Scottish engineer John Rennie was born on this day in 1761.  He made himself famous designing and building canals, docks, harbors and bridges. His better known bridges are across the River Thames in London, most notably the Waterloo Bridge and the New London Bridge that thirty years ago was brought by the Americans and transferred to the United States. 

Paul Gaugin, the renowned French postimpressionist painter of the 19th century, was born on this day  in 1848. 

Dan Bullock, 15, becomes the youngest American soldier to die in Vietnam, on this day in 1969. He faked his papers adding several years to his real age to get drafted. 

June 8…

The Prophet Mohammed died on this day in 633, in Medina, in what is now Saudi Arabia. The founding father of Islam and revered by Moslems around the world, Mohammed belonged to the valiant and respected Kureish tribe. His grandfather was an elder and was also a very respected man. According to Arab historians, Mohammed was a man of impeccable reputation, kind, honest and a man of his word. 

The legendary Soviet World War Two pilot Ivan Kozhedub was born on this day in 1920. During the war he shot down 62 enemy planes and took part in 120 dogfights. 

June 9…

On this day in 68 Roman Emperor Nero took his life after learning that the Senate had joined forces with the rebellious army and condemned him to be flogged to death. Without waiting for the executioner, Nero asked his secretary to stab him in the neck. His last words were “Qualis artifex pereo!” (“What an artist the world loses in me!”)

Thomas West, the 12th Baron de la Warr and the first British Governor of Virginia, was born on this day in 1577. There is a bay, river and a whole US state bearing the name of the British Baron. 

The Russian Emperor Peter the Great was born on this day in 1672.

The British engineer, the main inventor of the railroad locomotive and builder of the world’s first public rail line, Darlington-Stockton, George Stephenson, was born on this day in 1781. 

On this day, in 1815, the treaty concluding the post-Napoleonic Congress of Vienna, convened the previous year, was signed, making Poland a part of the Russian Empire and establishing the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the Swiss Confederation. 

On June 9, 1908 Dolly Shepherd saves Lola May’s life and the two safely land using Dolly’s parachute after Lola May’s fails to deploy. It was the first case of someone surviving a faulty parachute jump. 

June 10…

On this day in 1190 German King and Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa drowned in a river while leading an army of the Third Crusade as he tried to be the first to swim across the River Salef, in Armenia. 

On June 10, 1793 Washington becomes the capital of the United States of America, taking over from Philadelphia. 

And on this same day in 1809 Pope Pius VII excommunicated Napoleon I after the French troops enter Rome and the French Emperor announces the annexation of the papal province. In July the Pontiff was taken to France where he spent five years under house arrest. 

On this day in 1898 US troops land at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and seize the whole island. The Spanish-American War ends with the Americans taking control of the Spanish colonies in the Caribbean and the Pacific. The Guantanamo base to this day remains America’s one and only military foothold in Cuba. 

Raoul Salan, the French General and founder of the OAS secret military organization in Algeria was born on this day in 1899. OAS represented French settlers in Algeria and campaigned against this North African colony’s independence both in Algerian and France using terrorist means including the attempted assassination of in August 1961 of the French President Charles de Gaulle.  Captured in 1962, Salan was sentenced to life imprisonment but was released during a general amnesty only six years afterwards.  A veteran of the First and Second World wars and the war in Indochina, General Raoul Salan had more combat decorations than anyone else in France.  

A distressed Cunard passenger liner was the first to use the SOS signal on this day in 1909. 

Philip Mountbatten, Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Consort and the husband of Queen Elizabeth II was born on this day in 1921. 

In one of World War Two’s worst massacres German Nazis burned alive 642 people at Oradour-sur-Glane in west-central France on this day in 1944, locking them up inside the village church in retaliation for earlier attacks by resistance guerillas.  

On June 10 of 1999 Russian paratroopers make a surprise move towards Pristina, Kosovo, securing the local airport hours before the scheduled arrival there of NATO troops. 

June 11…

The world-renowned French oceanographer Jacques-Yves Cousteau was born on this day in 1910. Cousteau invented the aqualung and pioneered underwater photography. In 1951 he made his first major research expedition on board the Calypso and the wealth of feature films, documentaries and books he left behind earned him a national hero’s reputation in France. 

And on June 11 of 1965 The Beatles were awarded the Order of Member of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II.

June 12…

Napoleon’s troops crossed the Nieman River into Russia on this day in 1812 signaling the start of what has since been known in this country as the First Patriotic War.  

Anne Franck, a Jewish girl who kept a diary for two years as her family was hiding from Nazi persecution in Amsterdam, was born on this day in 1929. Anne perished in a death camp along with her near and dear.

And British actor Lawrence Olivier was made a life peer on this day in 1970, the first actor to be accorded this distinction.

And we finally arrive at June 13… 

On this day in 323 Alexander the Great suddenly departed this world during a military campaign in Babylon.