Today is Thursday, June 4, the 155th day of 2026. There are 210 days left in the year.
Today in history:
On June 4, 2018, Saudi Arabia issues its first drivers licenses to 10 women as the first step that month by the ultraconservative kingdom in lifting the world’s only ban on women driving.
Also on this date:
In 1812, the U.S. House of Representatives passed its first declaration of war against Britain, approving the measure by a vote of 79-49.
In 1919, Congress approved the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which said that the right of Americans to vote “shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” (The amendment was then sent to the states for ratification.)
In 1940, during World War II, the Allied military completed the evacuation of more than 338,000 troops from Dunkirk, France.
Also in 1940, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill declared in a speech to the House of Commons: “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”
In 1942, the World War II naval Battle of Midway began, which resulted in a decisive American victory against Japan and marked a turning point in the war in the Pacific.
In 1986, Jonathan Jay Pollard, a former U.S. Navy intelligence analyst, pleaded guilty in Washington to conspiring to deliver national defense information to Israel. (Sentenced to life in prison, Pollard would be released on parole in November 2015.)
In 1989, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of pro-democracy demonstrators and dozens of soldiers are estimated to have been killed when Chinese troops crushed a seven-week-long protest by demonstrators occupying Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.
In 1990, Dr. Jack Kevorkian carried out his first publicly assisted suicide, helping Janet Adkins, a 54-year-old Alzheimer’s patient from Portland, Oregon, end her life in Oakland County, Michigan. (Kevorkian died in 2011.)
In 1998, a federal judge sentenced Terry Nichols to life in prison without parole for his role in the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, which killed 168 people.
Today’s Birthdays:
- Actor Bruce Dern is 90.
- Golf Hall of Famer Sandra Haynie is 83.
- Singer-actor Michelle Phillips is 82.
- Jazz musician Paquito D’Rivera is 78.
- Actor Parker Stevenson is 74.
- Actor Keith David is 70.
- Singer El DeBarge is 65.
- Opera singer Cecilia Bartoli is 60.
- R&B singer Al B. Sure! is 58.
- Actor Scott Wolf is 58.
- Comedian Horatio Sanz is 57.
- Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah is 55.
- Actor Noah Wyle is 55.
- Actor Angelina Jolie is 51.
- Actor-comedian T.J. Miller is 45.
- Olympic figure skating gold medalist Evan Lysacek is 41.
- Rapper Central Cee is 28.
- Singer Mackenzie Ziegler is 22.
