On This Day in History.....

632 Origin of Persian [Yezdegird] Era
1567 Mary Queen of Scots thrown into Lochleven Castle prison
1671 Cossack rebel leader Stenka Razin tortured, executed in Moscow
1755 British capture Fort Beaus‚jour, expel the Acadians
1832 Battle of Kellogg's Grove, Ill
1858 Abraham Lincoln says "A house divided against itself cannot stand"
1864 Siege of Petersburg & Richmond begins
1871 Ancient Arabic Order of Nobles of the Mystic Shrine founded, NYC
1879 Gilbert & Sullivan's "HMS Pinafore" debuts at Bowery Theatre NYC
1882 17" hailstones weighing 1.75 lbs fall in Dubuque Iowa
1883 1st baseball "Ladies' Day" (NY Gothams beat Cleve Spiders 5-2)
1896 Temperture hits 127øF at Fort Mojave, Calif
1903 1st Highlander (Yankee) shut-out victory 1-0 over White Sox
1903 Ford Motors incorporates
1904 Bloomsday (date of events in James Joyce's Ulysses)
1909 1st US airplane sold commercially, by Glenn Curtiss for $5,000
1916 Boston Brave's Tom Hughes 2nd no-hitter beats Pitts, 2-0
1917 1st Congress of Soviets convene in Russia
1922 Henry Berliner demonstrates his helicopter to US Bureau of Aeronautics
1927 Tommy Armour wins golf's US open
1932 Pres Hoover & VP Charles Curtis renominated by Rep Convention
1933 National Industrial Recovery Act becomes law (later struck down)
1933 US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) created
1937 Marx Brothers' "A Day At The Races" opens in LA
1938 St Louis Browns walk Boston Red Sox Jimmy Foxx 6 times in a row
1940 Commuinist govt installed in Lithuania
1941 1st US federally owned airport opened Wash DC
1943 Race riot in Beaumont Texas (2 die)
1946 Lloyd Mangrum wins golf's US open after 2 playoffs
1947 1st network news-Dumont's "News from Washington"
1947 Pravda denounces Marshall Plan
1949 Gas turbine-electric locomotive demonstrated, Erie Pa
1951 Ben Hogan wins golf's US open for 2nd year in a row
1953 Despite Johnny Mize 2,000th hit, Yanks lose ending 18 game win streak & also ending St Louis Brown 14 game losing streak
1955 Pope Pius XII ex-communicated Argentine Pres Juan Peron
1957 White Sox reliever Dixie Howell hits 2 HRs to beat Wash Senators 8-6
1961 Dave Garroway is fired as Today Show host
1961 Soviet ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev defects to West in Paris
1963 Levi Eshkol replaces David Ben-Gurion as Israeli PM
1963 Valentina Tereshkova becomes 1st woman in space, aboard Vostok 6
1964 Quake strikes Niigata Japan
1967 50,000 attend Monterey International Pop Festival
1968 Lee Trevino is 1st to play all 4 rounds of golf's US open under par
1969 Supreme Court rules suspension of Adam Clayton Powell Jr from House
1970 Kenneth A Gibson elected 1st black mayor of Newark, NJ
1970 Race riots in Miami Florida
1971 Racial disturbance in Jacksonville Florida
1975 Bucks trade Kareem Abdul-Jabber & Walt Wesley to LA for 4 players
1975 Randy Farland finds a 14-leaf clover near Sioux Falls, SD
1976 Student uprisings begin in Soweto, South Africa (Soweto Day)
1977 "Beatlemania" opens on Broadway
1977 Leonid Brezhnev named president of USSR
1977 Ron Guidry's 1st complete game, 7-0 over KC Royals
1978 Cin Red Tom Seaver no-hits St Louis Cards, 4-0
1978 Ringo releases "Bad Boy" album; Wings releases "I've Had Enough"
1979 Carl Yastrzemski hits his 1,000th extra base hit
1979 H-E Schuster discovers asteroid #2275
1982 Britain requests Argentina arrange for return of prisoners
1983 Charlos Vieira completes 191 hr "nonstop" cycling in Leiria Portugal
1983 European Space Agency launches European Comm Satellite 1, Oscar 10
1983 Ringo releases "Old Wave" album in West Germany
1984 Edwin Moses wins his 100th consecutive 400-meter hurdles race
1984 Matt de Waal finishes 14,290-mi round trip from Salt Lake City (106d)
1985 T C Chen, ahead by 4 strokes in final round of US Open
1985 Willie Banks of USA sets triple jump record (58'11«") in Indianapolis quadruple bogies the 5th hole & never recovers
1986 1 day general strike in South Africa
1987 Joe Robbie Stadium in Miami, opens
1987 Subway gunman Bernhard Goetz acquitted on all but gun possession charges after shooting 4 black youths who tried to rob him
1988 Boston Red Sox Barrett steals home
1988 In Santa Barbara, CA, a team of 32 divers begin cycling underwater on a standard tricycle, to complete 116.66 mi in 75 hrs 20 mins
1989 "Ghostbusters II" premiers
1989 4 golfers shoot a hole-in-one on the same hole at the US Open are made all on the 6th hole (Weaver, Wiebe, Pate & Price) Only 17 hole-in-ones recorded since the US open began, today 4 more
1991 Boris Yeltsin elected president of Russian SSR
1991 Minnesota Twins win a team record 15 games in a row
1991 NYC Mayor Dinkins declares "Joseph Doherty Week" (through the 23rd)
1991 Otis Nixon steals NL record 6 bases in 1 day
1991 With 3 runs in the 9th, Balt ends Twins 15 game win streak 6-5
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Missing In Action.....

