June 4 in History

The foundation of Constantinople in 330 AD marks the conventional start of the Byzantine Empire, which fell to the Ottoman Empire in 1453 AD. Only the emperors who were recognized as legitimate rulers and exercised sovereign authority are included, to the exclusion of junior co-emperors who never attained the status of sole or senior ruler, as well as of the various usurpers or rebels who claimed the imperial title.

Charles VI (3 December 1368 – 21 October 1422), nicknamed the Beloved (French: le Bien-Aimé) and in the 19th century, the Mad (French: le Fol or le Fou), was King of France from 1380 until his death in 1422. He is known for his mental illness and psychotic episodes that plagued him throughout his life, including glass delusion. Charles ascended the throne at age 11, his father Charles V leaving behind a favorable military situation, marked by the reconquest of most of the English possessions in France. Charles VI was placed under the regency of his uncles: Philip II, Duke of Burgundy; Louis I, Duke of Anjou; John, Duke of Berry; and Louis II, Duke of Bourbon. He decided in 1388, aged 20, to emancipate himself. In 1392, while leading a military expedition against the Duchy of Brittany, the king had his first attack of delirium, during which he attacked his own men in the forest of Le Mans. A few months later, following the Bal des Ardents (January 1393) where he narrowly escaped death from burning, Charles was again placed under the regency of his uncles, the Dukes of Berry and Burgundy. From then on, and until his death, Charles alternated between periods of mental instability and lucidity. Power was held by his influential uncles and by his wife, Queen Isabeau. His younger brother, Louis I, Duke of Orléans, also aspired to the regency and saw his influence grow. The enmity between the Duke of Orléans and his cousin John the Fearless, successor of Philip the Bold as Duke of Burgundy, plunged France into the Armagnac–Burgundian Civil War of 1407–1435, during which the king found himself successively controlled by one or the other of the two parties. In 1415, Charles's army was crushed by the English at the Battle of Agincourt. The king subsequently signed the Treaty of Troyes, which entirely disinherited his son, the Dauphin and future King Charles VII, in favour of Henry V of England. Henry was thus made regent and heir to the throne of France, and Charles' daughter Catherine married to Henry. However, Henry died shortly before Charles, which gave the House of Valois the chance to continue the fight against the House of Lancaster, leading to eventual Valois victory and the end of the Hundred Years' War in 1453. Charles was succeeded in law by his grandson (Henry V's son), the infant Henry VI of England, but Charles's own son was crowned first in Reims Cathedral in 1429 and was widely regarded even before his coronation as the true heir by the French people.

The 1525 Bayham Abbey riot was a civil disturbance on 4 June 1525 in Kent, England. It was instigated by local residents near Bayham Abbey in protest against the closure of the Abbey. The rioters occupied the Abbey for a week before 31 were arrested.

In architecture, a steeple is a tall tower on a building, topped by a spire and often incorporating a belfry and other components. Steeples are very common on Christian churches and cathedrals and the use of the term generally connotes a religious structure. They might be stand-alone structures, or incorporated into the entrance or center of the building. In Christianity, steeples serve as a clear marker of a Christian church and are "an elaborate architectural metaphor—a symbol pointing to heaven", directing the minds of the faithful upward to God.

The siege of Osaka (大坂の役, Ōsaka no Eki; or, more commonly, 大坂の陣 Ōsaka no Jin) was a series of battles undertaken by the Japanese Tokugawa shogunate against the Toyotomi clan, ending in that clan's destruction. Divided into two stages, the winter campaign and the summer campaign, it lasted from 1614 to 1615. The siege put an end to the last major armed opposition to the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate. The end of the conflict is sometimes called the Genna Armistice (元和偃武, Genna Enbu), because the era name was changed from Keichō to Genna immediately following the siege.

The Battle of Hohenfriedberg or Hohenfriedeberg (now Dobromierz, Poland), also known as the Battle of Striegau (now Strzegom, Poland) was one of Frederick the Great's most admired victories. Frederick's Prussian army decisively defeated an Austro-Saxon army under Prince Charles Alexander of Lorraine on June 4, 1745, during the Second Silesian War – part of the War of the Austrian Succession.

The Expulsion of the Acadians was the forced removal of the French colonists of the North American region historically known as Acadia between 1755 and 1764 by Great Britain. It included the modern Canadian Maritime provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island, along with part of the US state of Maine. The Expulsion occurred during the French and Indian War, the North American theatre of the Seven Years' War.

