In Music Fund Hall in Philadelphia, the first national convention of the Republican Party, founded two years before, comes to its conclusion. John Charles Fremont of California, the famous explorer of the West, was nominated for the presidency, and William Lewis Dayton of New Jersey was chosen as the candidate for the vice presidency. In […]

Austrian Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian, installed as emperor of Mexico by French Emperor Napoleon III in 1864, is executed on the orders of Benito Juarez, the president of the Mexican Republic. In 1861, the liberal Mexican Benito Juarez became president of a country in financial ruin, and he was forced to default on his debts to […]

On June 19, 1892, Francesca Rojas’ two young children—a six-year-old boy and a four-year-old girl—are stabbed to death in their home in the small town of Necochea, Argentina. Rojas tells police that a man named Velasquez had threatened her when she rejected his sexual advances earlier in the day. Upon returning home later, Rojas claimed […]

On June 19, 1905, some 450 people attend the opening day of the world’s first notable nickelodeon, located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and developed by the brilliant Vaudeville impresario and showman Harry Davis. While it wasn’t technically the nation’s first theater for moving pictures, its runaway success made it, in many historians’ view, the birthplace of […]

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were convicted of conspiring to pass U.S. atomic secrets to the Soviets, are executed at Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, New York.

On June 19, 1971, Carole King 10 years after her professional songwriting-for-hire career took off, Carole King finally fulfilled her long-held dream of having her own hit record as both singer and songwriter when she earned her first number-one single as a performer with the double-sided hit “It’s Too Late/I Feel The Earth Move.” King […]

Chinese American Vincent Chin, 27, is beaten in the head with a baseball bat by two white autoworkers in Detroit on June 19, 1982. Chin died in a hospital four days later, on June 23.  During his bachelor party at a club on the night of June 19, Chin and three friends were singled out by Ronald […]

On June 19, 2006, on the remote island of Spitsbergen halfway between mainland Norway and the North Pole, the prime ministers of Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Iceland lay the ceremonial first stone of the Global Seed Vault. The vault, which now has the capacity to hold 2.25 billion seeds, is intended to “provide insurance […]

When the clock struck midnight on June 19, 2014, King Juan Carlos I of Spain’s nearly 40-year reign came to an end. Two weeks after abdicating the Spanish throne amidst sagging approval ratings, Juan Carlos symbolically removed his red sash—signifying his status as leader of the Spanish military—and wrapped it around the waist of his […]