Historical Events on Wednesday, 4th June

04/06/2025

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 crowd crushes are catastrophic incidents that occur when a body of people becomes dangerously overcrowded. When numbers are up to about five people per square meter, the environment may feel cramped but manageable; when numbers reach between eight and ten people per square meter, individuals become pressed against each other and may be swept along against their will by the motion of the crowd. Under these conditions, the crowd may undergo a progressive collapse where the pressure pushes people off their feet, resulting in people being trampled or crushed by the weight of other people falling on top of them. At even higher densities, the pressure on each individual can cause them to be crushed or asphyxiated while still upright.

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04/06/2023

Protests begin in Poland against the Duda government.

On June 4, 2023, a series of planned anti-government marches took place in several areas of Poland, with the main one being held in the capital city of Warsaw. The protests were additionally motivated by the passing of the bill commonly referred to as "Lex Tusk", which critics argued would disrupt the constitutional separation of powers by giving the ruling party of PiS excessive judicial oversight. The Polish opposition in the national Parliament, as well as numerous foreign commentators, considered the law's approval an extension of the perceived constitutional crisis under the presidency of Andrzej Duda and the government headed by Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki.

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

The Cessna Citation V is a business jet built by Cessna as part of the Cessna Citation family. The first Model 560 prototype, a stretched version of the Citation S/II, flew in August 1987 and was certified on December 9, 1988. The upgraded Citation Ultra was announced in September 1993; the Citation Encore, upgraded with PW535 turbofans, was announced in 1998 and later upgraded as the Encore+. Between 1989 and 2011, 774 of all variants were produced. Its U.S. military designation is UC-35 as an executive transport and OT-47B as a reconnaissance aircraft.

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04/06/2010

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.

The Dragon Spacecraft Qualification Unit was a boilerplate version of the Dragon spacecraft manufactured by SpaceX. After using it for ground tests to rate Dragon's shape and mass in various tests, SpaceX launched it into low Earth orbit on the maiden flight of the Falcon 9 rocket, on June 4, 2010. SpaceX used the launch to evaluate the aerodynamic conditions on the spacecraft and performance of the carrier rocket in a real-world launch scenario, ahead of Dragon flights for NASA under the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program. The spacecraft orbited the Earth over 300 times before decaying from orbit and reentering the atmosphere on 27 June.

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04/06/2005

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

The Civic Forum of the Romanians of Covasna, Harghita and Mureș is a forum grouping some 45 organizations of Covasna, Harghita and Mureș counties in Romania as of 2022. These counties have a large ethnically Hungarian population made up of the Székely subgroup, although ethnic Romanians also live in them. The FCRCHM was founded on 4 June 2005 and aims to organize the ethnic Romanian population in these counties to prevent its disappearance; for this purpose, it has organized various events and initiatives.

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04/06/1998

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

Terry Lynn Nichols is an American domestic terrorist who was convicted for conspiring with Timothy McVeigh in the Oklahoma City bombing plot.

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04/06/1996

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

Ariane 5 is a retired European heavy-lift space launch vehicle operated by Arianespace for the European Space Agency (ESA). It was launched from the Guiana Space Centre (CSG) in French Guiana. It was used to deliver payloads into geostationary transfer orbit (GTO), low Earth orbit (LEO) or further into space. The launch vehicle had a streak of 82 consecutive successful launches between 9 April 2003 and 12 December 2017. In development since 2014, Ariane 6, a direct successor system was first launched in 2024.

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04/06/1989

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.

An election for the second supreme leader of Iran was held on 4 June and 6 August 1989 following the death of the first supreme leader Ruhollah Khomeini.

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The 1989 Tiananmen Square protests are suppressed in Beijing by the People's Liberation Army, with between 241 and 10,000 dead (an unofficial estimate).

Protests led by students and workers, known in China as the June Fourth Incident, were held in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China, from 15 April to 4 June 1989. After weeks of unsuccessful attempts between the demonstrators and the Chinese government to find a peaceful resolution, the Chinese government initiated martial law in late May and deployed troops to occupy the square on the night of 3 June in what is referred to as the Tiananmen Square massacre. The events are sometimes called the '89 Democracy Movement, the Tiananmen Square Incident, or the Tiananmen uprising.

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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, full name Independent Self-Governing Trade Union "Solidarity", is a Polish trade union founded in August 1980 at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk, Poland. Subsequently, it was the first independent trade union in a Warsaw Pact country to be recognised by the state.

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

The Ufa train disaster was a railway accident that occurred in the Iglinsky District of the Bashkir ASSR, Soviet Union on 4 June 1989, killing 575 people and injuring 800 more. It is the second-deadliest rail disaster in Soviet/Russian history after the 1944 Vereshchyovka train disaster, and the deadliest to occur during peacetime.

