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American history, reported as it happened
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The events of June 6 · Read the full edition → · More from June 6 →
19181776 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.

By the summer of 1918, German forces had pushed within 95 kilometers of Paris, and a brigade of U.S. Marines stood in their path near the Marne River. On June 6, 1918, the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines and the 3rd Battalion, 6th Marines advanced from the west into Belleau Wood, crossing waist-high wheat fields swept by German machine gun fire. The casualties that afternoon — 31 officers and 1,056 enlisted men — were the worst the Marine Corps had suffered in a single day in its 143-year history. They would not be surpassed until the landing on Betio Island at Tarawa in November 1943…

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More from June 6
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.
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.
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.
18891776 Club
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.
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Read the full June 6 edition →Everything that happened on June 6 →
More from The World Wars
1945

50 nations sign the United Nations Charter in San Francisco

China signs first, as the nation that bore Axis aggression longest; delegates from all 50 Allied powers file through the Herbst Theatre to add their names.
1932

The Dow closes at 41.22; ninety cents of every dollar are gone

Three summers of selling, and still no floor in sight.
1944

Saipan falls to Smith's Marines and infantry; Japan's inner defense ring is broken

Twenty-four days through caves, cane fields, and Tapotchau's slopes: 3,100 Americans dead, 13,000 wounded, and roughly 30,000 Japanese killed.
1942

Navy pilot spots a downed Zero on Akutan Island; the U.S. has its first intact enemy fighter

Bill Thies, flying a PBY, finds Petty Officer Koga's crashed Zero upside down in the mud, a month after it went down during the Dutch Harbor attack.
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