On June 3, 1754, during the Seven Years’ War, a 22-year-old lieutenant colonel in the Virginia militia named George Washington begins construction of a makeshift Fort Necessity. The fort was built to defend his forces from French soldiers enraged by the murder of Ensign Joseph Coulon de Jumonville while in Washington’s custody. One month later, […]

Union General Ulysses S. Grant makes what he later recognizes to be his greatest mistake by ordering a frontal assault on entrenched Confederates at Cold Harbor, Virginia. The result was some 7,000 Union casualties in less than an hour of fighting. Grant’s Army of the Potomac and Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia had […]

On June 3, 1916, United States President Woodrow Wilson signs into law the National Defense Act, which expanded the size and scope of the National Guard—the network of states’ militias that had been developing steadily since colonial times—and guaranteed its status as the nation’s permanent reserve force. Though Theodore Roosevelt and other Republicans were pushing […]

Larry McMurtry, one of the most well-known modern writers in the western genre, is born in Wichita Falls, Texas on June 3, 1936. McMurtry’s family had been involved in Texas ranching for three generations, and he was exposed to ranching life from an early age. McMurtry, however, ultimately proved more interested in books than in […]

On June 3, 1940, the German air force bombs Paris, killing 254 people, most of them civilians. Determined to wreck France’s economy and military, reduce its population, and in short, cripple its morale as well as its ability to rally support for other occupied nations, the Germans bombed the French capital without regard to the […]

Edward H. White II opens the hatch of the Gemini 4 and steps out of the capsule, becoming the first American astronaut to walk in space.

With protests for democratic reforms entering their seventh week, the Chinese government authorizes its soldiers and tanks to reclaim Beijing’s Tiananmen Square at all costs. By nightfall on June 4, Chinese troops had forcibly cleared the square, killing hundreds and arresting thousands of demonstrators and suspected dissidents On April 15, the death of Hu Yaobang, […]

During one horrific 8-minute period on June 3, 2017, eight people were killed as a band of terrorists drove a van through a pedestrian walkway on the London Bridge. The men then exited, armed with pink steak knives, and proceeded to slash and stab people in a nearby market. The attack was the third to […]