The Montgolfier brothers – Joseph-Michel Montgolfier (French: [ʒozɛf miʃɛl mɔ̃ɡɔlfje]; 26 August 1740 – 26 June 1810) and Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier ([ʒak etjɛn mɔ̃ɡɔlfje]; 6 January 1745 – 2 August 1799) – were aviation pioneers, balloonists and paper manufacturers from the commune Annonay in Ardèche, France. They invented the Montgolfière-style hot air balloon, globe aérostatique, which launched the first confirmed piloted ascent by humans in 1783, carrying Jacques-Étienne. Joseph-Michel also invented the self-acting hydraulic ram (1796) and Jacques-Étienne founded the first paper-making vocational school. Together, the brothers invented a process to manufacture transparent paper.

The siege of Mantua lasted from 4 June 1796 to 2 February 1797 with a short break where French forces under the overall command of Napoleon Bonaparte besieged and blockaded a large Austrian garrison at Mantua for many months until it surrendered. The siege was the focal point of the Italian Campaign of 1796-1797, lasting the vast majority of the campaign and being the hinge point that would determine which side would control Northern Italy. The eventual surrender, together with the heavy losses incurred during four unsuccessful relief attempts, led to Napoleon invading Austria and convincing the Austrians to sue for peace in 1797. The siege occurred during the War of the First Coalition, which is part of the French Revolutionary Wars. Mantua, a city in the Lombardy region of Italy, lies on the Mincio River. After driving the Austrian army out of northwest and north-central Italy, the French invested the fortress of Mantua starting in early June 1796. In late July, a new Austrian commander, Dagobert Sigmund von Wurmser, led an army to the relief of Joseph Canto d'Irles's garrison from the north. Mantua was reached and the French were forced to abandon the siege. However, the Austrians were subsequently beaten in the battles of Lonato and Castiglione. Forced to retreat, Wurmser resupplied and reinforced the fortress with food and able-bodied troops. After withdrawing north up the Adige River, Wurmser planned to move his main army through the mountains to Bassano via the Brenta valley. From there he would mount the second relief of Mantua from the northeast. In an exceedingly bold maneuver, Bonaparte smashed Paul Davidovich's covering force and followed Wurmser down the Brenta valley. Overcoming the Austrian army at Bassano in early September, Bonaparte tried to destroy Wurmser but failed. Instead he chased the bulk of the Austrian army into Mantua. The garrison now counted 30,000 men, but cut off from outside help, disease and starvation began mowing down Wurmser's troops. A new commander, József Alvinczi, led the third relief of Mantua in November. While Alvinczi marched from the northeast, Davidovich's column moved down from the north. Alvinczi defeated Bonaparte twice and moved to the gates of Verona while Davidovich drubbed his French opponent in the Adige valley. At his last gasp, Bonaparte crossed the Adige behind Alvinczi's left flank at Arcole. The fighting raged for three days but the French finally prevailed, forcing the Austrians to pull back. Free of Alvinczi, Bonaparte attacked Davidovich and forced his corps to retreat also. For the fourth relief of Mantua, Alvinczi advanced his main army from the north while sending two smaller columns to threaten the French from the northeast. The French crushed the Austrian main army at Rivoli. Leaving two divisions to finish off Alvinczi, Bonaparte rapidly moved south and arrived near Mantua in time to destroy one of the other Austrian columns. With no hope of further help, Wurmser surrendered Mantua in early February.

Charles Emmanuel IV (Carlo Emanuele Ferdinando Maria; 24 May 1751 – 6 October 1819) was King of Sardinia and ruler of the Savoyard states from 16 October 1796 until 1802, when he abdicated in favour of his brother Victor Emmanuel I.

Louisiana is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is bordered by Texas to the west, Arkansas to the north, and Mississippi to the east. Of the 50 U.S. states, it ranks 31st in area and 25th in population, with roughly 4.6 million residents. Reflecting its French heritage, Louisiana is the only U.S. state with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are equivalent to counties, making it one of only two U.S. states not subdivided into counties. Baton Rouge is the state's capital, and New Orleans, a French Louisiana region, is its most populous city with a population of about 363,000 people. Louisiana has a coastline with the Gulf of Mexico to the south; a large part of its eastern boundary is demarcated by the Mississippi River; and the mouth of the Mississippi or delta defines much of its lower topography.

Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de La Fayette, known in the United States as Lafayette, was a French military officer and politician who volunteered to join the Continental Army, led by General George Washington, in the American Revolutionary War. Lafayette commanded Continental Army troops in the decisive siege of Yorktown in 1781, the Revolutionary War's final major battle, which secured American independence. After returning to France, Lafayette became a key figure in the French Revolution of 1789 and the July Revolution of 1830 and continues to be celebrated as a hero in both France and the United States.

Henry Constantine Wayne (September 18, 1815 – March 15, 1883) was a United States Army officer, and is known for his commanding the expedition to test the U.S. Camel Corps as part of Secretary of War Jefferson Davis's plan to use camels as a transport in the West. Wayne was also a Confederate adjutant and inspector-general for Georgia and a brigadier general during the American Civil War.

The Second Italian War of Independence was fought by the Second French Empire and the Kingdom of Sardinia against the Austrian Empire in 1859 and played a crucial part in the process of Italian Unification. A year prior to the war, in the Plombières Agreement, France agreed to support Sardinia's efforts to expel Austria from Italy in return for territorial compensation in the form of the Duchy of Savoy and the County of Nice. The two states signed a military alliance in January 1859. Sardinia mobilised its army on 9 March 1859, and Austria mobilized on 9 April. On 23 April, Austria delivered an ultimatum to Sardinia demanding its demobilization. Upon Sardinia's refusal, the war began on 26 April. Austria invaded Sardinia three days later, and France declared war on Austria on 3 May. The Austrian invasion was stopped by the arrival of French troops in Piedmont that had begun in late April. The Austrians were defeated at the Battle of Magenta on 4 June and pushed back to Lombardy, where the Franco-Sardinian victory at the Battle of Solferino on 24 June resulted in the end of the war and the signing of the Armistice of Villafranca on 12 July. Austria ceded Lombardy to France, which, in turn, gave it to Sardinia. Exploiting the collapse of Austrian power in Italy, Sardinia annexed the United Provinces of Central Italy, consisting of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the Duchy of Parma, the Duchy of Modena and Reggio and the Papal Legations, on 22 March 1860. Two days later, Sardinia ceded Savoy and Nice to France at the Treaty of Turin as compensation for its assistance.

The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), which was formed in 1861 by states that had seceded from the Union to preserve slavery in the United States. The South saw slavery as threatened because of the election of Abraham Lincoln as US president in 1860 and the growing abolitionist movement in the North. The war ended with Union victory, the dissolution of the Confederacy and the national abolition of slavery, freeing four million African Americans. Decades of controversy over slavery came to a head when Lincoln, a Republican who opposed slavery's expansion, won the 1860 presidential election. Seven slave states in the South responded to Lincoln's victory by seceding from the United States and forming the Confederate States of America. The Confederacy seized US forts and other federal assets in the South. The war began on April 12, 1861, when the Confederacy bombarded Fort Sumter in South Carolina. A wave of enthusiasm for war swept over the North and South, as military recruitment soared. Four more Southern states seceded after the war began and, led by its president, Jefferson Davis, the Confederacy comprised eleven states, containing a third of the US population. Four years of intense combat, mostly in the South, ensued. During 1861–1862 in the western theater, the Union made permanent gains, though in the eastern theater the conflict was inconclusive. The abolition of slavery became a Union war goal on January 1, 1863, when Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared all slaves in rebel states to be free, applying to more than 3.5 million of the 4 million enslaved people in the country. To the west, the Union first destroyed the Confederacy's river navy by the summer of 1862, then much of its western armies, and seized New Orleans. The successful 1863 Union siege of Vicksburg split the Confederacy in two at the Mississippi River, while Confederate general Robert E. Lee's incursion north failed at the Battle of Gettysburg. General Ulysses S. Grant's western successes led Lincoln to promote him to command of all Union armies in 1864. Inflicting an ever-tightening naval blockade of Confederate ports, the Union marshaled resources and manpower to attack the Confederacy from all directions. This led to the fall of Atlanta in 1864 to Union general William Tecumseh Sherman, followed by his March to the Sea, which culminated in his taking Savannah. The last significant battles raged around the ten-month siege of Petersburg, gateway to the Confederate capital of Richmond. The Confederates abandoned Richmond, and on April 9, 1865, Lee surrendered to Grant following the Battle of Appomattox Court House, setting in motion the end of the war. Lincoln lived to see this victory but was shot by an assassin on April 14, dying the next day. By the end of the war, much of the South's infrastructure had been destroyed. The Confederacy collapsed, the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery, and four million enslaved black people were freed. The war-torn nation then entered the Reconstruction era in an attempt to rebuild the country, bring the former Confederate states back into the United States, and grant civil rights to freed slaves. The war is one of the most extensively studied and written about episodes in the history of the United States. It remains the subject of cultural and historiographical debate. Of continuing interest is the myth of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy. The war was among the first to use industrial warfare. Railroads, the electrical telegraph, steamships, the ironclad warship, and mass-produced weapons were widely used. The war left an estimated 700,000 soldiers dead, along with an undetermined number of civilian deaths, making it the deadliest in American history. The technology and brutality of the Civil War foreshadowed the coming world wars.

