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American history, reported as it happened
Made for the 250thOn this day › June 6
What happened on June 6 in American history
June 6 is the 157th day of the year (the 158th in leap years). Patriot Compass has published 12 stories from June 6 spanning 1813 to 2024. Among them: in 1813, Harvey's 700 storm the American camp at Stoney Creek; both U.S. generals are taken; and in 1862, Memphis falls by noon; Union rams wreck the Confederate river fleet in under two hours.
1813Member story · 1776 Club
Harvey's 700 storm the American camp at Stoney Creek; both U.S. generals are taken
Chandler walks into the wrong line and is seized at bayonet point, Winder moments after, and 3,400 men fall back from the deepest reach into Upper Canada.
1862Member story · 1776 Club
Memphis falls by noon; Union rams wreck the Confederate river fleet in under two hours
Citizens watch from the bluff as all but one Confederate cottonclad is sunk or captured, and the sole Union casualty is a colonel with a pistol ball in his knee.
1889Member story · 1776 Club
Glue pot boils over in a basement; 25 blocks of Seattle are gone by morning
A carpenter's gasoline fire on wood chips and turpentine takes four wharves, the railroad terminals, and nearly $20 million of a city built almost entirely of wood.
1892Member story · 1776 Club
Chicago's first "L" runs: steam and four wooden coaches, 39th Street to Congress in fourteen minutes
The Chicago and South Side Rapid Transit Railroad opens today, offering the city's million residents a line that runs above the streets and does not stop at nightfall.
1912Member story · 1776 Club
Earth tears open on the Alaska Peninsula; sixty hours of ash bury the land
The eruption near Trident Volcano has expelled up to 3.6 cubic miles of ash and collapsed Mount Katmai's summit into a caldera 2,000 feet deep.
1918Member story · 1776 Club
Marines charge Belleau Wood; 1,087 fall crossing the wheat fields
Two battalions advance into German machine gun fire west of the Marne, and the Corps records its worst single-day loss in 143 years of existence.
1925Member story · 1776 Club
Walter Chrysler buries Maxwell Motor; a new company rises in Highland Park
The railroad mechanic turned auto executive reorganizes Maxwell's troubled remains into the Chrysler Corporation, closing the books on years of unsold cars and a bad merger.
1933Member story · 1776 Club
Hollingshead opens a movie lot for 400 cars in Pennsauken; Wives Beware is the first feature
A Camden chemical magnate turns a patented idea into a 40-by-50-foot screen on Admiral Wilson Boulevard, pitching the car as the Depression's cheapest theater seat.
1934
Roosevelt signs the Securities Exchange Act; a federal watchdog now stands over Wall Street
Kennedy, a multimillionaire who thrived in unregulated markets, is named the SEC's first chairman to police the very customs he knows best.
1942
In six minutes of dive-bombing, three Japanese carriers are ablaze; a fourth burns by afternoon
Nimitz, tipped by broken codes, springs an ambush near Midway atoll and the Kidō Butai loses four fleet carriers in a single day.
1944
160,000 troops cross the Channel; Allied forces land on five Normandy beaches under fire
Paratroopers went in past midnight, 5,000 vessels follow at dawn, and by nightfall a contested beachhead holds at a cost of at least 10,000 casualties.
2024Member story · 1776 Club
Both stages of Starship come down under power; SpaceX lands its full stack for the first time
Super Heavy splashes into the Gulf within half a centimeter of its mark; Ship 29 survives reentry with tiles missing and touches down six kilometers off target in the Indian Ocean.
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