Here are 30 newsworthy and notable historical anniversaries in June 2024 (listed six months in advance so you have time to write about them)
Historical anniversaries are great for ‘On This Day in History’ features, articles, biographies and other anniversary tie-ins. They’re popular with newspaper and magazine readers and radio stations, and editors, producers and presenters love them. They’re easy to research too. You can also turn them into movies, documentaries, novels, use them to plan events and exhibitions, and much more. (Find out more at the end of this article.)
We’ve randomly picked one anniversary for each day of the month from The Date-A-Base Book 2024, which lists more than 3,000 anniversaries (an average of eight newsworthy anniversaries for every day of the year).
1 Jun 1974 – 50 years ago
The Heimlich manoeuvre (a procedure for rescuing choking victims using abdominal thrusts) was first published in the journal Emergency Medicine.
2 Jun 1924 – 100 years ago
The Indian Citizenship Act came into effect in the USA. It granted full U.S. citizenship to all Native Americans born in the USA.
3 Jun 1949 – 75 years ago
The first episode of the police drama series Dragnet was broadcast on NBC radio in the USA. It ran until 1957. A TV version ran from 1967 to 1970.
4 Jun 1944 – 80 years ago
World War II: the liberation of Rome, Italy.
5 Jun 1964 – 60 years ago
The first manned deep-ocean research submersible DSV Alvin went into service with the U.S. Navy.
6 Jun 1944 – 80 years ago
World War II – D-Day: the Normandy landings.
Over 150,000 Allied troops landed on the beaches of Normandy, France at the start of the Battle of Normandy.
(The battle ended on 25th August. Allied victory.)
7 Jun 1984 – 40 years ago
The U.S. première of the supernatural comedy film Ghostbusters. (Released 8th June. UK 7th December.)
8 Jun 1949 – 75 years ago
George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four was published.
9 Jun 1934 – 90 years ago
Walt Disney’s character Donald Duck made his first appearance, in the Silly Symphonies cartoon The Wise Little Hen.
10 Jun 1924 – 100 years ago
The first political convention to be broadcast on the radio: the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, USA was broadcast on NBC.
11 Jun 1959 – 65 years ago
British engineer Christopher Cockerell unveiled the first full-size practical hovercraft SRN-1 and gave a public demonstration.
It could carry four people over land or water at up to 28 mph.
On 25th July it successfully crossed the English Channel from Calais to Dover.
12 Jun 1964 – 60 years ago
The Rivonia trial, Pretoria, South Africa.
Nelson Mandela (the future President of South Africa) and seven other leaders of the African National Congress (ANC) were sentenced to life imprisonment for acts of sabotage aimed at ending apartheid.
(Mandela was released in 1990. He became President in 1994.)
13 Jun 1774 – 250 years ago
Rhode Island becomes the first North American colony to ban the importation of slaves.
Current slaves, and their children, remained slaves.
In 1784 Rhode Island passed the Gradual Emancipation Act, which ruled that children born to slaves would not remain slaves.
14 Jun 1949 – 75 years ago
Albert II became the first monkey in space. The USA launched the rhesus monkey on a V-2 rocket to an altitude of 83 miles (134 km). His craft impacted the ground because of a parachute failure and he was killed.
15 Jun to 9 Jul 1944 – 80 years ago
World War II – the Pacific Campaign – the Battle of Saipan (Mariana Islands).
This battle has been called the ‘Pacific D-Day’.
U.S. victory leading to the resignation of Japanese Prime Minister Hideki Tōjō (on 22nd July). It also gave the USA a strategic air base in range of the Japanese archipelago.
16 Jun 1624 – 400 years ago
The Virginia Company’s charter was revoked, and Virginia became a Royal Colony.
17 Jun 1994 – 30 years ago
American actor and former football player O. J. Simpson was arrested for murdering his ex-wife and her friend after a low-speed 60-mile pursuit by police.