An express train is a type of passenger train that makes few or no stops between its origin and destination stations, usually major destinations, providing faster service than local trains that stop at many or all of the stations along their route. They are sometimes referred to by terms such as "fast train" or "high-speed train", e.g., the German Schnellzug.

Henry Ford was an American industrialist and business magnate. As the founder of the Ford Motor Company, he is credited as a pioneer in making automobiles affordable for middle-class Americans through the system that came to be known as Fordism. In 1911, he was awarded a patent for the transmission mechanism that would be used in the Ford Model T and other automobiles.

Massachusetts, officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine to its east, Connecticut and Rhode Island to its south, New Hampshire and Vermont to its north, and New York to its west. Massachusetts is the seventh-smallest state by land area. With an estimated population of over 7.1 million, it is the most populous state in New England, the 16th-most-populous in the United States, and the third-most densely populated U.S. state after New Jersey and Rhode Island.

Emily Wilding Davison (11 October 1872 – 8 June 1913) was an English suffragette who fought for votes for women in Britain in the early twentieth century. A member of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) and a militant fighter for her cause, she was arrested on nine occasions, went on hunger strike seven times and was force-fed on forty-nine occasions. She died after being hit by King George V's horse Anmer at the 1913 Derby when she walked onto the track during the race. Davison grew up in a middle-class family, and studied at Royal Holloway College, London, and St Hugh's College, Oxford, before taking jobs as a teacher and governess. She joined the WSPU in November 1906 and became an officer of the organisation and a chief steward during marches. She soon became known in the organisation for her militant action; her tactics included breaking windows, throwing stones, setting fire to postboxes, planting bombs and, on three occasions, hiding overnight in the Palace of Westminster—including on the night of the 1911 census. Her funeral on 14 June 1913 was organised by the WSPU. A procession of 5,000 suffragettes and their supporters accompanied her coffin and 50,000 people lined the route through London; her coffin was then taken by train to the family plot in Morpeth, Northumberland. Davison was a staunch feminist and passionate Christian, and considered that socialism was a moral and political force for good. Much of her life has been interpreted through the manner of her death. She gave no prior explanation for what she planned to do at the Derby and the uncertainty of her motives and intentions has affected how she has been judged by history. Several theories have been put forward, including accident, suicide or an attempt to pin a suffragette flag to the king's horse.

World War I, or the First World War, also known as the Great War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Central Powers. One of the deadliest conflicts in history, World War I caused 15 to 22 million deaths, including those resulting from war crimes and genocides. The war also contributed to the spread of the Spanish flu pandemic. The conflict saw important developments in weaponry, including machine guns, artillery, aircraft, chemical weapons, and tanks.

The Pulitzer Prizes ( PULL-it-sər) are 23 annual American awards for achievements in "journalism, arts and letters", administered by Columbia University in New York City. They were established in 1917 by the will of Joseph Pulitzer, a Hungarian-American immigrant and newspaper publisher whose bequest also founded and endowed the Columbia School of Journalism. First awarded in June 1917, they remain among the most prestigious national honors for American journalism. The prizes are awarded each spring following recommendations from the Pulitzer Prize Board, whose voting membership consists mainly of leading journalists and news executives, along with academics and figures in the arts; the dean of the Columbia journalism school and the administrator of the prizes serve as non-voting members. Fifteen of the Pulitzer Prizes are awarded for journalism, and eight for achievements in books, drama, and music. Three finalists are named for each award. All categories are initially juried; the juries nominate the finalists, from which the board selects a winner. The board also has the discretion to move entries between categories or to decline to grant an award in a category. Each award carries with it a certificate and a monetary prize of $15,000, except in the Public Service category, in which the winning news organization receives a gold medal. The value of the monetary award has changed over the history of the prizes; it was increased from $10,000 to $15,000 beginning with the 2017 awards.

