more events on June 8
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1995
U.S. Air Force pilot Captain Scott O’Grady is rescued by U.S. Marines in Bosnia.
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1969
President Richard Nixon meets with President Thieu of South Vietnam to tell him 25,000 U.S. troops will pull out by August.
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1968
James Earl Ray, the alleged assassin of Martin Luther King, Jr., is captured at the London Airport.
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1967
Israeli airplanes attack the USS Liberty, a surveillance ship, in the Mediterranean, killing 34 Navy crewmen.
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1953
After being turned away at a local diner, 86-year-old African American activist Mary Church Terrell and civil rights groups score a major victory as Supreme Court rules against segregated lunch counters in Washington, D.C.
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1947
Sara Paretsky, detective novelist.
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1942
Andrew Weil, physician and author (Spontaneous Healing).
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1939
Herb Adderley, American football player.
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1925
Barbara Pierce Bush, First Lady to 41st President, George H. W. Bush.
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1918
Robert Preston, actor (The Music Man).
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1916
Francis Crick, British scientist who co-discovered of the structure of DNA.
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1904
The U.S. dispatches Marines to Tangiers, Morocco, to protect Ion Pedicaris, the wealthy son of a U.S. ambassador, after his family is kidnapped by hostile native tribes in what became known as the “Perdicaris Affair.”
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1867
Frank Lloyd Wright, influential American architect.
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1863
Residents of Vicksburg flee into caves as General Ulysses S. Grant‘s army begins shelling the town.
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1862
At the Battle of Cross Keys, Confederate Gen. Richard Ewell and his men defeat Union Gen. John C. Fremont, setting up Stonewall Jackson to move the next day against Union forces at nearby Port Republic.
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1861
Tennessee votes to secede from the Union and join the Confederacy.
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1813
David D. Porter, Union admiral during the American Civil War.
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1810
Robert Schumann, German composer.
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1724
John Smeaton, English engineer.
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1625
Giovanni Domenico Cassini, astronomer.
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793
The Vikings raid the Northumbrian coast of England.
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632
Muhammad, the founder of Islam and unifier of Arabia, dies.