June 20 in History

The SS Savannah arrived in Liverpool on June 20, 1819, completing the first transatlantic crossing by a steamship, though it used its steam engine for only about 80 hours of the 29-day voyage, relying on sails for most of the journey. The ship was a converted sailing vessel with a steam engine and collapsible paddlewheels added as auxiliary power. Maritime observers in Ireland who spotted smoke on the horizon thought the ship was on fire and sent rescue boats. The Savannah carried no passengers and no cargo on its proving voyage. Despite the successful crossing, the ship failed to attract buyers or commercial interest in steam-powered ocean travel. The owners removed the engine and converted it back to a sailing ship. Regular transatlantic steamship service did not begin until the late 1830s.

Alexander Graham Bell inaugurated the world's first commercial telephone service on June 20, 1877, in Hamilton, Ontario, connecting the city to Bell's family home in Brantford, eight miles away. This was not Bell's first demonstration (the famous "Mr. Watson, come here" call occurred on March 10, 1876) but the first commercial application of the technology. Bell had offered to sell his patents to Western Union for $100,000 in 1876, but the telegraph company's president dismissed the telephone as a "toy." Within two years, there were 150,000 telephones in the United States, and Western Union attempted to enter the market using Thomas Edison's competing design. Bell sued and won. By 1886, over 150,000 people in the US owned telephones. Today there are over 7 billion mobile phone subscriptions worldwide.

Wernher von Braun surrendered to American forces in May 1945 and was secretly brought to the United States under Operation Paperclip, a program that recruited over 1,600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians. Von Braun had designed the V-2 rocket that killed over 9,000 people in London, Antwerp, and other cities, and was built using slave labor from the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp, where an estimated 20,000 prisoners died. In America, he became the chief architect of the Saturn V rocket that carried Apollo astronauts to the Moon. His Nazi past was quietly suppressed until investigative journalists uncovered his SS membership and evidence that he visited the Mittelwerk underground factory where prisoners were worked to death. His legacy remains deeply contested: visionary space pioneer or war criminal who escaped justice through American Cold War opportunism.

The "hotline" between Washington and Moscow was established on June 20, 1963, five months after the Cuban Missile Crisis demonstrated the catastrophic danger of leaders being unable to communicate quickly during a nuclear confrontation. Contrary to popular belief, it was never a red telephone. The original system used teletype machines connected by a full-duplex cable running from Washington through London, Copenhagen, Stockholm, and Helsinki to Moscow. The first test message sent by Washington was "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog's back 1234567890." Moscow's test reply described a sunset over the Moscow River. The system was upgraded to a satellite link in 1971, fax capability in 1986, and a fiber optic line with secure email in 2008. It has been used during several crises, including the 1967 Six-Day War and the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

A Houston court stripped Muhammad Ali of his heavyweight title on June 20, 1967, after he refused induction into the U.S. Army, famously declaring "I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong." Ali was convicted of draft evasion and sentenced to five years in prison, though he remained free on appeal. His boxing license was revoked in every state. The ban lasted three and a half years, from age 25 to 28, taking away what most experts consider the prime years of a heavyweight's career. The Supreme Court unanimously overturned his conviction in Clay v. United States (1971), ruling that his conscientious objector claim as a Nation of Islam minister was sincere. Ali returned to boxing and won the title twice more, but his footwork and reflexes were never quite the same.

Imperial Chinese troops and Boxer militants besieged the Legation Quarter in Beijing from June 20 to August 14, 1900, trapping approximately 900 foreign civilians, 400 military personnel, and 2,800 Chinese Christians behind hastily improvised barricades. The defenders held a perimeter of roughly one-third of a mile, using furniture, sandbags, and demolition rubble as fortifications. They were armed with a motley collection of rifles, and ammunition was critically short. Sir Claude MacDonald, the British minister, coordinated the defense. Regular Chinese army troops joined the attack, though some officials secretly supplied food and ammunition to the besieged. The relief expedition of 20,000 troops from eight nations fought their way 80 miles from Tianjin, arriving on August 14. Sixty-six foreigners and an unknown number of Chinese Christians died during the siege.

American pilots decimated Japanese naval aviation at the Battle of the Philippine Sea on June 19-20, 1944, in an engagement so lopsided that American pilots dubbed it "The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot." Japanese carriers launched four major air attacks on the American fleet; of approximately 370 aircraft launched, fewer than 100 returned. American submarines sank the carriers Taiho and Shokaku. On June 20, American aircraft sank the carrier Hiyo and damaged four other carriers. Japan lost over 600 aircraft and three carriers; the US lost 123 aircraft and no ships, though 80 American aviators were lost when they ran out of fuel returning from an extended-range strike at dusk. Admiral Mitscher controversially ordered his fleet to turn on its lights to guide returning pilots, breaking blackout protocols.