Events on June 8 45
Year 218
Battle of Antioch: With the support of the Syrian legions, Elagabalus defeats the forces of emperor Macrinus. He flees, but is captured near Chalcedon and later executed in Cappadocia.
Year 793
Vikings raid the abbey at Lindisfarne in Northumbria, commonly accepted as the beginning of Norse activity in the British Isles.
Year 1042
Edward the Confessor becomes King of England, one of the last Anglo-Saxon kings of England.
Year 1405
Richard le Scrope, the Archbishop of York, and Thomas Mowbray, Earl of Norfolk, are executed in York on Henry IV's orders.
Year 1776
American Revolutionary War: American attackers are driven back at the Battle of Trois-Rivières.
Year 1783
Laki, a volcano in Iceland, begins an eight-month eruption which kills over 9,000 people and starts a seven-year famine.
Year 1789
James Madison introduces twelve proposed amendments to the United States Constitution in Congress.
Year 1794
Robespierre inaugurates the French Revolution's new state religion, the Cult of the Supreme Being, with large organized festivals all across France.
Year 1856
A group of 194 Pitcairn Islanders, descendants of the mutineers of HMS Bounty, arrives at Norfolk Island, commencing the Third Settlement of the Island.
Year 1862
American Civil War: Battle of Cross Keys: Confederate forces under General Stonewall Jackson save the Army of Northern Virginia from a Union assault on the James Peninsula led by General George B. McClellan.
Year 1867
Coronation of Franz Joseph as King of Hungary following the Austro-Hungarian compromise (Ausgleich).
Year 1887
Herman Hollerith applies for US patent #395,781 for the 'Art of Compiling Statistics', which was his punched card calculator.
Year 1906
Theodore Roosevelt signs the Antiquities Act into law, authorizing the President to restrict the use of certain parcels of public land with historical or conservation value.
Year 1918
A solar eclipse is observed at Baker City, Oregon by scientists and an artist hired by the United States Navy.
Year 1928
Second Northern Expedition: The National Revolutionary Army captures Peking, whose name is changed to Beijing ("Northern Capital").
Year 1929
Margaret Bondfield is appointed Minister of Labour. She is the first woman appointed to the Cabinet of the United Kingdom.
Year 1940
World War II: The completion of Operation Alphabet, the evacuation of Allied forces from Narvik at the end of the Norwegian Campaign.
Year 1941
World War II: The Allies commence the Syria-Lebanon Campaign against the possessions of Vichy France in the Levant.
Year 1942
World War II: The Japanese imperial submarines I-21 and I-24 shell the Australian cities of Sydney and Newcastle.
Year 1949
Helen Keller, Dorothy Parker, Danny Kaye, Fredric March, John Garfield, Paul Muni and Edward G. Robinson are named in an FBI report as Communist Party members.
Year 1953
An F5 tornado hits Beecher, Michigan, killing 116, injuring 844, and destroying 340 homes.
Year 1953
The United States Supreme Court rules that restaurants in Washington, D.C. cannot refuse to serve black patrons.
Year 1959
The USS Barbero and United States Postal Service attempt the delivery of mail via Missile Mail.
Year 1966
An F-104 Starfighter collides with XB-70 Valkyrie prototype no. 2, destroying both aircraft during a photo shoot near Edwards Air Force Base. Joseph A. Walker, a NASA test pilot, and Carl Cross, a United States Air Force test pilot, are both killed.
Year 1966
Topeka, Kansas, is devastated by a tornado that registers as an "F5" on the Fujita scale: The first to exceed US$100 million in damages. Sixteen people are killed, hundreds more injured, and thousands of homes damaged or destroyed.
Year 1966
The National Football League and American Football League announced a merger effective in 1970.
Year 1972
Vietnam War: Nine-year-old Phan Thị Kim Phúc is burned by napalm, an event captured by Associated Press photographer Nick Ut moments later while the young girl is seen running down a road, in what would become an iconic, Pulitzer Prize-winning photo.
Year 1982
Bluff Cove Air Attacks during the Falklands War: Fifty-six British servicemen are killed by an Argentine air attack on two landing ships, RFA Sir Galahad and RFA Sir Tristram.
Year 1987
New Zealand's Labour government establishes a national nuclear-free zone under the New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act 1987.
Year 1992
The first World Oceans Day is celebrated, coinciding with the Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Year 1995
Downed U.S. Air Force pilot Captain Scott O'Grady is rescued by U.S. Marines in Bosnia.
Year 2001
Mamoru Takuma kills eight and injures 15 in a mass stabbing at an elementary school in the Osaka Prefecture of Japan.
Year 2004
The first Venus Transit in well over a century takes place, the previous one being in 1882.
Year 2007
Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia, is hit by the State's worst storms and flooding in 30 years resulting in the death of nine people and the grounding of a trade ship, the MV Pasha Bulker.
Year 2008
At least 37 miners go missing after an explosion in an Ukrainian coal mine causes it to collapse.
Year 2008
At least seven people are killed and ten injured in a stabbing spree in Tokyo, Japan.
Year 2009
Two American journalists are found guilty of illegally entering North Korea and sentenced to 12 years of penal labour.
Year 2014
At least 28 people are killed in an attack at Jinnah International Airport, Karachi, Pakistan.