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19661776 Club

Walker's F-104 clips the Valkyrie's wingtip; both aircraft are down over the Mojave

The formation was a GE publicity shoot, unauthorized by the Air Force; Walker and XB-70 co-pilot Maj. Carl Cross are dead.

Six aircraft held formation over the Mojave Desert on June 8, 1966, arranged by General Electric for a publicity shoot celebrating the common engine shared by all five military jets. NASA test pilot Joe Walker — the first civilian American to reach space, a man who had flown the X-15 to 108 kilometers — was flying an F-104N Starfighter on the right wing of the massive XB-70 Valkyrie prototype. Walker's F-104 drifted into the XB-70's right wingtip, flipped inverted over the bomber, and struck both vertical stabilizers and the left wing before exploding. The Valkyrie entered an uncontrollable spin and crashed north of Barstow, California, killing Walker and XB-70 co-pilot USAF Major Carl Cross. The formation flight had not been authorized by the Air Force…

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More from June 8
1789

Madison rises in the House with a list of amendments; rivals are still calling for a second convention

Drawing on more than two hundred proposals from state ratifying conventions, he moves to revise the Constitution before its opponents can dismantle it.
1906

Roosevelt signs the Antiquities Act; no proclamation needed from Congress to seal off federal land

For decades, pot hunters have stripped pottery and bones from Chaco Canyon and across the Southwest. The president can now designate national monuments alone, by proclamation.
1861

Tennessee votes to leave the Union; the eleventh state is also the last

Middle Tennessee swings from 51 percent against secession in February to 88 percent in favor today, providing the decisive margin, though East Tennessee refuses to accept the result.
17761776 Club
A local farmer leads the 2,000-man column off the road as British reinforcements land behind them, cutting off any retreat north.
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Read the full June 8 edition →Everything that happened on June 8 →
More from Cold War America
1967

Thurgood Marshall takes the oath; the Supreme Court has its first Black justice

The Senate confirmed Marshall 69–11 on August 30, brushing aside sustained Southern objections; he is sworn in today, October 2.
1971

The Times begins printing the Pentagon Papers; four presidents, the documents show, misled the country on Vietnam

A 7,000-page classified Defense Department study reveals the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations each obscured the true scope of U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia.
1961

Twelve nations' Antarctic pact takes force; military operations and nuclear tests are now banned on the continent

The agreement, signed in 1959 after Argentine marines fired on British researchers, designates everything south of 60°S as a scientific preserve open to all signatories.
1972

Nixon signs 37 words into law; no federal program may turn away a student on the basis of sex

Senator Birch Bayh's passage, buried in the Education Amendments of 1972, draws almost no public attention at the signing.
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