1965 SCHUMANN JOHN R. COKATO MN PROBABLY DEAD
1968 BOWMAN FRANK WALTERBORO SC
1968 CHANDLER ANTHONY GORDON WARNER ROBINS GA
1968 RUPINSKI BERNARD FRANCIS EDWARDSVILLE PA
1968 WILBER WALTER EUGENE MILLERTON PA 02/12/73 RELEASED BY DRV INJURED
1973 CORNELIUS SAMUEL B. LUBBOCK TX SURVIVAL UNLIKELY PER SAR
1973 SMALLWOOD JOHN J. MARIETTA GA SURVIVAL UNLIKELY

Births which occurred on June 16:

1874 Arthur Meighen © 9th PM of Canada (1920-21, 1926)
1895 Stan Laurel comedian (Laurel & Hardy)
1899 Nelson Doubleday US, publisher (Doubleday)
19-- Geoffrey Pierson actor (Ryan's Hope)
19-- Ian Buchanan actor (General Hospital, Gary Shandling Show)
19-- Nancy Lane Passaic NJ, actress (Tina-Rhoda, Angie, Duck Factory)
19-- Pat Briggs rocker (RU Ready)
1902 Barbara McClintock US, cytogeneticist (Nobel 1983)
1907 Jack Albertson Malden Mass, actor (Thin Man, Chico & the Man)
1910 E.G. Marshall Owatonna Minn, actor (Lawrence-Defenders)
1910 Ilona Massey Budapest Hungary, actress/singer (Ilona Massey Show)
1912 Enoch Powell England, ©, racist
1917 Katharine Graham newspaper publisher (Wash Post)
1920 John Howard Griffin US, photographer/author (Black Like Me)
1922 Frances Rafferty Iowa, actress (Abbott & Costello in Hollywood)
1925 Faith Domergue New Orleans, actress (House of 7 Corpses)
1928 Sergiu Comissiona Buch Romania, conductor (Haifa Symph 1959-64)
1935 Jim Dine Cincinatti Oh, pop artist (St John the Divine)
1937 August Busch III CEO (Anheuser-Busch)
1937 Erich Segal author (Love Story, Oliver's Story)
1938 Joyce Carol Oates US, novelist (Garden of Earthly Delights) (1946)
1938 Mickie Finn Hugo Okla, TV hostess/banjo player (Mickie Finn's)
1940 Billy "Crash" Craddock Greensboro NC, singer
1941 Lamont Dozier Detroit, songwriter (Dozier-Holland-Dozier)
1942 Giacomo Agostini Lovere, Italy, world motorcycle race champion
1943 Joan Van Ark NYC, actress (Valene-Dallas/Knots Landing)
1944 Reg Presley singer (Troggs-Wild Thing)
1944 Takamiyama [Jesse Kuhaulua] Hawaii, 1st non-Japanese sumo champion
1948 Brian Eno rocker (Here Comes the Warm Jets)
1949 Kale Browne San Rafael Calif, actor (Michael Hudson-Another World)
1950 Jesse Dizon Oceanside Calif, actor (Ramon-Operation Petticoat)
1951 Roberto Duran boxer (fists of stone, no m…s)
1951 Sonia Braga Maringa Brazil, actress (Dona Flor & Her 2 Husbands)
1952 Aleksandr Zaitsev USSR, pairs figure skating (Olympic-gold-1976, 80)
1952 Gino Vanelli singer (Living Inside Myself)
1957 Clio Goldsmith Paris France, actress (The Gift, Heat of Desire)
1968 Patrick Stuart Hollywood Cal, actor (Will Cortlandt-All My Children)
1975 Frederick Koehler actress (Kate & Allie)
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Deaths which occurred on June 16:

