On This Day — 4 June

2025

Eleven people are killed and 56 people are injured during a crowd crush incident outside M.Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru, India for the celebration of Royal Challengers Bengaluru's Indian Premier League victory.

Crowd collapses and crushes

2023

Protests begin in Poland against the PiS government.

2023 Polish protests

2023

Four people are killed when a Cessna Citation V crashes into Mine Bank Mountain in Augusta County, Virginia.

Cessna Citation V

2010

Falcon 9 Flight 1 is the maiden flight of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, which launches from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Space Launch Complex 40.

Dragon Spacecraft Qualification Unit

2005

The Civic Forum of the Romanians of Covasna, Harghita and Mureș is founded.

Civic Forum of the Romanians of Covasna, Harghita and Mureș

1998

Terry Nichols is sentenced to life in prison for his role in the Oklahoma City bombing.

Terry Nichols

1996

The first flight of Ariane 5 explodes after roughly 37 seconds. It was a Cluster mission.

Ariane 5

1989

In the 1989 Iranian supreme leader election, Ali Khamenei is elected as the new Supreme Leader of Iran after the death and funeral of Ruhollah Khomeini.

1989 Iranian supreme leader election

1989

Solidarity's victory in the 1989 Polish legislative election occurs, the first election since the Communist Polish United Workers' Party abandoned its monopoly of power. It sparks off the Revolutions of 1989 in Eastern Europe.

Solidarity (Polish trade union)

1989

Ufa train disaster: A natural gas explosion near Ufa, Russia, kills 575 as two trains passing each other throw sparks near a leaky pipeline.

Ufa train disaster

1988

Three cars on a train carrying hexogen to Kazakhstan explode in Arzamas, Gorky Oblast, USSR, killing 91 and injuring about 1,500.

RDX

1986

Jonathan Pollard pleads guilty to espionage for selling top secret United States military intelligence to Israel.

Jonathan Pollard

1983

Gordon Kahl, who killed two US Marshals in Medina, North Dakota on February 13, is killed in a shootout in Smithville, Arkansas, along with a local sheriff, after a four-month manhunt.

Gordon Kahl

1979

Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings takes power in Ghana after a military coup in which General Fred Akuffo is overthrown.

Flight lieutenant

1977

JVC introduces its VHS videotape at the Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago. It will eventually prevail against Sony's rival Betamax system in a format war to become the predominant home video medium.

JVC

1975

Governor of California Jerry Brown signs the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act into law, the first law in the United States giving farmworkers collective bargaining rights.

Governor of California

1970

Tonga gains independence from the British Empire.

Tonga

1967

Seventy-two people are killed when a Canadair C-4 Argonaut crashes at Stockport in England.

Canadair North Star

1961

Cold War: In the Vienna summit, the Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev sparks the Berlin Crisis by threatening to sign a separate peace treaty with East Germany and ending American, British and French access to East Berlin.

Cold War

1944

World War II: A hunter-killer group of the United States Navy captures the German Kriegsmarine submarine U-505: The first time a U.S. Navy vessel had captured an enemy vessel at sea since the 19th century.

United States Navy

1944

World War II: The United States Fifth Army captures Rome, although much of the German Fourteenth Army is able to withdraw to the north.

United States Army North

1942

World War II: Gustaf Mannerheim, the Commander-in-Chief of the Finnish Army, is granted the title of Marshal of Finland by the government on his 75th birthday. On the same day, Adolf Hitler arrives in Finland for a surprise visit to meet Mannerheim.

Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim

1940

World War II: The Dunkirk evacuation ends: the British Armed Forces completes evacuation of 338,000 troops from Dunkirk in France. To rally the morale of the country, Winston Churchill delivers, only to the House of Commons, his famous "We shall fight on the beaches" speech.

World War II

1939

The Holocaust: The MS St. Louis, a ship carrying 973 German Jewish refugees, is denied permission to land in Florida, in the United States, after already being turned away from Cuba. Forced to return to Europe, more than 200 of its passengers later die in Nazi concentration camps.

The Holocaust

1932

Marmaduke Grove and other Chilean military officers lead a coup d'état establishing the short-lived Socialist Republic of Chile.

Marmaduke Grove

1928

The President of the Republic of China, Zhang Zuolin, is assassinated by Japanese agents.