18 Jun 1959 – 65 years ago
Civil rights: a federal court reversed Arkansas’s law that allowed schools to close to prevent integration. This ended the ‘lost year’ in Little Rock, where all public schools closed from September 1958 to August 1959.
19 Jun 1949 – 75 years ago
The first NASCAR race was held, at Charlotte Fairgrounds Speedway in North Carolina, USA. The winner was Jim Roper.
20 Jun 1944 – 80 years ago
The first man-made object to reach space. Germany launched a V-2 rocket (MW 18014) on a test flight from Peenemünde. It reached an altitude of 109 miles before falling back to Earth. The official boundary between the Earth’s atmosphere and outer space is the Karman line, at an altitude of 62 miles.
21 Jun 1964 – 60 years ago
Mississippi civil rights workers’ murders, USA. Three civil rights activists, Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney, were kidnapped and killed by members of the Ku Klux Klan. The activists had been working on the Freedom Summer campaign, which encouraged African Americans to register to vote. Seven Klan members were convicted at the time, but received relatively minor sentences. Another member, Edgar Ray Killen, was convicted in 2005 and received a 60-year sentence.
22 Jun 1874 – 150 years ago
The first lawn tennis sets went on sale in London. They were designed by Walter Clopton Wingfield and included balls, racquets, a net and poles, court markers and instructions. Wingfield is credited with inventing modern lawn tennis.
The world’s first lawn tennis club (Leamington Lawn Tennis Club) opened later that year, and held its first competition.
Wimbledon began hosting international lawn tennis championships in 1877.
23 Jun 1949 – 75 years ago
The first 12 women graduated from Harvard Medical School in the USA.
24 Jun 1949 – 75 years ago
The first episode of the television Western Hopalong Cassidy was broadcast on NBC in the USA. It was the first network Western TV series.
25 Jun 1524 to 1525 – 500 years ago
The German Peasants’ War (also called the Great Peasants’ Revolt).
Several insurrections broke out in south-west Germany and spread throughout the country. More than 100,000 peasants were killed when the insurrections were suppressed by the military.
26 Jun 1824 – 200 years ago
Birth of William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, British mathematician, physicist and engineer. He made important contributions to thermo-dynamics, electricity, and modern physics. The kelvin scale of absolute temperature was named in his honour.
27 Jun 1999 – 25 years ago
The government of Colombia announced that it was including income earned from growing illegal drugs in its Gross Domestic Product (GDP). It exports an estimated 500 – 700 tons of cocaine each year (half the world’s supply) worth $4 – $10 billion.
The announcement was condemned by the United Nations.
28 Jun 1974 – 50 years ago
Chemists at the University of California, Irvine published the first report that warned that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) could damage the Earth’s ozone layer. CFCS were widely used in refrigerators, air conditioning systems, and as aerosol propellants. Production was heavily regulated from 1976, and later banned.
29 Jun 1949 – 75 years ago
The USA withdrew the last of its forces from South Korea following the end of WWII. This left South Korea with weak and ill-equipped defences. It was invaded by North Korea in June 1950, beginning the Korean War.
30 Jun 1934 – 90 years ago
The Night of the Long Knives – Adolf Hitler’s purge (execution) of senior Nazi officials, particularly leaders of the SA paramilitary group (also known as the ‘brownshirts’), and hundreds of other (perceived) political opponents.
More anniversaries:
You’ll find hundreds more anniversaries for this month in The Date-A-Base Book 2024. The 2025, 2026, 2027 and 2028 editions are also available if you work further ahead. The anniversaries are available as PDF ebooks, Excel spreadsheets, and printed paperback books.
How to use the anniversaries:
If you’d like to know more about how to turn the anniversaries listed here and in The Date-A-Base Books into articles for magazines and newspapers, take a look at our free 68-page guide, Ditch Your Day Job: the easiest way to make a living (or earn some extra cash) as a writer.
It has some terrific bonuses too, including a complete month of anniversaries from The Date-A-Base Book 2023, hundreds of article-writing tips and ideas, plus a 25 percent discount when you buy two or more editions of The Date-A-Base Book.