On This Date In History



June 1, 1996 -- The Grand Opening of the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF).

June 4, 1947 -- Project Mogul launches a top-secret balloon train designed to listen in on Soviet nuclear tests. The evidence is very strong that this balloon probably ended up as debris found on June 14 by rancher Mac Brazel.

June 5, 8498 BCE -- According to German inventor Otto Muck, this was the date Atlantis was destroyed when an asteroid crashed into it. Muck, with typical German precision, sets the time at 8 pm.

June 10, 1692 -- Bridget Bishop was hanged in Salem, the first official execution of the Salem witch trials.

June 14, 1947 -- Near Roswell, New Mexico, rancher Mac Brazel comes across a few pounds of fabric, foil, and string debris. He doesn't think much of it at the time, but a few weeks later, he reports the finding, and the debris are mistaken for a crashed alien spacecraft.

June 15, 1992 -- First issue of Skeptic magazine was released.

June 17, 1052 -- Holy Roman Emperor Henry III outlaws crimes of poisoning and assassination in Italy. Poisoning was the Satanic Ritual Abuse of the High Middle Ages, as witchcraft was later. Any unexplained death, of which there were many, could be attributed to it.

June 19, 1987 -- The US Supreme Court, in a 7 to 2 vote, struck down a Louisiana act which required creation science to be taught alongside evolution in the state's science classes.

June 22, 1633 -- Galileo recants.

June 24, 1947 -- Pilot Kenneth Arnold spots what he calls 'flying boomerangs' near Mt. Rainier. A reporter changes this to 'flying saucers,' and a majority of future UFO sightings conform to the erroneous description. This is considered by many to be the birth of the UFO movement.



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