June 26 1963:

Kennedy: 'Ich bin ein Berliner'

The US President, John F Kennedy, has made a ground-breaking speech in Berlin offering American solidarity to the citizens of West Germany.
A crowd of 120,000 Berliners gathered in front of the Schöneberg Rathaus (City Hall) to hear President Kennedy speak.

They began gathering in the square long before he was due to arrive, and when he finally appeared on the podium they gave him an ovation of several minutes.

The president had just returned from a visit on foot to one of the Berlin Wall's most notorious crossing points, Checkpoint Charlie.

He was watched from the other side of the border by small groups of East Berliners unable even to wave because of the presence of large groups of the East German People's Police.


All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words, 'Ich bin ein Berliner'


President John F Kennedy


In an impassioned speech, the president told them West Berlin was a symbol of freedom in a world threatened by the Cold War.

"Two thousand years ago," he told the crowd, "the proudest boast in the world was 'civis Romanus sum'.

"Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is 'Ich bin ein Berliner.'"

"Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect," he continued. "But we never had to put up a wall to keep our people in."

His speech was punctuated throughout by rapturous cheers of approval.

He ended on the theme he had begun with:

"All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words, 'Ich bin ein Berliner.'"

After the speech, the mayor of West Berlin, Willi Brandt, spoke out for the citizens of East Germany, saying they would be brought out in a few days to greet the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, whether they wanted to or not.

"But they would much rather be with us, freely gathered here," he said.

"We tell them, we will not give up. Berlin is true to those behind barbed wire as to fellow countrymen in the West and friends in the whole world."

His words were followed by the tolling of the Freedom Bell from the belfry of the Rathaus in remembrance of those in East Germany.

For the first time that day, the massive crowd fell silent.

June 26, 1945 : U.N. CHARTER SIGNED:

In the Herbst Theater auditorium in San Francisco, delegates from 50
nations sign the United Nations Charter, establishing the world body
as a means of saving "succeeding generations from the scourge of war."
The Charter was ratified on October 24, and the first U.N. General
Assembly met in London on January 10, 1946.

Despite the failure of the League of Nations in arbitrating the
conflicts that led up to World War II, the Allies as early as 1941
proposed establishing a new international body to maintain peace in
the postwar world. The idea of the United Nations began to be
articulated in August 1941, when U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt
and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill signed the Atlantic
Charter, which proposed a set of principles for international
collaboration in maintaining peace and security. Later that year,
Roosevelt coined "United Nations" to describe the nations allied
against the Axis powers--Germany, Italy, and Japan. The term was first
officially used on January 1, 1942, when representatives of 26 Allied
nations met in Washington, D.C., and signed the Declaration by the
United Nations, which endorsed the Atlantic Charter and presented the
united war aims of the Allies.

In October 1943, the major Allied powers--Great Britain, the United
States, the USSR, and China--met in Moscow and issued the Moscow
Declaration, which officially stated the need for an international
organization to replace the League of Nations. That goal was
reaffirmed at the Allied conference in Tehran in December 1943, and in
August 1944 Great Britain, the United States, the USSR, and China met
at the Dumbarton Oaks estate in Washington, D.C., to lay the
groundwork for the United Nations. Over seven weeks, the delegates
sketched out the form of the world body but often disagreed over
issues of membership and voting. Compromise was reached by the "Big
Three"--the United States, Britain, and the USSR--at the Yalta
Conference in February 1945, and all countries that had adhered to the
1942 Declaration by the United Nations were invited to the United
Nations founding conference.

On April 25, 1945, the United Nations Conference on International
Organization convened in San Francisco with 50 nations represented.
Three months later, during which time Germany had surrendered, the
final Charter of the United Nations was unanimously adopted by the
delegates. On June 26, it was signed. The Charter, which consisted of
a preamble and 19 chapters divided into 111 articles, called for the
U.N. to maintain international peace and security, promote social
progress and better standards of life, strengthen international law,
and promote the expansion of human rights. The principal organs of the
U.N., as specified in the Charter, were the Secretariat, the General
Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council, the
International Court of Justice, and the Trusteeship Council.

On October 24, 1945, the U.N. Charter came into force upon its
ratification by the five permanent members of the Security Council and
a majority of other signatories. The first U.N. General Assembly, with
51 nations represented, opened in London on January 10, 1946. On
October 24, 1949, exactly four years after the United Nations Charter
went into effect, the cornerstone was laid for the present United
Nations headquarters, located in New York City. Since 1945, the Nobel
Peace Prize has been awarded more than ten times to the United Nations
and its organizations or to individual U.N. officials, most recently
to both the organization as a whole and Secretary-General Kofi Annan
in 2001.

June 28 1992:

Two of the strongest earthquakes ever to hit California strike the desert area east of Los Angeles on this day in 1992.
Although the state sits upon the immense San Andreas fault line, relatively few major earthquakes have hit California in modern times.
Two of the strongest, but not the deadliest, hit southern California on a single morning in the summer of 1992.

Just before 5 a.m. on a Sunday morning, a 7.3-magnitude quake struck in Landers, 100 miles east of Los Angeles.
Because the Landers area is sparsely populated, damage was relatively minor given the intensity of the jolt.
In Los Angeles, residents experienced rolling and shaking for nearly a minute.
The tremors were also felt in Arizona, Las Vegas and as far away as Boise, Idaho.

Just over three hours later, a second 6.3-magnitude tremor hit in Big Bear, not too far from the original epicenter.
This quake caused fires to break out and cost three people their lives.
A chimney fell on a 3-year-old child and two people suffered fatal heart attacks.
Between the two quakes, 400 people were injured and $92 million in damages were suffered.
The physical damage was also significant.
The quakes triggered landslides that wiped out roads and opened a 44-mile-long rupture in the earth,
the biggest in California since the 1906 San Francisco quake.

June 28, 1914

A Bosnian Serb, Gavrilo Princip, assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand Karl Ludwig Josef von Habsburg-Lothringen (heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne) and his wife Sofia in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, setting off a chain of events that would culminate in a world war by August. Five years later, on June 28, 1919, Germany and the Allies signed the Treaty of Versailles, formally ending World War I and providing for the creation of the League of Nations. The Treaty of Versailles was never ratified by the US Senate in spite of the efforts of President Wilson. Thus, the United States never joined the League of Nations.

June 29 1776:

Edward Rutledge, one of South Carolina’s representatives to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia,
expresses his reluctance to declare independence from Britain in a letter to the like-minded John Jay of New York.

Contrary to the majority of his Congressional colleagues, Rutledge advocated patience with regards to declaring independence.
In a letter to Jay, one of New York’s representatives who was similarly disinclined to rush a declaration,
Rutledge worried whether moderates like himself and Jay could "effectually oppose" a resolution for independence.
Jay had urgent business in New York and therefore was not able to be present for the debates.
Thus, Rutledge wrote of his concerns.

Rutledge was born in Charleston, to a physician who had emigrated from Ireland.
Edward’s elder brother John studied law at London’s Middle Temple before returning to set up a lucrative practice in Charleston.
Edward followed suit and studied first at Oxford University before being admitted to the English bar at the Middle Temple.
He too returned to Charleston, where he married and began a family in a house across the street from his brother.
As revolutionary politics roiled the colonies, first John, then Edward served as South Carolina’s representative to the Continental Congress.
Neither Rutledge brother was eager to sever ties with Great Britain,
but it fell to Edward to sign the Declaration of Independence and create the appearance of unanimity to strengthen the Patriots’ stand.
At age 26, Edward Rutledge was the youngest American to literally risk his neck by signing the document.