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04/06/1988

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

RDX (Research Department Explosive or Royal Demolition Explosive), or hexogen, also known by other names, is an organic compound with the formula (CH2N2O2)3. It is white, odorless, tasteless, and widely used as an explosive. Chemically, it is classified as a nitroamine alongside HMX, which is a more energetic explosive than trinitrotoluene (TNT). It was used widely in World War II and remains common in military applications. It is lower performing and more toxic than modern replacements like TKX-50.

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04/06/1986

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

Jonathan Jay Pollard is an American-born Israeli spy and former intelligence analyst who was jailed for spying for Israel.

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04/06/1983

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 Wendell Kahl was an American World War II veteran, farmer and tax protester who was known for being a one-time member of the Posse Comitatus movement and for his involvement in two fatal shootouts with law enforcement officers in the United States in 1983.

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04/06/1979

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

Flight lieutenant is a junior officer rank used by some air forces, with origins from the Royal Air Force. The rank originated in the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) in 1914. It fell into abeyance when the RNAS merged with the Royal Flying Corps during the First World War but was revived in 1919 in the post-war RAF. The rank is used by air forces of many countries that have historical British influence.

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04/06/1977

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 was a Japanese brand owned by JVCKenwood. Founded in 1927 as the Victor Talking Machine Company of Japan and later as Victor Company of Japan, Ltd. , the company was best known for introducing Japan's first televisions and for developing the Video Home System (VHS) video recorder.

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04/06/1975

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.

The governor of California is the head of government of the U.S. state of California. The governor is the commander-in-chief of the California National Guard and the California State Guard.

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04/06/1970

Tonga gains independence from the British Empire.

Tonga, officially the Kingdom of Tonga, is an island country in Polynesia, part of Oceania. The country has 171 islands, of which 45 are inhabited. Its total surface area is about 750 km2 (290 sq mi), scattered over 700,000 km2 (270,000 sq mi) in the southern Pacific Ocean. As of 2021, according to Johnson's Tribune, Tonga has a population of 104,494, 70% of whom reside on the main island, Tongatapu. The country stretches approximately 800 km north-south. It is surrounded by Fiji and Wallis and Futuna (France) to the northwest, Samoa to the northeast, New Caledonia (France) and Vanuatu to the west, Niue to the east and Kermadec to the southwest. Tonga is about 1,800 km from New Zealand's North Island.

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04/06/1967

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

The Canadair North Star is a 1940s Canadian development, for Trans-Canada Air Lines (TCA), of the Douglas DC-4. Instead of radial piston engines used by the Douglas design, Canadair used Rolls-Royce Merlin V12 engines to achieve a higher cruising speed of 325 mph (523 km/h) compared with the 246 mph (396 km/h) of the standard DC-4. Requested by TCA in 1944, the prototype flew on 15 July 1946. The type was used by various airlines and by the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF). It proved to be reliable but noisy when in service through the 1950s and into the 1960s. Some examples continued to fly into the 1970s, converted to cargo aircraft.

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04/06/1961

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.

The Cold War was a period of international geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc. It began in the aftermath of the Second World War and ended with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The term cold war is used because there was no direct fighting between the two superpowers, though each supported opposing sides in regional conflicts known as proxy wars. In addition to the struggle for ideological and economic influence and an arms race in both conventional and nuclear weapons, the Cold War was expressed through technological rivalries such as the Space Race, espionage, propaganda campaigns, embargoes, and sports diplomacy.

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04/06/1944

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.

The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and is designated as the navy of the United States in the Constitution. With 290 combat vessels, it is the world's second largest navy, behind the People's Liberation Army Navy, and by far the largest by displacement, at 4.5 million tons in 2021. It has the world's largest aircraft carrier fleet, with eleven in service, one undergoing trials, two new carriers under construction, and six other carriers planned as of 2024. The U.S. Navy is a part of the United States Department of Defense and is one of six armed forces of the United States and one of eight uniformed services of the United States.

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

The United States Army North (ARNORTH) is a formation of the United States Army. An Army Service Component Command (ASCC) subordinate to United States Northern Command (NORTHCOM), ARNORTH is the joint force land component of NORTHCOM. ARNORTH is responsible for homeland defense and defense support of civil authorities. ARNORTH is headquartered at Fort Sam Houston, Texas. Redesignated ARNORTH in 2004, it was first activated in early January 1943 as the United States Fifth Army, under the command of Lieutenant General Mark W. Clark.

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04/06/1943

A military coup in Argentina ousts Ramón Castillo.

