On This Day July 1

Commercial television was authorized by the FCC on July 1, 1941 and NBC television begun commercial operation by its affiliate WNBT New York using channel 1 the same day. The world's first legal television commercial advertisement, for Bulova watches, was aired at 2:29 PM on July 1, 1941 before a baseball game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and Philadelphia Phillies.

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On This Day June 30

On June 30, 1859 French tightrope walker Charles Blondin successfully crossed Niagara Gorge on a tightrope, 160 ft (49 m) above the water, near the location of the current Rainbow Bridge.
He repeated the feat a number of times thereafter, always with different theatrical variations: blindfolded, in a sack, trundling a wheelbarrow, on stilts, sitting down midway while he cooked and ate an omelette and standing on a chair with only one chair leg on the rope.

Charles Blondin crossing the Niagara River in 1859

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On This Day June 29

Charlotte Brontë married her father's curate, the Reverend Arthur Nicholls, on June 29, 1854.
Charlotte wore a white muslin wedding dress with delicate green embroidery and a lace trimmed bonnet. It was said she looked like a "snowdrop". Arthur was faithful, pleasant and indomitable and Charlotte at first merely admired but later grew to love her husband. They had nine months of an increasingly happy marriage as Charlotte found joy in domestic love until her death in March 1855.

Charlotte Brontë portrait by J. H. Thompson

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On This Day June 28

Queen Victoria's coronation took place on June 28, 1838 at Westminster Abbey. Over 400,000 visitors came to London for the celebrations. As Queen Victoria was being crowned, the Archbishop of Canterbury forced the Coronation Ring on to the wrong finger. She didn't complain, but had to ice her bruised finger later. Victoria endeared herself to the public when she sprung from her throne to help an elderly noble man who had stumbled on approaching her to pay his respects.

Coronation portrait by George Hayter

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On This Day June 27

A Scot, John Shepherd-Barron, invented the ATM. Managing director of a security printing firm, De La Rue Instruments; he was lying in the bath when the idea of a cash dispenser occurred to him. Barclays Bank were impressed with Shepherd-Barron’s idea and the first DACS (De La Rue Automatic Cash System) was fitted outside the bank's branch in Enfield, north London on June 27, 1967. Comic actor Reg Varney was the first person to use the cash machine (see below).

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On This Day June 26

The sport of mountaineering originated on June 26, 1492 when an expedition set out to climb Mont Aiguille, in the Vercors near Grenoble, led by Antoine De Ville, Lord of Domjulien and Beaupré. De Ville and his team scaled the near-vertical Alpine peak Mont Aiguille on King Charles VIII orders. They reached the summit by means of ropes and siege ladders, remaining there for just under a week. It was the first ever recorded climb of any technical difficulty.

Picture of a mountaineer by Josef Feid Anastasius Grün

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On This Day June 25

The phrase burying the hatchet, meaning, to end an argument or conflict, is derived from a Native American custom where a hatchet or tomahawk was buried in the ground to mark a declaration of peace. The Burying the Hatchet ceremony happened in Nova Scotia on June 25, 1761. It ended more than seventy-five years of war between the British and the Mi'kmaq.

Old hatchet

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On This Day June 24

Dancing mania was a phenomenon seen primarily in mainland Europe between the 14th and 17th centuries. During such outbreaks, groups of up to thousands of people would dance uncontrollably, screaming, shouting, and claiming to have visions until they collapsed from exhaustion. One of the first major outbreaks of dancing mania took place in Aachen (present-day Germany) on June 24, 1374, before spreading to other cities and countries.

A painting by Pieter Brueghel the Younger, after drawings by his father.

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On This Day June 23

The Pawtucket Red Sox and the Rochester Red Wings, two teams from the Triple-A International League played the longest ever professional baseball game. The game begun at McCoy Stadium, Pawtucket, Rhode Island on April 18, 1981. It lasted for 33 innings, with eleven hours and 25 minutes of playing time. 32 innings were played, before the game was suspended at 4:00 the next morning. The final 33rd inning was played June 23, 1981. Pawtucket won the game, 3–2.

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On This Day June 22

George V and Mary of Teck were crowned King and Queen of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions at Westminster Abbey in London on June 22, 1911. During World War 1 George V and Queen Mary set an example of quiet determination. After the war, his reign saw the rise of socialism, communism, fascism and Irish republicanism, all of which radically changed the political landscape. King George's policy of reconciliation helped to unify the British people.

