On This Day (June 23)

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• 1713 - French residents of Acadia given one year to declare allegiance to Britain or leave Nova Scotia Canada. After 1764, many exiled Acadians finally settled in Louisiana, which had been transferred by France to Spain before the end of the French and Indian War. The name Acadian was corrupted to Cajun, which was first used as a pejorative term until its later mainstream acceptance.
• 1757 – Seven Years' War: British forces under Robert Clive defeated troops under Siraj ud-Daulah at the Battle of Plassey, allowing the British East India Company to annex Bengal.
• 1858 – Edgardo Mortara, a six-year-old Jewish boy, was seized by Papal authorities and taken to be raised as a Roman Catholic.
• 1887 – The Parliament of Canada passed the Rocky Mountains Park Act, creating Banff National Park (pictured) as Canada's first national park.
  
  
  Moraine Lake in Banff National Park
  
  
• 1894 – Led by French historian Pierre de Coubertin, an international congress at the Sorbonne in Paris founded the International Olympic Committee to reinstate the Ancient Olympic Games.
• 1927 - Bob Fosse, American choreographer born. (d. 1987) (Fosse was an American musical theater choreographer and director, and a film director. He won an unprecedented eight Tony Awards for choreography, as well as one for direction, and received the Academy Award for Best Director in 1972 for Cabaret.)
• 1991 – The video game Sonic the Hedgehog was first released, propelling the Sega Genesis 16-bit console into mass popularity.
• 1995 - Jonas Salk, American medical researcher died. (b. 1914) (Salk was an American biologist and physician best known for the research and development of a killed-virus polio vaccine, the eponymous Salk vaccine.)

Picture of the Day



The Australian painted lady (Vanessa kershawi) butterfly is found in both Australia and New Zealand. It is similar to the near-cosmopolitan Painted Lady V. cardui and is sometimes considered a subspecies of that butterfly.

On This Day (June 22)

• 168 BCE – Third Macedonian War: Roman forces defeated Macedonian King Perseus at the Battle of Pydna.
• 1633 - The Holy Office in Rome forces Galileo Galilei to recant his scientific view that the Sun, not the Earth, is the center of the Universe.
• 1854 – The British Parliament abolished feudalism and the seigneurial system in British North America.
• 1898 - Erich Maria Remarque, German writer born. (d. 1970) (“All Quiet on the Western Front”)
• 1911 – George V was crowned King of the United Kingdom at Westminster Abbey in London.
• 1941 – World War II: While the Lithuanian underground government started an uprising to liberate Lithuania from Soviet occupation, Nazi Germany began to invade the Soviet Union.
• 1965 - David O. Selznick, American film producer died. (b. 1902) (“Gone With the Wind”)
• 1978 – Working at the United States Naval Observatory, American astronomer James W. Christy discovered Charon, then thought to be the largest moon of Pluto.
• 1987 - Fred Astaire, American dancer and actor died. (b. 1899) (Astaire was an American Academy Award-winning film and Broadway stage dancer, choreographer, singer and actor. His stage and subsequent film career spanned a total of seventy-six years, during which he made thirty-one musical films. He is particularly associated with Ginger Rogers, with whom he made ten films.)
  
  
  Ceiling Dance from Royal Wedding
  
  
• 2002 – An earthquake measuring 6.5 Mw struck Iran, killing at least 261 people and injuring 1,300 others, and eventually causing widespread public anger due to the slowness of the victims receiving aid and supplies.

Picture of the Day



Lilium 'Citronella', a lily cultivar (as indicated by the name being in single quotation marks). Lilies are herbaceous flowering plants normally growing from bulbs. Although the common name "lily" is applied to other related plants, only those in the Lilium genus are considered "true lilies".

On The Day (June 21)

• 1527 - Niccolò Machiavelli, Italian historian and political author died. (b. 1469) (Machiavelli was an Italian diplomat, political philosopher, musician, poet and playwright. Machiavelli was a figure of the Italian Renaissance, and a central figure of its political scene. In June of 1498, following the ouster and execution of Savonarola, the Great Council elected Machiavelli as the second chancellor of the Republic of Florence.)
• 1734 – A black slave known as Marie-Joseph Angélique, after having been convicted of setting the fire that destroyed much of Montreal, was tortured and then hanged in New France.
• 1781 - Siméon-Denis Poisson, French mathematician and physicist born. (d. 1840) (Poisson was a French mathematician, geometer, and physicist.)
• 1813 – Peninsular War: The Marquess of Wellington's combined British, Portuguese, and Spanish allied army defeated the French near Vitoria, Spain.
• 1874 - Anders Jonas Ångström, Swedish physicist died. (b. 1814) (Angstrom was a physicist in Sweden, one of the founders of the science of spectroscopy. The ångström units with which the wavelength of light is measured are named for him.)
• 1898 – In a bloodless event during the Spanish-American War, the United States captured Guam from Spain.
• 1948 - Columbia Records introduces the long-playing record album in a public demonstration at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City.
• 1905 - Jean-Paul Sartre, French philosopher and writer, Nobel Prize laureate (declined) born. (d. 1980) (Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher and pioneer, dramatist and screenwriter, novelist and critic. He was a leading figure in 20th century French philosophy.)
• 1908 - Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Russian composer died. (b. 1844) (Rimsky-Korsakov was a Russian composer, one of five Russian composers known as The Five, and was later a teacher of harmony and orchestration. He is particularly noted for a predilection for folk and fairy-tale subjects, and for his extraordinary skill in orchestration, which may have been influenced by his synesthesia.)
  
  
  Sheherazade (excerpt), Gergiev, Kirov Orchestra
  
  
• 1948 – The Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine (replica pictured), the world's first stored-program computer, ran its first computer program.
  
  
  
  
• 1973 – The U.S. Supreme Court delivered its decision in the landmark case Miller v. California, establishing the "Miller test" for determining what is obscene material.
• 1985 – Greenland officially adopted its own flag, adding support to its independence movement from Denmark.
• 2004 - SpaceShipOne becomes the first privately funded spaceplane to achieve spaceflight.