Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette
This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.
Find the past “On This Day in History” here.
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June 1 is the 152nd day of the year (153rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 213 days remaining until the end of the year.
On this day in 1980, CNN (Cable News Network), the world’s first 24-hour television news network, makes its debut. The network signed on at 6 p.m. EST from its headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, with a lead story about the attempted assassination of civil rights leader Vernon Jordan. CNN went on to change the notion that news could only be reported at fixed times throughout the day. At the time of CNN’s launch, TV news was dominated by three major networks–ABC, CBS and NBC–and their nightly 30-minute broadcasts. Initially available in less than two million U.S. homes, today CNN is seen in more than 89 million American households and over 160 million homes internationally.
CNN was the brainchild of Robert “Ted” Turner, a colorful, outspoken businessman dubbed the “Mouth of the South.” Turner was born on November 19, 1938, in Cincinnati, Ohio, and as a child moved with his family to Georgia, where his father ran a successful billboard advertising company. After his father committed suicide in 1963, Turner took over the business and expanded it. In 1970, he bought a failing Atlanta TV station that broadcast old movies and network reruns and within a few years Turner had transformed it into a “superstation,” a concept he pioneered, in which the station was beamed by satellite into homes across the country. Turner later bought the Atlanta Braves baseball team and the Atlanta Hawks basketball team and aired their games on his network, TBS (Turner Broadcasting System). In 1977, Turner gained international fame when he sailed his yacht to victory in the prestigious America’s Cup race.
The Cable News Network was launched at 5:00 p.m. EST on Sunday June 1, 1980. After an introduction by Ted Turner, the husband and wife team of David Walker and Lois Hart anchored the first newscast. Burt Reinhardt, the then executive vice president of CNN, hired most of CNN’s first 200 employees, including the network’s first news anchor, Bernard Shaw.
Since its debut, CNN has expanded its reach to a number of cable and satellite television companies, several web sites, specialized closed-circuit channels (such as CNN Airport Network), and a radio network. The company has 36 bureaus (10 domestic, 26 international), more than 900 affiliated local stations, and several regional and foreign-language networks around the world. The channel’s success made a bona-fide mogul of founder Ted Turner and set the stage for the Time Warner conglomerate’s eventual acquisition of Turner Broadcasting.
A companion channel, CNN2, was launched on January 1, 1982 and featured a continuous 24-hour cycle of 30-minute news broadcasts. A year later, it changed its name to “CNN Headline News”, and eventually it was simply called “Headline News”. (In 2005, Headline News would break from its original format with the addition of Headline Prime, a prime-time programming block that features news commentary; and in 2008 the channel changed its name again, to “HLN”.)
193 – Roman Emperor Didius Julianus is assassinated.
987 – Hugh Capet is elected King of France.
1204 – King Philip Augustus of France conquers Rouen.
1215 – Beijing, then under the control of the Jurchen ruler Emperor Xuanzong of Jin, is captured by the Mongols under Genghis Khan, ending the Battle of Beijing.
1252 – Alfonso X is elected King of Castile and Leon.
1298 – Residents of Riga and Grand Duchy of Lithuania defeated the Livonian Order in the Battle of Turaida.
1495 – Friar John Cor records the first known batch of scotch whisky.
1533 – Anne Boleyn is crowned Queen of England.
1648 – The Roundheads defeat the Cavaliers at the Battle of Maidstone in the Second English Civil War.
1660 – Mary Dyer is hanged for defying a law banning Quakers from the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
1670 – In Dover, England, Charles II of Great Britain and Louis XIV of France sign the secret treaty of Dover, which will force England into the Third Anglo-Dutch War.
1679 – The Scottish Covenanters defeat John Graham of Claverhouse at the Battle of Drumclog.
1779 – Benedict Arnold, a general in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, is court-martialed for malfeasance.
1792 – Kentucky is admitted as the 15th state of the United States.
1794 – The battle of the Glorious First of June is fought, the first naval engagement between Britain and France during the French Revolutionary Wars.
1796 – Tennessee is admitted as the 16th state of the United States.
1812 – War of 1812: U.S. President James Madison asks the Congress to declare war on the United Kingdom.
1813 – James Lawrence, the mortally-wounded commander of the USS Chesapeake, gives his final order: “Don’t give up the ship!”
1815 – Napoleon swears fidelity to the Constitution of France.
1831 – James Clark Ross discovers the North Magnetic Pole.
1855 – American adventurer William Walker conquers Nicaragua.