1216 Innocent III pope, dies at 54
1671 Stenka Razin Cossack rebel leader, tortured, executed in Moscow
1686 -BC- Hammurabi the Great dies in Babylon
1959 George Reeves actor (Superman, Gone With the Wind), shoots himself
1969 John Scott rocker with the Pretenders, dies at 25
1976 Francis E Meloy Jr US ambassador to Lebanon, kidnapped & killed
1977 Wernher von Braun dies at 65 from smoking
1982 John Honeyman-Scott guitarist of the Pretenders, overdoses on drugs

1738 Patriot printer, publisher and postmistress, Mary Katharine Goddard, born

On this day in 1738, Mary Katharine Goddard is born in New London, Connecticut. She went on to publish the first version of the Declaration of Independence to include all of the Congressional signatures.

Mary Goddard’s professional life was inextricably bound with that of her brother, William. They worked together in print shops he owned in Providence, Rhode Island, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, before moving to Baltimore, Maryland. While William traveled extensively in his efforts to build their business, Mary maintained the day-to- day operations in Baltimore. In 1775, William and his network showed their confidence in Mary’s abilities by naming her Baltimore’s postmaster. She held this post throughout the turbulent years of the War of Independence. In 1777, when Congress decided to print the Declaration of Independence including a complete list of signatures, they chose the Goddards as printers. As usual, Mary, not William, was running operations, and thus the document appeared “printed by Mary Katherine Goddard.”

During the war years, Mary printed the revolutionary Maryland Journal begun by her brother. William resumed control of the business following a quarrel between the siblings in 1784. With the founding of the new federal government in 1789, the new postmaster general, Samuel Osgood, replaced Goddard with a male novice political appointee, John White. Osgood claimed that the job involved too much travel for a female. Despite a petition from 230 citizens demanding that Goddard “be restored” to the role in which she had given “universal Satisfaction to the community,” Mary Goddard was reduced to running the bookstore attached to the print shop. She died on August 12, 1816, leaving her personal property to her black maid and companion.
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1862 Battle of Secessionville

On this day, a Union attempt to capture Charleston, South Carolina, is thwarted when the Confederates turn back an attack at Secessionville, just south of the city on James Island.

In November 1861, Union ships captured Port Royal, which lay about halfway between Charleston and Savannah. This gave the Federals an important base from which to mount operations along the southern coast.

