Todays History

Laki, a volcano in Iceland, begins an eight-month eruption which kills over 9,000 people and starts a seven-year famine.

Priscilla Presley opens Graceland to the public; the bathroom where Elvis Presley died five years earlier is kept off-limits.

The Great Seattle Fire destroys all of downtown Seattle.

The British Secretary of State for War, John Profumo, resigns in a sex scandal known as the “Profumo affair”.

World War II: The Battle of Midway begins. The Japanese Admiral Ch?ichi Nagumo orders a strike on Midway Island by much of the Imperial Japanese…

The last pair of great auks is killed

P. T. Barnum and his circus start their first tour of the United States.

The Heimlich maneuver for rescuing choking victims is published in the journal Emergency Medicine