June 16.
1858. Abraham Lincoln gives the House Divided speech. Surprisingly, it's not about tariffs.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Abraham Lincoln
"A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.
Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new — North as well as South. |
1903. Ford Motor Company is incorporated.
1904. Bloomsday. Irish author James Joyce begins his relationship with Nora Barnacle, and therefore uses this day to set the events of his novel Ulysses, all of which occur within this single date. The date is therefore celebrated as Bloomsday in Ireland, being named after Leopold Bloom, the protagonist of the novel.
1940. In a sad closing chapter of a French military hero from WWI, the 84 year old Henri Philippe Petain, Marshal of France, becomes Premier of Vichy France, which collaborated with the Nazis. Following the war, he is convicted of and sentenced to death by firing squad for treason, a sentence that is commuted to life imprisonment by his former protege Charles de Gaulle. He eventually dies, completely senile while inprisoned on an island off the Atlantic Coast of France. Calls are occassionally made for him to be reinterred at a site prepared for him near Verdun, the WWI battle where he achieved his greatest fame. Mount Petain, in the Canadian Rockies, was named for him in 1919, one of a number of other summits named for French military leaders of WWI, such as Foch, and Joffre.
1976. The Soweto uprising, a non-violent demonstration by 15,000 students in Soweto, South Africa, turns into days of rioting after police open fire.