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Made for the 250thOn this day › June 7
What happened on June 7 in American history
June 7 is the 158th day of the year (the 159th in leap years). Patriot Compass has published 12 stories from June 7 spanning 1776 to 1998. Among them: in 1776, Lee rises in Congress and calls the colonies free and independent states; Adams seconds the motion; and in 1862, Seward and Lyons sign a treaty giving both navies the right to search and seize slave ships.
1776
Lee rises in Congress and calls the colonies free and independent states; Adams seconds the motion
Five delegations lack instructions to vote, so a decision is delayed three weeks and a drafting committee is named in the meantime.
1862
Seward and Lyons sign a treaty giving both navies the right to search and seize slave ships
The Senate ratifies unanimously the same day, ending half a century of U.S. resistance to British calls for mutual search rights on African and Cuban waters.
1892Member story · 1776 Club
Plessy boards a whites-only car and waits; the arrest goes exactly as planned
The Comité des Citoyens hired the detective themselves, staging the challenge to Louisiana's Separate Car Act at the Press Street Depot.
1899Member story · 1776 Club
Carrie Nation walks into Dobson's Saloon in Kiowa and starts throwing rocks
She calls them "smashers"; before the day is out she has wrecked two more saloons, and a tornado that strikes eastern Kansas tonight she takes as a sign from God.
1938Member story · 1776 Club
Carl Cover lifts Douglas's four-engine DC-4E off Clover Field; the airlines that paid for it are already unsure they want it
The 97-foot prototype carries nosewheel gear, air conditioning, and power-boosted controls, a constellation of firsts that its backers call too costly to maintain.
1942Member story · 1776 Club
Japanese troops land on Attu and Kiska; American soil is occupied for the first time since 1812
The 301st Infantry Battalion met almost no resistance on Attu, where the island held 45 Unangax villagers, a radio technician, and his schoolteacher wife.
1942
Dive bombers sink three Japanese carriers in six minutes; a fourth falls before dark
Cryptanalysts cracked Tokyo's naval code and fed the enemy a lie about a water shortage, and Nagumo's flight decks are crowded with fueled, armed planes when the Americans arrive.
1948Member story · 1776 Club
Shostakovich and three Soviet composers lose their bid to silence 'The Iron Curtain'
Justice Koch rules the public's right to use uncopyrighted works outweighs any moral claim the composers hold over Fox's anti-Soviet spy film.
1965Member story · 1776 Club
Supreme Court strikes Connecticut's contraception ban; Douglas finds privacy in the Constitution's "penumbras"
Seven justices rule that married couples may use contraceptives without government intrusion, though the majority's reasoning draws immediate scorn and praise in equal measure.
1971Member story · 1776 Club
Most survive the impact; 28 die in the fire after Allegheny 485 clips New Haven cottages in fog
Investigators find exit instructions too small to read through the haze, and the second flight attendant the FAA had waived away was not there to lead anyone out.
1971Member story · 1776 Club
Harlan writes for the Court, 5–4: California cannot jail a man for words on a jacket
Paul Robert Cohen's "Fuck the Draft" conviction is reversed; Harlan holds that offense alone gives the state no power to silence speech.
1998Member story · 1776 Club
Three men chain James Byrd Jr. to a truck and drag him three miles to his death in Jasper, Texas
Berry, Brewer, and King dumped the 49-year-old's remains outside a Black cemetery, then drove to a barbecue.
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