Lev Davidovich Trotsky, better known as Leon Trotsky, was a Russian revolutionary, Soviet politician, and political theorist. He was a key figure in the 1905 Revolution, the October Revolution of 1917, the Russian Civil War, and the establishment of the Soviet Union, from which he was exiled in 1929 before his assassination in 1940. Trotsky and Vladimir Lenin were widely considered the two most prominent figures in the Soviet state from 1917 until Lenin's death in 1924. Ideologically a Marxist and a Leninist, Trotsky's ideas and beliefs inspired a school of Marxism known as Trotskyism.

Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning much of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia and Slovenia to the southwest, and Austria to the west. Hungary lies within the Danube River's drainage basin and is dominated by great lowland plains. It has a population of over 9.5 million, consisting mostly of ethnic Hungarians (Magyars) and a significant Romani minority. Hungarian is the official language and among the few in Europe outside the Indo-European family. Budapest is the country's capital, largest city, and cultural and economic centre.

The president of the Republic of China, also known as the president of Taiwan, is the head of state of the Republic of China (Taiwan), as well as the commander-in-chief of the Republic of China Armed Forces. Before 1949 the position had the authority of ruling over mainland China, but losing control of it after communist victory in the Chinese Civil War, the remaining jurisdictions of the ROC have been limited to Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen, Matsu, and smaller islands.

Marmaduke Grove Vallejo (July 6, 1878 – May 15, 1954), was a Chilean Air Force officer, political figure and member of the Government Junta of the Socialist Republic of Chile in 1932.

The Holocaust, known in Hebrew as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered around six million Jews across German-occupied Europe, approximately two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population. The murders were committed primarily through mass shootings across Eastern Europe and poison gas chambers in extermination camps, chiefly Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, Chełmno and Majdanek death camps in occupied Poland. Concurrent Nazi persecutions killed millions of other non-Jewish civilians and prisoners of war (POWs); the term Holocaust is sometimes used to include the murder and persecution of non-Jewish groups, such as the Romani and Soviet POWs.

World War II, or the Second World War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries participated, with many engaging in total war on an unprecedented scale. World War II was the deadliest conflict in history, causing the deaths of 60 to 75 million people, a majority of whom were civilians. Millions died as a result of massacres, starvation, disease, and genocides, including the Holocaust. After the Allied victory, Germany, Austria, Japan, and Korea were occupied, and German and Japanese leaders were tried for war crimes.

The Battle of Midway was a major naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II that took place on 4–7 June 1942, six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea. The Japanese Combined Fleet under the command of Isoroku Yamamoto suffered a decisive defeat by two carrier strike groups of the U.S. Pacific Fleet near Midway Atoll, about 1,300 mi northwest of Oahu. Yamamoto had intended to capture Midway and lure out and destroy the U.S. Pacific Fleet, especially the aircraft carriers which had escaped damage at Pearl Harbor.

Baron Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim was a Finnish military commander and statesman. He served as the military leader of the Whites in the Finnish Civil War (1918), as regent of Finland (1918–1919), as commander-in-chief of the Finnish Defence Forces during World War II (1939–1945), and as the president of Finland (1944–1946). He became Finland's only field marshal in 1933 and was appointed honorary Marshal of Finland in 1942.

The 1943 Argentine Revolution was a coup d'état on 4 June 1943 that ended the government of Ramón Castillo, who had been fraudulently elected to the office of vice-president before succeeding to the presidency in 1942 as part of the period known as the Infamous Decade. The coup d'état was launched by the lodge "United Officers' Group" (GOU), a secret military organization of nationalist nature. Although its soldiers shared different views of nationalism: there were Catholic nationalists, Radicals, military with a more pragmatic approach, and even fascists. The military was opposed to Governor Robustiano Patrón Costas, Castillo's hand-picked successor, a major landowner in Salta Province and a primary stockholder in the sugar industry. The only serious resistance to the military coup came from the Argentine Navy, which confronted the advancing army columns at the Navy Petty-Officers School of Mechanics.

