement, on-site inspectors from both countries would observe the destruction process. The treaty, […]

On June 1, 2008, a massive, early morning fire at the Universal Studios Hollywood theme park and studio backlot in Universal City, California destroys a trove of irreplaceable recordings by some of the greatest musical artists in American history, thousands of archived digital and video film copies and King Kong Encounter, one of the park’s […]