The 1943 Argentine Revolution was a coup d'état on 4 June 1943 that ended the government of Ramón Castillo, who had been fraudulently elected to the office of vice-president before succeeding to the presidency in 1942 as part of the period known as the Infamous Decade. The coup d'état was launched by the lodge "United Officers' Group" (GOU), a secret military organization of nationalist nature. Although its soldiers shared different views of nationalism: there were Catholic nationalists, Radicals, military with a more pragmatic approach, and even fascists. The military was opposed to Governor Robustiano Patrón Costas, Castillo's hand-picked successor, a major landowner in Salta Province and a primary stockholder in the sugar industry. The only serious resistance to the military coup came from the Argentine Navy, which confronted the advancing army columns at the Navy Petty-Officers School of Mechanics.

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04/06/1942

World War II: The Battle of Midway begins. Japanese Admiral Chūichi Nagumo orders a strike on Midway Island by much of the Imperial Japanese Navy.

The Battle of Midway was a major naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II that took place on 4–7 June 1942, six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea. The Japanese Combined Fleet under the command of Isoroku Yamamoto suffered a decisive defeat by two carrier strike groups of the U.S. Pacific Fleet near Midway Atoll, about 1,300 mi northwest of Oahu. Yamamoto had intended to capture Midway and lure out and destroy the U.S. Pacific Fleet, especially the aircraft carriers which had escaped damage at Pearl Harbor.

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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.

Baron Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim was a Finnish military commander and statesman. He served as the military leader of the Whites in the Finnish Civil War (1918), as regent of Finland (1918–1919), as commander-in-chief of the Finnish Defence Forces during World War II (1939–1945), and as the president of Finland (1944–1946). He became Finland's only field marshal in 1933 and was appointed honorary Marshal of Finland in 1942.

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04/06/1940

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, or the Second World War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries participated. Tanks and aircraft played major roles, the latter enabling the strategic bombing of cities and delivery of the only nuclear weapons used in war. World War II was the deadliest conflict in history, causing the death of 60 to 75 million people. Millions died as a result of massacres, starvation, disease, and genocides including the Holocaust. After the Allied victory, Germany, Austria, Japan, and Korea were occupied, and German and Japanese leaders were tried for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and crimes against peace.

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04/06/1939

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, known in Hebrew as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered around six million Jews across German-occupied Europe, approximately two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population. The murders were committed primarily through mass shootings across Eastern Europe and poison gas chambers in extermination camps, chiefly Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, Chełmno and Majdanek death camps in occupied Poland. Concurrent Nazi persecutions killed millions of other non-Jewish civilians and prisoners of war (POWs); the term Holocaust is sometimes used to include the murder and persecution of non-Jewish groups, such as the Romani and Soviet POWs.

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04/06/1932

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

Marmaduke Grove Vallejo, was a Chilean Air Force officer, political figure and member of the Government Junta of the Socialist Republic of Chile in 1932.

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04/06/1928

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

The president of the Republic of China, also known as the president of Taiwan, is the head of state of the Republic of China (Taiwan), as well as the commander-in-chief of the Republic of China Armed Forces. Before 1949 the position had the authority of ruling over mainland China, but losing control of it after communist victory in the Chinese Civil War, the remaining jurisdictions of the ROC have been limited to Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen, Matsu, and smaller islands.

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04/06/1920

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

Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning much of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia and Slovenia to the southwest, and Austria to the west. Hungary lies within the drainage basin of the Danube River and is dominated by great lowland plains. It has a population of 9.6 million, consisting mostly of ethnic Hungarians (Magyars) and a significant Romani minority. Hungarian is the official language, and among the few in Europe outside the Indo-European family. Budapest is the country's capital and its largest city, and the dominant cultural and economic centre.

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04/06/1919

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 are the rights and entitlements claimed for women and girls worldwide. They formed the basis for the women's rights movement in the 19th century and the feminist movements during the 20th and 21st centuries. In some countries, these rights are institutionalized or supported by law, local custom, and behavior, whereas in others, they are ignored and suppressed. They differ from broader notions of human rights through claims of an inherent historical and traditional bias against the exercise of rights by women and girls, in favor of men and boys.

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

Lev Davidovich Trotsky, better known as Leon Trotsky, was a Russian revolutionary, Soviet politician and political theorist. He was a key figure in the 1905 Revolution, the October Revolution of 1917, the Russian Civil War, and the establishment of the Soviet Union, from which he was exiled in 1929 before his assassination in 1940. Trotsky and Vladimir Lenin were widely considered the two most prominent figures in the Soviet state from 1917 until Lenin's death in 1924. Ideologically a Marxist and a Leninist, Trotsky's ideas and beliefs inspired a school of Marxism known as Trotskyism.

