Moments in Time

May 31, 20120

The History Channel

• On June 11, 1509, King Henry VIII of England marries Catherine of Aragon, the first of six wives he will have in his lifetime. When Catherine failed to produce a male heir, Henry divorced her against the will of the Roman Catholic Church.

• On June 15, 1877, Henry Ossian Flipper, born a slave in Thomasville, Ga., in 1856, becomes the first black cadet to graduate from the United States Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. Flipper was never spoken to by a white cadet during his four years at West Point.

• On June 16, 1884, the first roller coaster in America opens at Coney Island, in Brooklyn, N.Y. Known as a switchback railway, it traveled approximately 6 mph and cost a nickel to ride.

• On June 12, 1942, Anne Frank, a young Jewish girl living in Amsterdam, receives a diary for her 13th birthday. A month later, she and her family went into hiding from the Nazis in rooms behind her father’s office. Anne’s diary, detailing their two years in hiding, was published in 1947.

• On June 14, 1951, the U.S. Census Bureau dedicates UNIVAC, the world’s first commercially produced electronic digital computer. UNIVAC, which stood for Universal Automatic Computer, used thousands of vacuum tubes for computation and was the forerunner of today’s digital computer.

• On June 13, 1966, the Supreme Court hands down its decision in Miranda v. Arizona, establishing the principle that all criminal suspects must be advised of their rights before interrogation. The roots of the Miranda decision go back to 1963 when Ernesto Miranda confessed to a crime and later recanted, unaware that he didn’t have to say anything at all.

• On June 17, 1972, five of President Richard Nixon’s re-election employees are arrested for burglary in the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Complex in Washington, D.C. An investigation unveiled a scheme of political sabotage and espionage designed to discredit Democratic candidates. Equipment used during the burglary had been borrowed from the CIA.