On This Day: June 10, 1990 — Pilot Sucked Out of Flight 5390
On June 10, 1990, BA Flight 5390 captain Tim Lancaster was sucked halfway out of a windscreen at 17,300 feet — and survived 20 minutes outside the aircraft.
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On This Day: June 7, 1990 — Universal Studios Florida Opens
June 7, 1990: Spielberg cut the ribbon, $631 million went online, and three of the headline rides immediately broke. Inside Universal Studios Florida’s legendary disaster of a grand opening.
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On This Day: June 6, 1984 — Tetris Is Born in Moscow
On June 6, 1984, Soviet engineer Alexey Pajitnov finished Tetris on an Elektronika 60. The story of how it leaked out of Moscow and became gaming’s most-played game ever.
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On This Day: June 5, 1989 — Tank Man Stops Tiananmen
On June 5, 1989, an unknown man with shopping bags stopped a column of Type 59 tanks in Beijing. Inside the iconic Tank Man photograph, the four photographers who smuggled it out, and what happened to the man who refused to move.
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Larry King Live Debut: 7 Wild Facts From June 3, 1985
On June 3, 1985 — exactly five years to the day after CNN signed on — a former Miami radio host named Larry King sat down in a folding chair on Ted Turner’s struggling cable network and started talking to the governor of New York. There were no flashy graphics, no panel of pundits, no…
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On This Day: June 2, 1989 — Dead Poets Society Premieres
On June 2, 1989, Dead Poets Society opened in eight theaters and became the year’s highest-grossing drama. The story behind Robin Williams, the cast, and the desk scene.
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On This Day: June 1, 1980 — CNN’s Bold 24-Hour Debut
On June 1, 1980, Ted Turner launched CNN from an Atlanta mansion and promised 24-hour news ‘until the world ends.’ Inside the first hour of cable news.
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On This Day: May 31, 1985 — The Only F5 to Hit PA
The May 31, 1985 tornado outbreak dropped 44 twisters, killed 90 people, and produced the only F5 ever recorded in Pennsylvania.
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On This Day: May 30, 1993 — Fittipaldi Drinks the OJ
On May 30, 1993, Emerson Fittipaldi won the Indy 500 and skipped the milk for orange juice. Fans booed, dairy farmers revolted, and a tradition got more sacred.
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On This Day: May 29, 1985 — Heysel Stadium Disaster
The Heysel Stadium disaster happened on May 29, 1985, an hour before the European Cup final between Liverpool and Juventus in Brussels, when a charge by Liverpool fans pushed Italian supporters against a crumbling concrete wall that buckled and collapsed, killing 39 people. Thirty-two of the dead were Italian. The youngest was 11 years old….
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On This Day: May 28, 1987 — Mathias Rust Lands in Red Square
At 6:43 p.m. on May 28, 1987, an 18-year-old West German kid named Mathias Rust set the wheels of a rented Cessna 172 down on a bridge fifty feet from St. Basil’s Cathedral. He had just flown 750 miles through the most heavily defended airspace on the planet. Soviet radar had tracked him. A MiG-23…
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On This Day: May 27, 1995 — Christopher Reeve’s Fall in Culpeper
At 3:01 p.m. on May 27, 1995, Christopher Reeve was thrown from his horse at a low-stakes event in Culpeper, Virginia. What happened next reshaped spinal cord research for a decade.