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04/06/1917

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.

The Pulitzer Prizes are 23 annual awards given by Columbia University in New York City for achievements in the United States in "journalism, arts and letters". They were established in 1917 by the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made his fortune as a newspaper publisher.

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04/06/1916

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

World War I, or the First World War, also known as The Great War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Central Powers. Major areas of conflict included Europe and the Middle East, as well as parts of Africa and the Asia-Pacific. The war saw important developments in weaponry including tanks, aircraft, artillery, machine guns, and chemical weapons. One of the deadliest conflicts in history, it resulted in an estimated 15 to 22 million military and civilian casualties and genocide. The movement of large numbers of people was a major factor in the deadly Spanish flu pandemic.

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04/06/1913

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 Wilding Davison was an English suffragette who fought for votes for women in Britain in the early twentieth century. A member of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) and a militant fighter for her cause, she was arrested on nine occasions, went on hunger strike seven times and was force-fed on forty-nine occasions. She died after being hit by King George V's horse Anmer at the 1913 Derby when she walked onto the track during the race.

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04/06/1912

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

Massachusetts, officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine to its east, Connecticut and Rhode Island to its south, New Hampshire and Vermont to its north, and New York to its west. Massachusetts is the seventh-smallest state by land area. With an estimated population of over 7.1 million, it is the most populous state in New England, the 16th-most-populous in the United States, and the third-most densely populated U.S. state after New Jersey and Rhode Island.

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04/06/1896

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

Henry Ford was an American industrialist and business magnate. As the founder of the Ford Motor Company, he is credited as a pioneer in making automobiles affordable for middle-class Americans through the system that came to be known as Fordism. In 1911, he was awarded a patent for the transmission mechanism that would be used in the Ford Model T and other automobiles.

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04/06/1878

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

The Cyprus Convention of 4 June 1878 was a secret agreement reached between the United Kingdom and the Ottoman Empire which granted administrative control of Cyprus to Britain, in exchange for its support of the Ottomans during the Congress of Berlin. Provisions in the Convention retained Ottoman rights over the territory of Cyprus.

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04/06/1876

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.

An express train is a type of passenger train that makes few or no stops between its origin and destination stations, usually major destinations, providing faster service than local trains that stop at many or all of the stations along their route. They are sometimes referred to by terms such as "fast train" or "high-speed train", e.g., the German Schnellzug. Though many high-speed rail services are express, not all trains described as express have been much faster than other services; trains in the United Kingdom in the 19th century were called expresses as long as they had a "journey speed" of at least 40 miles per hour (64 km/h). Express trains sometimes have higher fares than other routes, and bearers of a rail pass may be required to pay an extra fee. First class may be the only class available. Some express train routes that overlap with local train service may stop at stations near the tail ends of the line. This can be done, for example, where there is no supplemental local service to those stations. Express train routes may also become local at times when ridership is not high enough to justify parallel local service, such as at nighttime.

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04/06/1862

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

The American Civil War was a civil war in the United States between the Union and the Confederacy, which was formed in 1861 by states that had seceded from the Union to preserve slavery in the United States, which they saw as threatened because of the election of Abraham Lincoln and the growing abolitionist movement in the North. The war lasted a little over four years, ending with Union victory, the dissolution of the Confederacy and the abolition of slavery, freeing four million African Americans.

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04/06/1859

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

The Second Italian War of Independence, also called the Sardinian War, the Austro-Sardinian War, the Franco-Austrian War, or the Italian War of 1859, was fought by the Second French Empire and the Kingdom of Sardinia against the Austrian Empire in 1859 and played a crucial part in the process of Italian Unification.

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04/06/1855

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

Henry Constantine Wayne was a United States Army officer, and is known for his commanding the expedition to test the U.S. Camel Corps as part of Secretary of War Jefferson Davis's plan to use camels as a transport in the West. Wayne was also a Confederate adjutant and inspector-general for Georgia and a brigadier general during the American Civil War.

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04/06/1825

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.

Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de La Fayette, known in the United States as Lafayette, was a French military officer and politician who volunteered to join the Continental Army, led by General George Washington, in the American Revolutionary War. Lafayette commanded Continental Army troops in the decisive siege of Yorktown in 1781, the Revolutionary War's final major battle, which secured American independence. After returning to France, Lafayette became a key figure in the French Revolution of 1789 and the July Revolution of 1830 and continues to be celebrated as a hero in both France and the United States.