Before dawn on June 16, Yankee General Henry W. Benham led 9,000 troops onto James Island. Benham had a checkered career as a commander. He helped clear western Virginia of Confederates in the summer of 1861 but was ordered arrested by General William Rosecrans for "unofficer-like neglect of duty" because he was headstrong and critical of leadership. Eventually, he and Rosecrans made amends, and in the spring of 1862 Benham was sent to Port Royal to command the northern district of General David Hunter's Department of the South.

Benham decided to attack the strong fortifications that protected Confederates under the command of General Nathan "Shanks" Evans. But the Rebels' fortifications were nearly impenetrable. The approach to the fort was across a strip of firm ground bracketed by marshes, which narrowed the ground that the Confederate artillery needed to cover. Only 500 Confederates were inside, but another 1,500 rushed in from Charleston. Benham staged three attacks against the fort, but each failed. The Federals lost nearly 800 men, while the Southerners suffered only 200 losses.

After the disastrous battle, Union officials began pointing fingers, and Benham was arrested three days later. His superior, Hunter, had ordered no assault without permission. There was disagreement between Benham and his three subordinates over plans to attack. The three later said they had presented objections on the eve of the battle, but an aide to Benham said there had been no such discussion. Benham blamed one of his commanders, Isaac Stephens, for the botched charge.

The Judge Advocate General's Office recommended revocation of Benham's commission. But the aggressiveness he possessed was in short supply among Union generals in 1862, and the Lincoln administration rescinded the revocation. Benham joined Ulysses S. Grant for the Vicksburg campaign, and he commanded the Army of the Potomac's engineering brigade during Grant's Virginia campaign against Robert E. Lee in 1864.
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1918 Battle of the Piave River

On June 16, 1918, the Battle of the Piave River rages on the Italian front, marking the last major attack by the Austro-Hungarian army in Italy of World War I.

After turmoil-plagued Russia bowed out of the war effort in early 1918, Germany began to pressure its ally, Austria-Hungary, to devote more resources to combating Italy. Specifically, the Germans advocated a major new offensive along the Piave River, located just a few kilometers from such important Italian urban centers as Venice, Padua and Verona. In addition to striking on the heels of Russia’s withdrawal, the offensive was intended as a follow-up to the spectacular success of the German-aided operations at Caporetto in the autumn of 1917.

By June 1918, however, Austria-Hungary’s troops were in a radically different condition than they had been at Caporetto. Supplies were low, as was morale, while the Italians had bulked up their numbers along the Piave and received new shipments of arms from Allied munitions factories. Nevertheless, both commanders in the region—former Commander-in-Chief Conrad von Hotzendorff and Svetozar Boroevic von Bojna—favored an attack. Preparations were laid to divide their two forces and carry out the offensive in a pincer-like motion, with Conrad taking the main task of reaching the city of Verona and Boroevic attempting to cross the Piave and aim for Padua and the Adige Valley.

After some diversionary attacks, the main Austrian offensive was launched on June 15. Conrad’s 10th and 11th Armies made limited progress, and their advance was checked the following day by the forceful counterattack of the Italian 4th and 6th Armies, fortified by British and French troops. Within a week, the Austrians had suffered over 40,000 casualties. Meanwhile, Boroevic’s 5th and 6th Armies, which had crossed the Piave River along the Italian coast on June 10, gained slightly more territory—some three miles along a 15-mile front—but was also forced to give up those gains and retreat on June 19 under the Italian counterattack by the 3rd and 8th Armies. The Austrian troops stalled in their attempt to cross back over the rapid-flowing Piave, however, and the Italians were able to attack their flank; by the time they finally reached the other shore, a total of 150,000 of Boroevic’s men had been killed or wounded.

Though the cautious Italian commander in chief, General Armando Diaz, chose not to pursue the fleeing enemy troops across the river, the offensive ended in dismal failure. It was a fateful blow for Austria-Hungary’s presence on the Italian front. In the months that followed, the depleted, demoralized army ceased to exist as a cohesive force, a destruction that was completed by the Italians during the Battle of Vittorio Veneto in late October 1918, just days before the end of World War I.
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1940 Marshal Petain becomes premier of occupied France

On this day in 1940, Marshal Henri-Philippe Petain, World War I hero, becomes prime minister of the Vichy government of France.

