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| Charles J. Guiteau |
June 30, 1520 – Spanish conquistadors led by Hernán Cortés
fought their way out of Tenochtitlan.
June 30, 1685 – Poet and dramatist John Gay was born in
Barnstaple, England.
June 30, 1775 - The Continental Congress drafted its
rationale for taking up arms against Great Britain in the Articles of War. In
the Articles of War, written one year before the adoption of the Declaration of
Independence, Congress referred to “his Majesty’s most faithful subjects in
these Colonies” and laid the blame for colonial discontent not on King George
III, but on “attempts of the British Ministry, to carry into execution, by
force of arms, several unconstitutional and oppressive acts of the British
parliaments for laying taxes in America.” By phrasing their discontent this
way, Congress attempted to notify the king that American colonists were unhappy
with parliamentary policy.
June 30, 1805 – The U.S. Congress organized the Michigan
Territory.
June 30, 1817 – English botanist and explorer Joseph Dalton
Hooker was born in Halesworth, Suffolk, England. Hooker was one of the greatest
British botanists and explorers of the 19th century. Hooker was a founder of
geographical botany, and Charles Darwin's closest friend.
June 30, 1859 – French acrobat Charles Blondin became the
first person to cross Niagara Falls on a tightrope.
June 30, 1860 - A
debate on the merits of the theory of evolution took place at Oxford University.
It occurred as part of the annual meeting of the British Association for the
Advancement of Science. Darwin's book “On
the Origin of Species” (1859) had just been published seven
months earlier, and was hotly contested by scientists and theologians on both
sides of the issue.
June 30, 1862 – The Seven Days’ Battles continued at
Glendale (White Oak Swamp), Va. as Robert E. Lee had a chance to deal a
decisive blow against George B. McClellan’s Army of the Potomac. Lee’s Army of
Northern Virginia had already won the Seven Days’ Battles, but the
Confederates’ attempt to rout McClellan cost many Southern casualties. Lee’s
failure at Glendale permitted McClellan’s army to fall back to higher, more
defensible locations.
June 30, 1881 – Lobina Knight Mitchell was mistakenly
murdered in Cragford, Ala. by Charles J. Waldrop, who was hanged for the crime
on July 3, 1881.
June 30, 1882 – Charles J. Guiteau was hanged in Washington,
D.C. for the assassination of U.S. President James Garfield.
June 30, 1906 – Prof. L.K. Benson, a graduate of Southern
University, was named principal of the Monroeville Institute in Monroeville,
Ala. He replaced I.A. Weaver, who took the job as editor of the Lineville
Headlight.
June 30, 1908 – The famous Tunguska event explosion occurred
in Siberia near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in what is now Krasnoyarsk
Krai, Russia. This meteor (or comet) explosion flattened nearly 770 square
miles of trees and struck people unconscious some 40 miles away. Commonly
thought to be caused by the air burst of a comet or meteor over the area, the
impact was a 1,000 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, and
it knocked over an estimated 80 million trees.
June 30, 1911 - Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz was born in Szetejnie, Lithuania.
June 30, 1915 – The Evergreen Courant reported that the
following officers had been recently elected at Downing Lodge, No. 580, in
Castleberry, Ala. Those officers included S. Castleberry, Worshipful Master;
J.W. Thurmond, Senior Warden; L.A. Kirkland, Junior Warden; J.F. Albreast,
Treasurer; E.A. White, Secretary; R.A. Baird, Senior Deacon; E.L. Connor,
Junior Deacon; J.D. Davis, Tyler; Rev. S.B. Strout, Chaplain; John L. Monk and
J.M. Branch, Stewards.
June 30, 1915 – The Evergreen Courant reported that J.G.
Barrow was now in charge of Hotel Evergreen in Evergreen, Ala.
June 30, 1915 – The Conecuh County Grand Jury was scheduled
to meet in Evergreen, Ala. in regard to the trial of John Salter and Robert
Watkins who made a full confession to the brutal murder of Martha Lassiter, the
attempted murder of Wiley House and the robbery and burning of House’s
residence on June 23, 1915.