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04/06/1812

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

Louisiana is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is bordered by Texas to the west, Arkansas to the north, and Mississippi to the east. Of the 50 U.S. states, it ranks 31st in area and 25th in population, with roughly 4.6 million residents. Reflecting its French heritage, Louisiana is the only U.S. state with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are equivalent to counties, making it one of only two U.S. states not subdivided into counties. Baton Rouge is the state's capital, and New Orleans, a French Louisiana region, is its most populous city with a population of about 363,000 people. Louisiana has a coastline with the Gulf of Mexico to the south; a large part of its eastern boundary is demarcated by the Mississippi River; and the mouth of the Mississippi or delta defines much of its lower topography.

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04/06/1802

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

Charles Emmanuel IV was King of Sardinia and ruler of the Savoyard states from 16 October 1796 until 1802, when he abdicated in favour of his brother Victor Emmanuel I.

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04/06/1796

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.

The siege of Mantua lasted from 4 June 1796 to 2 February 1797 with a short break where French forces under the overall command of Napoleon Bonaparte besieged and blockaded a large Austrian garrison at Mantua for many months until it surrendered. The siege was the focal point of the Italian Campaign of 1796-1797, lasting the vast majority of the campaign and being the hinge point that would determine which side would control Northern Italy. The eventual surrender, together with the heavy losses incurred during four unsuccessful relief attempts, led to Napoleon invading Austria and convincing the Austrians to sue for peace in 1797. The siege occurred during the War of the First Coalition, which is part of the French Revolutionary Wars. Mantua, a city in the Lombardy region of Italy, lies on the Mincio River.

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04/06/1792

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

Captain (Capt.) is a senior officer rank of the Royal Navy. It ranks above commander and below commodore and has a NATO ranking code of OF-5. The rank is equivalent to a colonel in the British Army and Royal Marines, and to a group captain in the Royal Air Force. There are similarly named equivalent ranks in the navies of many other countries.

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04/06/1784

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, or Elizabeth Tible, was the first woman to make a flight in an untethered hot air balloon. She was born in Lyon, France, on 8 March 1757. On 4 June 1784, eight months after the first crewed balloon flight, Thible flew with a Monsieur Fleurant on board a hot air balloon christened La Gustave in honour of King Gustav III of Sweden's visit to Lyon.

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04/06/1783

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

The Montgolfier brothers – Joseph-Michel Montgolfier and Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier – were aviation pioneers, balloonists and paper manufacturers from the commune Annonay in Ardèche, France. They invented the Montgolfière-style hot air balloon, globe aérostatique, which launched the first confirmed piloted ascent by humans in 1783, carrying Jacques-Étienne.

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04/06/1760

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

The Expulsion of the Acadians was the forced removal of inhabitants of the North American region historically known as Acadia between 1755 and 1764 by Great Britain. It included the modern Canadian Maritime provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island, along with part of the US state of Maine. The Expulsion occurred during the French and Indian War, the North American theatre of the Seven Years' War.

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04/06/1745

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.

The Battle of Hohenfriedberg or Hohenfriedeberg, also known as the Battle of Striegau was one of Frederick the Great's most admired victories. Frederick's Prussian army decisively defeated an Austro-Saxon army under Prince Charles Alexander of Lorraine on June 4, 1745, during the Second Silesian War – part of the War of the Austrian Succession.

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04/06/1615

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

The siege of Osaka was a series of battles undertaken by the Japanese Tokugawa shogunate against the Toyotomi clan, and ending in that clan's destruction. Divided into two stages, the winter campaign and the summer campaign, it lasted from 1614 to 1615. The siege put an end to the last major armed opposition to the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate. The end of the conflict is sometimes called the Genna Armistice , because the era name was changed from Keichō to Genna immediately following the siege.

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04/06/1561

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

In architecture, a steeple is a tall tower on a building, topped by a spire and often incorporating a belfry and other components. Steeples are very common on Christian churches and cathedrals and the use of the term generally connotes a religious structure. They might be stand-alone structures, or incorporated into the entrance or center of the building. In Christianity, steeples serve as a clear marker of a Christian church and are "are an elaborate architectural metaphor—a symbol pointing to heaven", directing the minds of the faithful upward to God.

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04/06/1525

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.

The 1525 Bayham Abbey riot was a civil disturbance on 4 June 1525 in Kent, England. It was instigated by local residents near Bayham Abbey in protest against the closure of the Abbey. The rioters occupied the Abbey for a week before 31 were arrested.

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04/06/1411

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, nicknamed the Beloved and in the 19th century, the Mad, was King of France from 1380 until his death in 1422. He is known for his mental illness and psychotic episodes that plagued him throughout his life, including glass delusion.

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