As Germany began to overrun more French territory, the French Cabinet became desperate for a solution to this crisis. Premier Paul Reynaud continued to hold out hope, refusing to ask for an armistice, especially now that France had received assurance from Britain that the two would fight as one, and that Britain would continue to fight the Germans even if France were completely overtaken. But others in the government were despondent and wanted to sue for peace. Reynaud resigned in protest. His vice premier, Henri Petain, formed a new government and asked the Germans for an armistice, in effect, surrendering.

This was an ironic position for Petain, to say the least. The man who had become a legendary war hero for successfully repelling a German attack on the French city of Verdun during the First World War was now surrendering to Hitler.

In the city of Vichy, the French Senate and Chamber of Deputies conferred on the 84-year-old general the title of "Chief of State," making him a virtual dictator-although one controlled by Berlin. Petain believed that he could negotiate a better deal for his country--for example, obtaining the release of prisoners of war--by cooperating with, or as some would say, appeasing, the Germans.

But Petain proved to be too clever by half. While he fought against a close Franco-German military collaboration, and fired his vice premier, Pierre Laval, for advocating it, and secretly urged Spain's dictator Francisco Franco to refuse passage of the German army to North Africa, his attempts to undermine the Axis while maintaining an official posture of neutrality did not go unnoticed by Hitler, who ordered that Laval be reinstated as vice premier. Petain acquiesced, but refused to resign in protest because of fear that France would come under direct German rule if he were not there to act as a buffer. But he soon became little more than a figurehead, despite efforts to manipulate events behind the scenes that would advance the Free French cause (then publicly denying, even denouncing, those events when they came to light).

When Paris was finally liberated by General Charles de Gaulle in 1944, Petain fled to Germany. He was brought back after the war to stand trial for his duplicity. He was sentenced to death, which was then commuted to life in solitary confinement. He died at 95 in prison. The man responsible for saving his life was de Gaulle. He and Petain had fought in the same unit in World War I and had not forgotten Petain's bravery during that world war.
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1961 Kennedy agrees to send instructors to train troops

Following a meeting between President John F. Kennedy and South Vietnam envoy Nguyen Dinh Thuan, an agreement is reached for direct training and combat supervision of Vietnamese troops by U.S. instructors. South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem had earlier asked Kennedy to send additional U.S. troops to train the South Vietnamese Army. U.S. advisers had been serving in Vietnam since 1955 as part of the U.S. Military Assistance Advisory Group. There would be only 900 U.S. military personnel in South Vietnam at the end of 1961, but in accordance with President Kennedy's pledge to provide American military assistance to South Vietnam, the number of U.S. personnel rose to 3,200 by the end of 1962. The number would climb until it reached 16,000 by the time of President Kennedy's assassination in November 1963.
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1965 More troops to be sent to Vietnam

Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara announces that 21,000 more U.S. troops are to be sent to Vietnam. He also claimed that it was now known that North Vietnamese regular troops had begun to infiltrate South Vietnam. The new U.S. troops were to join the U.S. Marines and paratroopers from the 173rd Airborne Brigade that had arrived earlier to secure U.S. airbases and facilities. These forces would soon transition from defensive missions to direct combat operations. As the war escalated, more and more U.S. combat troops were sent to South Vietnam. By 1969, there were over 540,000 American troops in Vietnam.
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1970 Communists isolate Phnom Penh

North Vietnamese and Viet Cong attacks almost completely isolate Phnom Penh. The principal fighting raged in and around Kompong Thom, about 90 miles north of the capital. On June 17, Cambodia's last working railway line, which ran to the border of Thailand, was severed when communist troops seized a freight train with 200 tons of rice and other food supplies at a station at Krang Lovea, about 40 miles northwest of Phnom Penh.