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.
June 9 is the 160th day of the year (161st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 205 days remaining until the end of the year.
On this day in 1973, Secretariat wins Triple Crown
With a spectacular victory at the Belmont Stakes, Secretariat becomes the first horse since Citation in 1948 to win America’s coveted Triple Crown–the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, and the Belmont Stakes. In one of the finest performances in racing history, Secretariat, ridden by Ron Turcotte, completed the 1.5-mile race in 2 minutes and 24 seconds, a dirt-track record for that distance.
With easy victories in his first two starts of 1973, Secretariat seemed on his way to the Triple Crown. Just two weeks before the Kentucky Derby, however, he stumbled at the Wood Memorial Stakes at Aqueduct, coming in third behind Angle Light and Sham. On May 5, he met Sham and Angle Light again at the Churchill Downs track in Louisville for the Kentucky Derby. Secretariat, a 3-to-2 favorite, broke from near the back of the pack to win the 2 1/4-mile race in a record 1 minute and 59 seconds. He was the first to run the Derby in less than two minutes and his record still stands. Two weeks later, at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore, Maryland, Secretariat won the second event of the Triple Crown: the Preakness Stakes. The official clock malfunctioned, but hand-recorded timers had him running the 1 1/16-mile race in record time.
On June 9, 1973, almost 100,000 people came to Belmont Park near New York City to see if “Big Red” would become the first horse in 25 years to win the Triple Crown. Secretariat gave the finest performance of his career in the Belmont Stakes, completing the 1.5-mile race in a record 2 minutes and 24 seconds, knocking nearly three seconds off the track record set by Gallant Man in 1957. He also won by a record 31 lengths. Ron Turcotte, who jockeyed Secretariat in all but three of his races, claimed that at Belmont he lost control of Secretariat and that the horse sprinted into history on his own accord.
411 BC – Coup in Athens succeeds, forming a short-lived oligarchy
53 – Roman Emperor Nero marries Claudia Octavia
62 – Claudia Octavia is executed.
68 – Roman Emperor Nero commits suicide, after quoting Homer’s Iliad.
721 – Odo of Aquitaine defeats the Moors in the Battle of Toulouse.
1310 – Duccio’s Maesta Altarpiece, a seminal artwork of the early Italian Renaissance, is unveiled and installed in the Siena Cathedral in Siena, Italy.
1534 – Jacques Cartier is the first European to discover the Saint Lawrence River.
1650 – The Harvard Corporation, the more powerful of the two administrative boards of Harvard, is established. It is the first legal corporation in the Americas.
1667 – The Raid on the Medway by the Dutch fleet begins. It lasts for five days and results in a decisive victory by the Dutch over the English in the Second Anglo-Dutch War.
1732 – James Oglethorpe is granted a royal charter for the colony of Georgia.
1772 – The British schooner Gaspèe is burned off the coast of Rhode Island.
1798 – Irish Rebellion of 1798: Battle of Arklow and Battle of Saintfield.
1815 – End of the Congress of Vienna: the new European political situation is set.
1856 – Five hundred Mormons leave Iowa City, Iowa and head west for Salt Lake City carrying all their possessions in two-wheeled handcarts.
1862 – American Civil War: Stonewall Jackson concludes his successful Shenandoah Valley Campaign with a victory in the Battle of Port Republic; his tactics during the campaign are now studied by militaries around the world.
1863 – American Civil War: Battle of Brandy Station, Virginia.
1873 – Alexandra Palace in London burns down after being open for only 16 days.
1885 – A peace treaty is signed to end the Sino-French War, with China eventually giving up Tonkin and Annam – most of present-day Vietnam – to France.
1900 – Birsa Munda, an important figure in the Indian independence movement, dies in British prison under mysterious circumstances.
1915 – William Jennings Bryan resigns as Woodrow Wilson’s Secretary of State over a disagreement regarding the United States’ handling of the sinking of the RMS Lusitania.
1923 – Bulgaria’s military takes over the government in a coup.
1924 – In the second attempt to climb Mount Everest, George Mallory and Andrew “Sandy” Irvine disappear, possibly having first made it to the top.
1928 – Charles Kingsford Smith completes the first trans-Pacific flight in a Fokker Trimotor monoplane, the Southern Cross.
1930 – Chicago Tribune reporter Jake Lingle is killed during rush hour at the Illinois Central train station by the Leo Vincent Brothers, allegedly over a 100,000 USD gambling debt owed to Al Capone.
1934 – Donald Duck makes his debut in The Wise Little Hen.
1944 – World War II: 99 civilians are hung from lampposts and balconies by German troops in Tulle, France, in reprisal for maquisards attacks.
1944 – World War II: the Soviet Union invades East Karelia and the previously Finnish part of Karelia, occupied by Finland since 1941.
1946 – King Bhumibol Adulyadej ascends to the throne of Thailand. He is currently the world’s longest reigning monarch.
1953 – Flint-Worcester tornado outbreak sequence: a tornado spawned from the same storm system as the Flint tornado hits in Worcester, Massachusetts killing 94.
1954 – McCarthyism: Joseph Welch, special counsel for the United States Army, lashes out at Senator Joseph McCarthy during hearings on whether Communism has infiltrated the Army giving McCarthy the famous rebuke, “You’ve done enough.
Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”
1958 – Queen Elizabeth II officially opens London Gatwick Airport, (LGW) in Crawley, West Sussex, United Kingdom.
1959 – The USS George Washington is launched. It is the first submarine to carry ballistic missiles.
1965 – Civilian Prime Minister of South Vietnam Phan Huy Quat resigned after being unable to work with a junta led by Nguyen Cao Ky.
1967 – Six-Day War: Israel captures the Golan Heights from Syria
1968 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson declares a national day of mourning following the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy.
1973 – Secretariat wins the Triple Crown.
1974 – Portugal and the Soviet Union establish diplomatic relations.
1978 – The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints opens its priesthood to “all worthy men”, ending a 148-year-old policy excluding black men.
1979 – The Ghost Train Fire at Luna Park Sydney (New South Wales, Australia) kills seven.
1985 – Thomas Sutherland is kidnapped in Lebanon (he will not be released until 1991).
1986 – The Rogers Commission releases its report on the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.
1999 – Kosovo War: the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and NATO sign a peace treaty.
2006 – 60th Anniversary Celebrations of Bhumibol Adulyadej’s Accession
2008 – Two bombs explode at a train station near Algiers, Algeria, killing at least 13 people
2008 – In the town of Lake Delton, Wisconsin, Lake Delton drains as a result of heavy flooding breaking the dam holding the lake back.
2009 – An explosion kills 17 people and injures at least 46 at a hotel in Peshawar, Pakistan.
2010 – At least 40 people are killed and more than 70 others are wounded as an explosion rips through an evening wedding party in Arghandab, Kandahar
* Anniversary of the Ascension of King Abdullah II (Jordan)
* Autonomy Day (Aland Islands)
* Christian Feast Day :
* Aidan of Lindisfarne (Lutheranism)
* Columba
* Ephrem the Syrian (Roman Catholic Church and Church of England)
* Primus and Felician
* June 9 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
* La Rioja Day (La Rioja)
* Murcia Day (Murcia)
* National Heroes’ Day (Uganda)