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On This Day June 21

The Australian radio-astronomer Dr John O'Sullivan and his team are credited with inventing Wi-Fi during a failed experiment to detect tiny black holes. The first major use of Wi-Fi came when Apple Inc. adopted the wireless network for their iBook series of laptops which was unveiled by Steve Jobs on June 21, 1999. It was the first mainstream computer designed and sold with integrated wireless networking. The Wi-Fi network connectivity was branded at the time by Apple as AirPort.

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On This Day June 20

1837 Queen Victoria wrote wrote in her diary on June 20, 1837, "I was awoke at 6 o'clock by Mamma, who told me the Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Conyngham were here and wished to see me. I got out of bed and went into my sitting-room (only in my dressing gown) and alone, and saw them. Lord Conyngham then acquainted me that my poor Uncle, the King, was no more, and had expired at 12 minutes past 2 this morning, and consequently that I am Queen."

Victoria receives the news of her accession

1887 The Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria was celebrated on June 20 and 21, 1887. She began the first day with breakfast under the trees at Frogmore, the resting place of her husband, Prince Albert, near Windsor Castle, before a banquet at Buckingham Palace. On the second day, she led a procession and, in the evening, put on a gown embroidered with silver roses, thistles and shamrocks for a banquet and was then wheeled into the garden to watch the fireworks.

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On This Day June 19

The ceremonial "first stone" of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a facility established to preserve a wide variety of plant seeds from locations worldwide in an underground cavern in Spitsbergen, Norway, was laid on June 19, 2006. There arctic vault stores over 860,000 different varieties of food crop seeds as an insurance policy for the world’s food supply.

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On This Day June 18

Columbia Records introduced the 33 1/3 LP ("long playing") record at New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel on June 18, 1948. The new format allowed listeners to enjoy an unprecedented 25 minutes of music per side, compared to the four minutes per side of the standard 78 rpm record. The first LPs were 10 inches in diameter, but 12 inches became the standard size, with 16-inch discs used for transcriptions. The first twelve-inch LP was Felix Mendelssohn's "Concerto in E Minor."

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On This Day June 17

Nicole Brown Simpson and her waiter friend Ron Goldman were found stabbed to death outside Nicole's Los Angeles condominium. Nicole's ex husband O.J. Simpson was a person of interest in their murders and five days later on June 17, 1994 he became the object of a low-speed pursuit in a white Ford Bronco SUV; TV stations interrupted coverage of the 1994 NBA Finals to broadcast the incident live. Following the low-speed highway chase, O. J. Simpson was arrested.

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On This Day June 16

Salvation Army founder William Booth first met Catherine Mumford when he came to preach at her church. They soon fell in love and married at Stockwell Green Congregational Church in London on June 16, 1855 . Their wedding was very simple, as they wanted to use their time and money for his ministry. Even on their honeymoon Booth was asked to speak at meetings. Catherine bore William eight children and they were reared with an iron disciple.

Catherine and William Booth

The Salvation Army uniform includes bonnets, which in its early days provided protective headgear when the going got rough. The bonnet was worn for the first time on June 16, 1880 at founders William and Catherine Booth's silver wedding in Whitechapel.

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On This Day June 15

College students Dan and Frank Carney founded the first Pizza Hut in Wichita, Kansas on June 15 1958. They opened the restaurant with $600 borrowed from their mom. The story behind the restaurant chain's name isn't very complicated. The sign outside the original building only had room for eight letters, the title "Pizza Hut" just happened to fit on the sign.

The first Pizza Hut in Wichita. By Sanjay Acharya

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On This Day June 14

Thomas Edison was responsible for the first film of a sporting event, a six round boxing match between Mike Leonard and Jack Cushing on June 14, 1894. A second fight was filmed the same day between James J. Corbett and Peter Courtney.

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On This Day June 13

During religious disturbances, Martin Luther was instrumental in the escape of a dozen nuns, who had been hiding in remote villages after becoming convinced of the truth of Lutheran theology. Making it his business to find them husbands in their new homes, Luther discovered two years later that one of them, Katharina Von Bara, was still unattached, so he married her himself on June 13, 1525. They lived together happily for the rest of Luther's life.

Portrait of Catherine von Bora by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1526 

After his marriage to the nun Katharina Von Bara on June 13, 1525, Martin Luther took the Augustian monastery in Wittenburg as married quarters. The Luthers lived in the "Black Cloister;" formerly his home as a monk. Luther's marriage to Katharina kick started the tradition of clerical marriage within several Christian traditions. The reformer said he could find no trace in the Gospels of the vows of chastity taken by monks and nuns.

