A mere 83 hours after leaving New York City, the Transcontinental Express train arrives in San Francisco. That any human being could travel across the entire nation in less than four days was inconceivable to previous generations of Americans. During the early 19th century, when Thomas Jefferson first dreamed of an American nation stretching from […]

On June 4, 1916, the Battle of Lutsk marks the beginning of the Brusilov Offensive, the largest and most successful Allied offensive of World War I. When the fortress city of Verdun, France, came under siege by the Germans in February 1916, the French pleaded with the other Allies, Britain and Russia, to mount offensives […]

As the German army advances through northern France during the early days of World War II, it cuts off British troops from their French allies, forcing an enormous evacuation of soldiers across the North Sea from the town of Dunkirk to England. The Allied armies, trapped by the sea, were quickly being encircled on all […]

On June 4, 1940, 22-year-old Carson McCullers’ first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, is published. The novel, about misfits in a Georgia mill town, is an instant success. McCullers, born Lula Carson Smith in Columbus, Georgia, in 1917, was strongly encouraged in her childhood artistic endeavors by her mother, who believed she was […]

On June 4, 1944, U.S. naval forces seize one of Adolf Hitler’s deadly submarines, the U-505, as it makes its way home after patrolling the Gold Coast of Africa The German submarine was the first enemy warship captured on the high seas by the U.S. Navy since the War of 1812. If ever there was […]

Angela Yvonne Davis, a Black communist activist and former philosophy professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, is acquitted on charges of conspiracy, murder and kidnapping by a jury in San Jose, California. In October 1970, Davis was arrested in New York City in connection with a shootout that occurred on August 7 in […]

In what has later been called “the gig that changed the world,” the Sex Pistols appear at the Lesser Free Trade Hall in Manchester, England, helping to launch the punk era. By June 1976, the Sex Pistols had been playing together under that name for only seven months, and though their look, their sound and […]

For domestic guru and media mogul Martha Stewart, known for her “good things” tips and tricks, things turn very bad when a federal grand jury serves her and her former stock broker a nine-count indictment, including charges of obstruction of justice, securities fraud, conspiracy and making false statements. Stewart, CEO and chairwoman of Martha Stewart […]