1857 – Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du mal is published.
1861 – American Civil War, Battle of Fairfax Court House (June 1861), first land battle of American Civil War after Battle of Fort Sumter, first Confederate combat casualty.
1862 – American Civil War, Peninsula Campaign: Battle of Seven Pines (or the Battle of Fair Oaks) ends inconclusively, with both sides claiming victory.
1868 – Treaty of Bosque Redondo is signed allowing the Navajos to return to their lands in Arizona and New Mexico.
1879 – Napoleon Eugene, the last dynastic Bonaparte, is killed in the Anglo-Zulu War.
1890 – The United States Census Bureau begins using Herman Hollerith’s tabulating machine to count census returns.
1910 – Robert Falcon Scott’s South Pole expedition leaves England.
1916 – Louis Brandeis becomes the first Jew appointed to the United States Supreme Court.
1918 – World War I, Western Front: Battle for Belleau Wood – Allied Forces under John J. Pershing and James Harbord engage Imperial German Forces under Wilhelm, German Crown Prince.
1921 – Tulsa Race Riot: civil unrest in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
1922 – The Royal Ulster Constabulary is founded.
1929 – The 1st Conference of the Communist Parties of Latin America is held in Buenos Aires.
1941 – World War II: Battle of Crete ends as Crete capitulates to Germany.
1941 – The Farhud, a pogrom of Iraqi Jews, takes place in Baghdad.
1943 – British Overseas Airways Corporation Flight 777 is shot down over the Bay of Biscay by German Junkers Ju 88s, killing actor Leslie Howard and leading to speculation the downing was an attempt to kill British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
1946 – Ion Antonescu, “Conducator” (leader) of Romania during World War II, is executed.
1958 – Charles de Gaulle comes out of retirement to lead France by decree for six months.
1960 – New Zealand’s first official television broadcast commences at 7.30pm from Auckland.
1963 – Kenya gains internal self-rule (Madaraka Day).
1974 – Flixborough disaster: an explosion at a chemical plant kills 28 people.
1974 – The Heimlich maneuver for rescuing choking victims is published in the journal Emergency Medicine.
1978 – The first international applications under the Patent Cooperation Treaty are filed.
1979 – The first black-led government of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in 90 years takes power.
1980 – Cable News Network (CNN) begins broadcasting.
1990 – George H. W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev sign a treaty to end chemical weapon production.
1993 – Dobrinja mortar attack: 13 are killed and 133 wounded when Serb mortar shells are fired at a soccer game in Dobrinja, west of Sarajevo.
1999 – American Airlines Flight 1420 slides and crashes while landing at Little Rock National Airport, killing 11 people on a flight from Dallas to Little Rock.
2001 – Nepalese royal massacre : Crown Prince Dipendra of Nepal shoots and kills several members of his family including his father and mother, King Birendra of Nepal and Queen Aiswarya.
2001 – Dolphinarium massacre: A Hamas suicide bomber kills 21 at a disco in Tel Aviv.
2003 – The People’s Republic of China begins filling the reservoir behind the Three Gorges Dam.
2009 – Air France Flight 447 crashes into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Brazil on a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. All 228 passengers and crew are killed.
2009 – General Motors files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. It is the fourth largest United States bankruptcy in history.
2011 – A rare tornado outbreak occurs in New England; a strong EF3 tornado strikes Springfield, Massachusetts, during the event, killing four people.
2012 – The Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental jumbo jet aircraft is introduced with Lufthansa.
2013 – The One World Trade Center opens in Lower Manhattan, New York City.
*Azores Day (Azores)
* Christian Feast Day:
* Crescentinus
* Fortunatus of Spoleto
* Justin Martyr (Eastern Orthodox)
* Ronan of Locronan
* June 1 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
* International Children’s Day (International), and its related observances:
* Children’s Day (Albania)
* Children’s Day (Cape Verde)
* Children’s Day (Romania)
* The Mothers and Children’s Day (Mongolia)
* Fei Fei Day (Vancouver)
* Festival in honour of Carna. (Roman Empire)
* Independence Day, celebrates the independence of Samoa from New Zealand in 1962.
* Madaraka Day (Kenya)
* Marine’s Day (Mexico)
* National Day Against Homophobia (Canada)
* National Tree Planting Day (Cambodia)
* Pancasila Day (Indonesia)
* President’s Day (Palau)
* The first day of the Gawai Dayak festival (Sarawak)
* Victory Day (Tunisia)