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Lucile Connally christens the SS United States; the largest ocean liner built in America slides into the water at Newport News

Designed by William Francis Gibbs and launched from a dry dock for the first time in ocean-liner history, she is built to carry tourists in peace and divisions of soldiers to war.

The Cold War had made the Pentagon nervous about troop transport, and the Korean War had made it desperate — so the Navy and a private shipping company built something that had never existed before. On June 23, 1951, Lucile Connally, wife of U.S. Senator Tom Connally, christened and launched the SS United States at Newport News — the largest ocean liner ever constructed entirely in America. Designed by William Francis Gibbs and built in a dry dock for the first time in ocean-liner history, she had been engineered to carry passengers across the Atlantic in peacetime and divisions of soldiers to war. The following July, she would cross the Atlantic in three days, ten hours, and forty minutes and not give the Blue Riband back…

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More from June 23
1972

Nixon tells Haldeman to use the CIA to block the FBI's Watergate inquiry

Six days after the break-in at Democratic headquarters, the Oval Office recording system captures the President invoking national security to shut down investigators.
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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Continental troops and New Jersey militia blunt both British columns at the Rahway crossings, and the redcoats leave nearly the whole town in ashes as they pull back.
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Read the full June 23 edition →Everything that happened on June 23 →
More from Cold War America
1950

American fighters meet North Korean Yaks above Suwon; three shot down, none lost

F-82s and F-80Cs scrambled to cover civilian evacuation flights out of Seoul, two days after North Korean forces crossed the 38th parallel.
1950

Gaetjens heads it in; the US beats England, 1–0, in Belo Horizonte

Borghi shuts out the sport's reigning aristocracy; the American squad includes a hearse driver, a schoolteacher, and men who trained together exactly once.
1956

Eisenhower signs the highway act; 41,000 miles of interstate and $25 billion set in motion

The president who crossed the country on rutted Army roads in 1919 authorizes the largest public works project the nation has yet attempted.
1946

Blandy detonates the bomb over Bikini; the target fleet survives, and the Navy claims vindication

Test Able misses its aim point by 2,130 feet, scattering results that disappoint the Navy's critics but settle nothing about the weapon's power at sea.
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