President of the Republic of China

1920

Hungary loses 71% of its territory and 63% of its population when the Treaty of Trianon is signed in Paris.

Hungary

1919

Women's rights: The U.S. Congress approves the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which guarantees suffrage to women, and sends it to the U.S. states for ratification.

Women's rights

1919

Leon Trotsky bans the Planned Fourth Regional Congress of Peasants, Workers and Insurgents.

Leon Trotsky

1917

The first Pulitzer Prizes are awarded: Laura E. Richards, Maude H. Elliott, and Florence Hall receive the first Pulitzer for biography (for Julia Ward Howe). Jean Jules Jusserand receives the first Pulitzer for history for his work With Americans of Past and Present Days. Herbert B. Swope receives the first Pulitzer for journalism for his work for the New York World.

Pulitzer Prize

1916

World War I: Russia opens the Brusilov Offensive with an artillery barrage of Austro-Hungarian lines in Galicia.

World War I

1913

Emily Davison, a suffragette, runs out in front of King George V's horse at The Derby. She is trampled, never regains consciousness, and dies four days later.

Emily Davison

1912

Massachusetts becomes the first state of the United States to set a minimum wage.

Massachusetts

1896

Henry Ford completes the Ford Quadricycle, his first gasoline-powered automobile and also gives it a successful test run.

Henry Ford

1878

Cyprus Convention: The Ottoman Empire cedes Cyprus to the United Kingdom but retains nominal title.

Cyprus Convention

1876

An express train called the Transcontinental Express arrives in San Francisco via the first transcontinental railroad, 83 hours and 39 minutes after leaving New York City.

Express train

1862

American Civil War: Confederate troops evacuate Fort Pillow on the Mississippi River, leaving the way clear for Union troops to take Memphis, Tennessee.

American Civil War

1859

Italian Independence wars: In the Battle of Magenta, the French army, under Louis-Napoleon, defeat the Austrian army.

Second Italian War of Independence

1855

Major Henry C. Wayne departs New York aboard the USS Supply to procure camels to establish the U.S. Camel Corps.

Henry C. Wayne

1825

General Lafayette, a French officer in the American Revolutionary War, speaks at what would become Lafayette Square in Buffalo, New York, during his visit to the United States.

Marquis de Lafayette

1812

Following Louisiana's admittance as a U.S. state, the Louisiana Territory is renamed the Missouri Territory.

Louisiana

1802

King Charles Emmanuel IV of Sardinia abdicates his throne in favor of his brother, Victor Emmanuel.

Charles Emmanuel IV

1796

The siege of Mantua begins when Napoleon Bonaparte lays siege to the fortress of Mantua the last Austrian stronghold in Northern Italy. It will become the main focus of Napoleon's army for eight months during the Italian campaign of 1796-1797.

Siege of Mantua (1796–1797)

1792

Captain George Vancouver claims Puget Sound for the Kingdom of Great Britain.

Captain (Royal Navy)

1784

Élisabeth Thible becomes the first woman to fly in an untethered hot air balloon. Her flight covers four kilometres (2.5 mi) in 45 minutes, and reached an estimated 1,500 metres (4,900 ft) in altitude.

Élisabeth Thible

1783

The Montgolfier brothers publicly demonstrate their montgolfière (hot air balloon).

Montgolfier brothers

1760

Great Upheaval: New England planters arrive to claim land in Nova Scotia, Canada, taken from the Acadians.

Expulsion of the Acadians

1745

Battle of Hohenfriedberg: Frederick the Great's Prussian army decisively defeat an Austrian army under Prince Charles Alexander of Lorraine during the War of the Austrian Succession.

Battle of Hohenfriedberg

1615

Siege of Osaka: Forces under Tokugawa Ieyasu take Osaka Castle in Japan.

Siege of Osaka

1561

The steeple of St Paul's, the medieval cathedral of London, is destroyed in a fire caused by lightning, and is never rebuilt.

Steeple

1525

1525 Bayham Abbey riot; Villagers from Kent and Sussex, England riot and occupy Bayham Old Abbey for a week in protest against Cardinal Thomas Wolsey's order to suppress the monastery in order to fund two colleges founded by him.

1525 Bayham Abbey riot

1411

King Charles VI grants a monopoly for the ripening of Roquefort cheese to the people of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon, as they had been doing for centuries.

Charles VI of France