The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and is designated as the navy of the United States in the Constitution. With 290 combat vessels, it is the world's second largest navy, behind the People's Liberation Army Navy, and by far the largest by displacement, at 4.5 million tons in 2021. It has the world's largest aircraft carrier fleet, with eleven in service, one undergoing trials, two new carriers under construction, and six other carriers planned as of 2024. The Navy is a part of the Department of Defense and is one of six armed forces and eight uniformed services of the United States.

The United States Army North (ARNORTH) was a formation of the United States Army. In its final form, it was an Army Service Component Command (ASCC) subordinate to United States Northern Command (NORTHCOM), ARNORTH was the joint force land component of NORTHCOM. ARNORTH was responsible for homeland defense and defense support of civil authorities. ARNORTH was headquartered at Fort Sam Houston, Texas. Redesignated ARNORTH in 2004, it was first activated in early January 1943 as the United States Fifth Army, under the command of Lieutenant General Mark W. Clark.

Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic, is a country in the far south of South America. It covers an area of 2,780,085 km2 (1,073,397 mi2), making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, the fourth-largest country in the Americas, and the eighth-largest country in the world. Argentina shares the bulk of the Southern Cone with Chile to the west, and is also bordered by Bolivia and Paraguay to the north, Brazil to the northeast, Uruguay and the South Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Drake Passage to the south. Argentina is a federal state divided into twenty-three provinces, and one autonomous city, which is the federal capital and largest city of the nation, Buenos Aires. The provinces and the capital have their own constitutions, but exist under a federal system. Argentina claims sovereignty over the Falkland Islands, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, and a part of Antarctica.

The Cold War was a period of international geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc. It began in the aftermath of the Second World War and ended with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The term cold war is used because there was no direct fighting between the two superpowers, though each supported opposing sides in regional conflicts known as proxy wars. In addition to the struggle for ideological and economic influence and an arms race in both conventional and nuclear weapons, the Cold War was expressed through technological rivalries such as the Space Race, espionage, propaganda campaigns, embargoes, and sports diplomacy.

The Canadair North Star is a 1940s Canadian development, for Trans-Canada Air Lines (TCA), of the Douglas DC-4. Instead of radial piston engines used by the Douglas design, Canadair used Rolls-Royce Merlin V12 engines to achieve a higher cruising speed of 325 mph (523 km/h) compared with the 246 mph (396 km/h) of the standard DC-4. Requested by TCA in 1944, the prototype flew on 15 July 1946. The type was used by various airlines and by the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF). It proved to be reliable but noisy when in service through the 1950s and into the 1960s. Some examples continued to fly into the 1970s, converted to cargo aircraft.

Tonga, officially known as the Kingdom of Tonga, is an island country in Polynesia, part of Oceania. The country has 171 islands, of which 45 are inhabited. Its total surface area is about 750 km2 (290 sq mi), scattered over 700,000 km2 (270,000 sq mi) in the southern Pacific Ocean. As of September 2026, Tonga has a population of 103,291, 70% of whom live on the main island, Tongatapu. The country stretches approximately 800 km north-south. It is surrounded by Fiji and Wallis and Futuna (France) to the northwest, Samoa to the northeast, New Caledonia (France) and Vanuatu to the west, Niue to the east and Kermadec to the southwest. Tonga is about 1,800 km from New Zealand's North Island.

The governor of California is the head of government of the U.S. state of California. The governor is the commander-in-chief of the California National Guard and the California State Guard.

The Victor Company of Japan, Limited , abbreviated and branded as JVC, was a Japanese electronics company. While defunct as an independent entity as of 2008, it survives as a brand owned and operated by its successor JVCKenwood. The company is best known for having introduced Japan's first televisions, for developing the Video Home System (VHS) analog video format, and for its pioneering camcorder JVC GR-C1.

Gordon Wendell Kahl was an American World War II veteran, farmer and tax protester who was known for being a one-time member of the Posse Comitatus movement and for his involvement in two fatal shootouts with law enforcement officers in the United States in 1983.

Jonathan Jay Pollard is an American-born Israeli spy and former American intelligence analyst who was jailed for spying for Israel.

RDX (Research Department Explosive or Royal Demolition Explosive), or hexogen, also known by other names, is an organic compound with the formula (CH2N2O2)3. It is white, odorless, tasteless, and widely used as an explosive. Chemically, it is classified as a nitroamine alongside HMX. It was used widely in World War II and remains common in military applications. It is lower performing and more toxic than modern replacements like TKX-50.