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On This Day June 12

The Virginia Company of London decided to bring the Native American princess Pocahontas to England as a symbol of the tamed New World "savage" and the success of the Jamestown settlement. Pocahontas and her husband John Rolfe arrived at the port of Plymouth on June 12, 1616, accompanied by a group of about eleven other Powhatans, including a holy man named Tomocomo.
Pocahontas died of smallpox in March 1617, the day before she was due to sail back to Virginia.

A 19th-century depiction

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On This Day June 11

Henry VIII of England married Catherine of Aragon on June 11, 1509. The wedding was low-key and held at the friar's church in Greenwich a fortnight before Henry's coronation. Catherine was a member of the Third Order of Saint Francis and she was punctilious in her religious obligations in the Order, integrating without demur her necessary duties as queen with her personal piety. Of their six children, only one daughter, the future Mary I lived and the marriage was annulled in 1533.

Catherine of Aragon

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On This Day June 10

Benjamin Franklin conceived the idea of drawing down lightening from the clouds by means of a rod. There was nowhere high enough in Philadelphia to try this, so he used a kite with a metal key tied to the end of the string, which on June 10, 1752 he flew during a thunderstorm and created sparks. As a result of these researches into electrical current issues Franklin identified lightening as an electrical conductor and in 1753 he published details how to make his lightening rod.

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On This Day June 9

Australian aviator Charles Kingsford Smith and his crew landed their Southern Cross aircraft in Brisbane at 10.50 a.m. on June 9, 1928, completing the first ever trans-Pacific flight from the United States mainland to Australia.  The total flight distance was approximately 11,566 kilometres (7,187 mi). Kingsford Smith was met by a huge crowd of 26,000 at Eagle Farm Airport, and welcomed as a hero.

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On This Day June 8

Ferdinand Porsche was a member of the Nazi party and was arrested by the French authorities at the end of World War II. He spent two years in prison, during which his son Ferry Porsche ran their company. Aided by the postwar Volkswagen enterprise, Ferry Porsche created the first high-end cars that are uniquely associated with the company. A hand-built aluminium prototype labelled "No. 1″ was the first Porsche sports vehicle ever built on June 8, 1948.

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On This Day June 7

The BBC suspended their television service from 1939–46 during World War II. Two days before Britain declared war on Germany, it was taken off air for security reasons and the last thing aired was a Mickey Mouse cartoon. BBC returned on June 7, 1946, with Jasmine Bligh, one of the original announcers, saying, "Good afternoon everybody. How are you? Do you remember me, Jasmine Bligh?" The same Mickey Mouse cartoon was replayed 20 minutes later.

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On This Day June 6

London draper George Williams was appalled at the degradation of workingmen in London and began a work among his fellow drapery employees. Williams was motivated to form the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) by the terrible conditions and the consequent temptations for sin he perceived in London for young men. The first YMCA meeting was held in Williams’ drapery shop in St Paul’s Churchyard on June 6, 1844 and included 12 young men in total.

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On This Day June 5

Wolfgang Mozart and his older sister Nannerl, a singer and harpsichord player, toured Europe 1762 to 1765. 8-year-old Mozart and his sister appeared before the English public for the first time in the Spring Garden Rooms, London on June 5, 1764. Mozart astonished the London general public with his playing of the harpsichord with a handkerchief covering the keys. Some members of the Royal Society thought his playing was too good for a child and suspected him of being a dwarf.

The Mozart family on tour:Watercolor by Carmontelle, ca. 1763

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On This Day June 4

Sylvan N. Goldman, the manager of a small supermarket in Oklahoma, developed the shopping cart after he realized that if customers could carry more shopping, they would buy more. When Sylvan Goldman first introduced the shopping cart on June 4, 1937 people were hesitant to use it. Men thought it 'effeminate,' and women felt it demeaned their ability to carry a shopping basket. After a while shopping carts became extremely popular and Goldman became a multimillionaire.

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On This Day June 3

A constitutional crisis began on November 16, 1936 when Edward VIII told Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin he intended to American divorcee Wallis Simpson. Desiring to marry Wallis Simpson against widespread opposition, Edward VIII abdicated the UK throne in December 1936. After his abdication, Edward was given the title Duke of Windsor. He married Simpson in a private ceremony near Tours, France on June 3, 1937. His brother, the new king George VI, and mother did not attend the ceremony.

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On This Day June 2

The inspiration for the telephone came when Alexander Graham Bell was working to improve the telegram in Boston, Massachusetts. The Scot was aided by a young repair mechanic Thomas Watson. On June 2, 1875 Watson made a mistake, the incorrect contact of a clamping screw which was too tight changed what should have been an intermittent transmission into a continuous current. Bell at the other end of the wire heard the contacter dropping - the first ever transmission of sound.

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