June

1533 -- Anne Bo­leyn be­comes Act­ing Queen of Eng­land. Her thou­sand days ex­pire May 17, 1536.

1835 -- P.T. Bar­num's rev­o­lu­tion­ary Grand Sci­en­tif­ic and Mu­si­cal Theater brings af­ford­able high­er ed­u­ca­tion to thou­sands of the na­tion's young and gullible.

1621 -- The Dutch West In­dia Com­pa­ny is grant­ed a char­ter for the ter­ri­to­ry of New Nether­land, whose cap­i­tal, New Am­s­ter­dam, is lat­er re­brand­ed New York fol­low­ing a se­ries of cor­po­rate takeovers.

2004 -- Dis­grun­tled res­i­dent Marvin Heemey­er makes zon­ing-or­di­nance his­to­ry with the launch of his sealed-op­er­a­tor ar­mored kil­la­to­ry bull­doz­er in the town of Gran­by, Colorado. The ma­chine cre­at­ed $7 mil­lion worth of vari­ances in un­der two hours be­fore be­com­ing ter­mi­nal­ly stuck in­side a se­mi-de­con­struct­ed hard­ware store.

1969 -- The Se­cond In­ter­na­tion­al Meet­ing of Com­mu­nist and Work­ers Par­ties con­venes in Moscow. Items on the agen­da are the smash­ing of Western im­pe­ri­al­ism, and plan­ning Lenin's hun­dredth birth­day cel­e­bra­tion.

1944 -- Lack of plan­ning and abysmal­ly poor com­mu­ni­ca­tions re­sult in the Al­lied in­va­sion of France oc­cur­ring near­ly one hun­dred nau­ti­cal miles off tar­get of the Ger­mans' main de­fen­sive stronghold at Pas de Calais.

1628 -- The Pe­ti­tion of Right be­comes English law un­der Charles Ⅰ. Among oth­er civ­il pro­tec­tions, it pre­vents the king from sus­pend­ing the con­sti­tu­tion ex­cept in case of per­pet­u­al war.

1959 -- The Cold War is tak­en to a new lev­el as the U.S. Post Of­fice Depart­ment suc­cess­ful­ly de­liv­ers 3,000 pieces of junk mail via sub­ma­rine-launched cruise mis­sile.

1975 -- First BBC live ra­dio broad­cast of House of Com­mons pro­ceed­ings proves con­fus­ing to lis­ten­ers, who are un­able to view body pos­ture, arm ges­tures and fa­cial gri­maces which are es­sen­tial el­e­ments of un­der­stand­ing the con­text.

1190 -- Em­per­or Fred­er­ick I Bar­barossa over­achieves him­self in­to a wa­tery grave, rather than wait­ing to cross the bridge like ev­ery­one else.

1770 -- Capt. James Cook runs his ship aground on the Great Bar­ri­er Reef, in what is the first known mu­tu­al as­sault be­tween the vul­ner­a­ble habi­tat and west­ern civ­i­liza­tion.

1967 -- The Sovi­et probe Ven­era 4 is launched, which will lat­er re­port back that the plan­et Venus, while tru­ly op­pressed, is not yet ready for So­cial­ist lib­er­a­tion.

2002 -- With long-range fore­sight, the Unit­ed States pre­pares for the next Cold War by with­draw­ing from the An­ti-Bal­lis­tic Mis­sile Treaty.

1951 -- U.S. Cen­sus Bureau ded­i­cates its UNIVAC I com­put­er, main­tain­ing the hope that they would one day re­ceive and be able to use it.

1961 -- In an in­ter­na­tion­al­ly-tele­vised press con­fer­ence, East Ger­man Premier Wal­ter Ul­bricht as­sures the world that there is noth­ing even re­mote­ly wall-like go­ing on in East Ber­lin.

2012 -- The X-37B U.S. space drone re­turns to Earth from its se­cret mis­sion last­ing over a year, dur­ing which it specif­i­cal­ly did not spy on the Chi­nese space sta­tion.

1885 -- The Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty con­struc­tion kit ar­rives in New York, while fran­tic at­tempts to crowd­source enough funds for as­sem­bly are still be­ing made.

1981 -- First flight of the of­fi­cial­ly nonex­is­tent U.S. F-117 stealth air­craft.

1934 -- U.S. Fed­er­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Com­mis­sion formed. Giv­en the im­pos­si­ble task of reg­u­lat­ing and en­forc­ing com­pe­ti­tion and equal­i­ty of telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions ser­vices, it has at least suc­ceed­ed in pro­vok­ing equal amounts of dis­ap­proval from ev­ery­one.

1963 -- After frus­tra­tion around stale come­backs al­most leads to sev­er­al im­pul­sive nu­cle­ar launch­es, the Moscow-Wash­ing­ton hot­line is es­tab­lished in or­der for the two ri­vals to ex­change in­sults in more sat­is­fy­ing re­al time.

2004 -- First cel­e­bra­tions of Go Skate­board­ing Day, In­ter­na­tion­al Surf­ing Day, and Know Your Emer­gen­cy Room Day (im­promp­tu).

1633 -- Hav­ing sat­is­fied the In­qui­si­tion by re­plac­ing the Sun with Rome in his cen­ter of the uni­verse the­o­ry, Galileo proves that sar­casm is lost on the Church.

2003 -- The first Unit­ed Na­tions Public Ser­vice Day, a year­ly event dur­ing which the or­ga­ni­za­tion be­stows awards to de­serv­ing re­cip­i­ents and demon­strates proof that it can in­deed ex­press ap­proval.

1947 -- Nine fly­ing saucers are ac­ci­den­tal­ly spot­ted near Mount Rainier, Wash­ing­ton.

1960 -- In what will be­come a fu­ture trend, two NSA whistle­blow­ers de­fect to Rus­sia.

1870 -- Christ­mas is de­clared a fed­er­al hol­i­day, en­sur­ing that any fu­ture op­po­si­tion to the event may be con­sid­ered an act of war.

1974 -- U.S. Pres­i­dent Richard Nixon ar­rives in the Sovi­et Union for his sec­ond vis­it, to an en­thu­si­as­tic re­cep­tion. He would re­sign from of­fice just over a month lat­er.

1985 -- His­toric U.S. Route 66 is split up in­to In­ter­states 40, 15, 10, and Cal­i­for­nia Route 1.

1948 -- The Com­mu­nist In­for­ma­tion Bureau tem­porar­i­ly but jus­ti­fi­ably ren­ders it­self home­less, af­ter ex­pelling its host coun­try, Yu­goslavia, for not be­ing suf­fi­cient­ly Com­mu­nist.

1956 -- Of­fi­cial be­gin­ning of the U.S. In­ter­state High­way Sys­tem, the rem­nants of which may still be found in many ar­eas of the coun­try.

1972 -- Due to the fail­ure of the Earth to main­tain con­sis­ten­cy in its ro­ta­tion, the first leap sec­ond is added to the of­fi­cial Univer­sal Time clock.