Protests led by students and workers, known in China as the June Fourth Incident, were held in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China, from 15 April to 4 June 1989. After weeks of unsuccessful attempts between the demonstrators and the Chinese government to find a peaceful resolution, the Chinese government initiated martial law in late May and deployed troops to occupy the square on the night of 3 June in what is referred to as the Tiananmen Square massacre. The events are sometimes called the '89 Democracy Movement, the Tiananmen Square Incident, or the Tiananmen uprising. The Chinese government terms the events the political turmoil between the spring and summer of 1989.

Solidarity, full name Independent Self-Governing Trade Union "Solidarity", is a Polish trade union founded in August 1980 at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk, Poland. Subsequently, it was the first independent trade union in a Warsaw Pact country to be recognised by the state.

The Ufa train disaster was a railway accident that occurred in the Iglinsky District of the Bashkir ASSR, Soviet Union on 4 June 1989, killing 575 people and injuring 800 more. It is the second-deadliest rail disaster in Soviet/Russian history after the 1944 Vereshchyovka train disaster, and the deadliest to occur during peacetime.

Ariane 5 is a retired European heavy-lift space launch vehicle operated by Arianespace for the European Space Agency (ESA). It was launched from the Guiana Space Centre (CSG) in French Guiana. It was used to deliver payloads into geostationary transfer orbit (GTO), low Earth orbit (LEO) or further into space. The launch vehicle had a streak of 82 consecutive successful launches between 9 April 2003 and 12 December 2017. In development since 2014, Ariane 6, a direct successor system was first launched in 2024.

The Dragon Spacecraft Qualification Unit was a boilerplate version of the Dragon spacecraft manufactured by SpaceX. After using it for ground tests to rate Dragon's shape and mass in various tests, SpaceX launched it into low Earth orbit on the maiden flight of the Falcon 9 rocket, on June 4, 2010. SpaceX used the launch to evaluate the aerodynamic conditions on the spacecraft and performance of the carrier rocket in a real-world launch scenario, ahead of Dragon flights for NASA under the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program. The spacecraft orbited the Earth over 300 times before decaying from orbit and reentering the atmosphere on 27 June.

The death of Giovanni López Ramírez occurred on 4 May 2020, in the municipality of Ixtlahuacán de los Membrillos, Jalisco, Mexico as a result of his arrest by police officers. He was allegedly arrested for not wearing a face mask during the COVID-19 pandemic in Mexico. He died at a hospital with traumatic brain injury and with a gunshot wound to his leg. Public outcry over his death erupted one month later, due to a video of his arrest going viral on social media and inspired by the George Floyd protests. Protests against police brutality began in Jalisco on 4 June 2020, and spread to other areas in Mexico.

On June 4, 2023, a series of planned anti-government marches took place in several areas of Poland, with the main one being held in the capital city of Warsaw. The protests were additionally motivated by the passing of the bill commonly referred to as "Lex Tusk", which critics argued would disrupt the constitutional separation of powers by giving the ruling party of PiS excessive judicial oversight. The Polish opposition in the national Parliament, as well as numerous foreign commentators, considered the law's approval an extension of the perceived constitutional crisis under the presidency of Andrzej Duda and the government headed by Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki.

The Cessna Citation V is a business jet built by Cessna as part of the Cessna Citation family. The first Model 560 prototype, a stretched version of the Citation S/II, flew in August 1987 and was certified on December 9, 1988. The upgraded Citation Ultra was announced in September 1993; the Citation Encore, upgraded with PW535 turbofans, was announced in 1998 and later upgraded as the Encore+. Between 1989 and 2011, 774 of all variants were produced. Its U.S. military designation is UC-35 as an executive transport and OT-47B as a reconnaissance aircraft.

Crowd collapses and crowd crushes are catastrophic incidents that occur when a body of people becomes dangerously overcrowded. When numbers are up to about five people per square meter, the environment may feel cramped but manageable; when numbers reach between eight and ten people per square meter, individuals become pressed against each other and may be swept along against their will by the motion of the crowd. Under these conditions, the crowd may undergo a progressive collapse where the pressure pushes people off their feet, resulting in people being trampled or crushed by the weight of other people falling on top of them. At even higher densities, the pressure on each individual can cause them to be crushed or asphyxiated while still upright.