June 30, 1921 – U.S. President Warren G. Harding appointed
former President William Howard Taft Chief Justice of the United States.
June 30, 1928 - As mandated by the state legislature, convict
leasing ended in Alabama. While many southern states leased convicts to
private industry as laborers, Alabama's program, begun in 1846, lasted the
longest, and for much of that time the notorious system was a key revenue
source for the state.
June 30, 1934 – The Night of the Long Knives, Adolf Hitler's violent
purge of his political rivals in Germany, took place.
June 30, 1936 - Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind, one
of the best-selling novels of all time and the basis for a blockbuster 1939
movie, was published on this day.
June 30, 1941 - A radio version of Alabama author Octavus
Roy Cohen's book “I Love You Again”
was broadcast as part of “The Lux Radio
Theatre” series.
June 30, 1946 – The Louisville & Nashville Railroad
announced a number of train schedule changes for its depot in Evergreen, Ala.
that took effect one minute after midnight on this date. Train No. 5 for Mobile
and New Orleans was changed to No. 7 and began leaving at 6:15 a.m. instead of
5:40 a.m. Train No. 4 for Montgomery, Atlanta, Washington, Birmingham,
Louisville, Cincinnati, St. Louis and Chicago began leaving at 4:10 p.m.
instead of 4:20 p.m. Train No. 38 for Jacksonville, Montgomery, Atlanta,
Washington and New York began leaving at 5:22 a.m. instead of 5:03 a.m. Train
No. 6 for Montgomery began leaving at 1:59 p.m. instead of 1:50 p.m.
June 30, 1956 – A TWA Super Constellation and a United
Airlines DC-7 collided above the Grand Canyon in Arizona and crashed, killing
all 128 on board both airliners.
June 30, 1958 - The U.S. Congress passed a law authorizing
the admission of Alaska as the 49th state in the Union.
June 30, 1959 – At the close of business on this day, Clyde
Dickey Bozeman took over the operations of The Thomasville Times in
Thomasville, Ala. after buying it from Times editor and publisher Earl L.
Tucker.
June 30, 1967 – Morris T. Ward resigned as principal at
Evergreen High School, where he had served as principal for six years, to
accept a position as assistant to Wilcox County Superintendent of Education Guy
S. Kelly. Ward, who had been a successful coach at Lyeffion and Thomaston, had
been Evergreen’s principal since July 1, 1961. Harvey G. Pate was Conecuh
County’s Superintendent of Education at the time of Ward’s resignation.
June 30, 1969 – In an incident often attributed to the
Bermuda Triangle, the 60-foot Maple Bank was found drifting north of Bermuda
with no trace of survivors.
June 30, 1962 - Sandy Koufax struck out 13 batters and walked
five to lead the Brooklyn Dodgers to victory over the New York Mets, 5-0, with
his first career no-hitter.
June 30, 1970 - The Cincinnati Reds moved to their new home
at Riverfront Stadium.
June 30, 1971 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the government
could not prevent the Washington Post or the New York Times from publishing the
“Pentagon Papers.”
June 30, 1976 – “The
Outlaw Josie Wales,” a movie version of Alabama author Forrest
Carter's book “Gone to Texas”
(also called “The Rebel Outlaw Josie Wales”),
was released.
June 30, 1978 - At Atlanta's Fulton County Stadium, Mobile,
Ala. native Willie McCovey hit his 500th home run.
June 30, 1984 - Alabama author Lillian Hellman died in
Martha's Vineyard, Mass.
June 30, 1988 – In Conecuh County, Ala. Odis Mims caught an
18-1/2 pound catfish on this Thursday evening.
June 30, 1989 – Eleven people were injured, but no one was
killed, when a van belonging to the Springhill Church of God in Mobile, Ala.
suffered a blow out, struck a guard rail and turned over just north of the
Conecuh County, Ala. line on Interstate Highway 65.
June 30, 1995 – Moore Academy School at Pine Apple in Wilcox
County, Ala. was added to the Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage.
June 30, 1995 – The Givens House in Andalusia, Ala. was
added to the Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage.
