[goofywife]

1968: Robert Kennedy is shot

Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, U.S. presidential candidate, was shot in the head and neck at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California, today. Kennedy was leaving a campaign rally when assassin Sirhan Sirhan fired the shots.

"The 42-year-old brother of the late President Kennedy was shot from about three feet away by a swarthy man in his 20's who was subdued by three Kennedy aides but not until he had emptied all eight bullets from a .22 caliber revolver toward the senator," reported the Bucks County Courier Times on June 5, 1968. "Kennedy's wife Ethel, who is expecting their 11th child, was not hurt."

NOTE: Kennedy died the day after the shooting occurred, and Sirhan was convicted in 1969 and sentenced to life in prison. After Kennedy's death, the U.S. Secret Service extended its protection to include presidential candidates.

2004: Ronald Reagan dies

"Ronald Reagan, the cheerful crusader who devoted his presidency to winning the Cold War, trying to scale back government and making people believe it was 'morning again in America,' died Saturday after a long twilight struggle with Alzheimer's disease," informed The Intelligencer on June 6, 2004. NOTE: Since Reagan’s death, his widow Nancy Reagan has been a staunch advocate of stem-cell research, stating that she believes that it could lead to a cure for Alzheimer’s disease.

1981: Report introduces first recognized AIDS case

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a report today announcing that rare cases of pneumonia were found among five homosexual men in Los Angeles, California. "The AIDS epidemic - a wave of death spread by sex, blood, birth and dirty drug needles - officially began," explained North Hills News Record on June 5, 1996, referring to the report that was issued 15 years earlier. "And social observers were making bold predictions. The sexual revolution was over, early marriage and premarital virginity would come back into vogue and the drug war would be transformed."

1967: Six-Day War begins in Mideast

"For the third time in 20 years, war broke out today in the Middle East and gunfire sounded in Israel and in three of its Arab neighbors - Egypt, Jordan and Syria. The Arabs, sworn to destroy Israel, were battling the Jewish state's forces on two fronts, at Egypt's Sinai frontier and on the Syria and Jordan borders. Each side accused the other of lighting the fuse for the explosion which, as in 1956, threatened to involve the major powers," reported the Oshkosh Daily Northwestern on June 5, 1967. NOTE: By the end of the war, Israel had gained control of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, two areas under disputed ownership to this day.

1947: Marshall Plan speech is given

U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall gave a speech at Harvard University today asking for economic aid to be sent to war-torn Europe. On June 5, 1947, the Middletown Times Herald reported, "Secretary of State George C. Marshall, in a thinly-veiled attack on communist tactics, warned today that the United States would oppose firmly any governments or groups that sought to 'perpetuate human misery' for political purposes. At the same time, Marshall declared that this country must extend Europe additional financial help for the next three or four years to prevent crises of 'grave character.'"