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Made for the 250thOn this day › June 9
What happened on June 9 in American history
June 9 is the 160th day of the year (the 161st in leap years). Patriot Compass has published 16 stories from June 9 spanning 1732 to 2019. Among them: in 1732, Oglethorpe wins the charter; a new colony rises between the Carolinas and Spanish Florida; and in 1772, Providence men row out at night and burn HMS Gaspee to the waterline.
1732Member story · 1776 Club
Oglethorpe wins the charter; a new colony rises between the Carolinas and Spanish Florida
Three years after watching his friend die in Fleet Prison, Oglethorpe and his partners secure the Province of Georgia as a haven for the "worthy poor" and a military buffer to the south.
1772
Providence men row out at night and burn HMS Gaspee to the waterline
Eighteen boatloads led by Abraham Whipple and merchant John Brown board the grounded revenue schooner in Narragansett Bay; Lieutenant Duddingston is shot and wounded.
1856Member story · 1776 Club
Two Mormon handcart companies leave Iowa City weeks late, pulling green-timber carts into the plains
More than 980 converts from Britain and Scandinavia set out on the Mormon Trail in late summer, far past any safe window for the crossing.
1862Member story · 1776 Club
Jackson breaks Tyler's line at Port Republic; Frémont's army watches, stranded across the flooded South Fork
Taylor's Louisiana brigade takes the Coaling, loses it, and takes it again before the Union line finally gives way, leaving Jackson's 17,000 men free to march on Richmond.
1863
Pleasonton crosses the Rappahannock at dawn; Stuart's cavalry fights all day to hold Fleetwood Hill
Eleven thousand Union horsemen hit the Confederate camps from two directions at once, and though the Federals withdraw by nightfall, the aura of easy Southern dominance on horseback does not survive the day.
1915Member story · 1776 Club
Bryan quits the cabinet; he will not sign Wilson's ultimatum to Germany over the Lusitania
The Secretary of State calls the stern note to Berlin a step toward war, arguing the Allied blockade is no less an offense than the U-boat that killed 1,197.
1930Member story · 1776 Club
Tribune reporter shot dead in the Randolph Street underpass; his paper offers $25,000 for the killer
A thin, blue-eyed man put a .38 slug in Jake Lingle's head in front of dozens of witnesses as he walked to the racetrack.
1953Member story · 1776 Club
Two tornadoes kill 210 across Michigan and Massachusetts; forecasters in Worcester never said the word
An F5 erases the Flint suburb of Beecher, killing 116, and an F4 cuts a mile-wide path through Worcester, killing 94, with almost no warning issued in either city.
1954Member story · 1776 Club
Welch turns on McCarthy: 'Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?'
On day thirty of the Army–McCarthy hearings, the army's counsel cuts off the senator mid-attack on a young Boston lawyer; the gallery erupts in applause.
1959Member story · 1776 Club
Built as Scorpion, rechristened and stretched, the George Washington slides into the Thames at Groton
The 130-foot hull extension added during construction gives her room for 16 Polaris missiles, a weapon the Navy hopes can survive a first strike and still hit back.
1965Member story · 1776 Club
VC regulars overrun Đồng Xoài; Westmoreland orders U.S. paratroopers into battle for the first time
The 272nd Regiment creeps to within 100 meters, weapons wrapped in cloth to muffle sound, and by dawn two ARVN battalions are shattered and 416 South Vietnamese are dead.
1968
Kennedy is dead; Johnson declares a national day of mourning
Shot in the Ambassador Hotel kitchen nearly 25 hours ago, the California primary winner dies at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles.
1972Member story · 1776 Club
Canyon Lake Dam gives way at midnight; flash flood tears through Rapid City
Debris-choked spillway backs Rapid Creek 11 feet before the break; at least 238 are dead, 3,000 hurt, and 1,335 homes gone.
1973Member story · 1776 Club
Secretariat wins the Triple Crown; 31 lengths and a clock that reads 2:24 flat
The chestnut colt takes the Belmont before 69,138 fans and sets an American record for a mile and a half on dirt, ending a 25-year wait since Citation.
1999Member story · 1776 Club
Yugoslavia signs the Kumanovo Agreement; NATO halts its bombs after 78 days
Military representatives meeting in Macedonia commit Yugoslav and Serbian forces to a staged, eleven-day withdrawal from Kosovo.
2019Member story · 1776 Club
Gunman shoots David Ortiz in the back at Santo Domingo bar; six-hour surgery under way
A single bullet fired from a motorcycle outside Dial Bar and Lounge; the Red Sox are arranging a medical flight to Boston.
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