This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.
Find the past “On This Day in History” here.
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June 22 is the 173rd day of the year (174th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 192 days remaining until the end of the year.
On this day in 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs into law the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, commonly known as the G.I. Bill.
The G.I. Bill was an omnibus bill that provided college or vocational education for returning World War II veterans (commonly referred to as G.I.s) as well as one year of unemployment compensation. It also provided many different types of loans for returning veterans to buy homes and start businesses. Since the original act, the term has come to include other veteran benefit programs created to assist veterans of subsequent wars as well as peacetime service.
By the time the original G.I. Bill ended in July 1956, 7.8 million World War II veterans had participated in an education or training program and 2.4 million veterans had home loans backed by the Veterans’ Administration (VA). Today, the legacy of the original G.I. Bill lives on in the Montgomery G.I. Bill.
Harry W. Colmery, a World War I veteran and the former Republican National Committee chairman, wrote the first draft of the G.I. Bill. He reportedly jotted down his ideas on stationery and a napkin at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, DC.[2] U.S. Senator Ernest McFarland was actively involved in the bill’s passage and is known, with Warren Atherton, as one of the “fathers of the G.I. Bill.” One might then term Edith Nourse Rogers, R-Mass., who helped write and who co-sponsored the legislation, as the “mother of the G.I. Bill”.[citation needed] Like Colmery, her contribution to writing and passing this legislation has been obscured by time.
The bill was introduced in the House on January 10, 1944, and in the Senate the following day. Both chambers approved their own versions of the bill.
The bill that President Roosevelt initially proposed was not as far reaching. The G.I. Bill was created to prevent a repetition of the Bonus March of 1932 and a relapse into the Great Depression after World War II ended.
An important provision of the G.I. Bill was low interest, zero down payment home loans for servicemen. This enabled millions of American families to move out of urban apartments and into suburban homes. Prior to the war the suburbs tended to be the homes of the wealthy and upper class.
Another provision was known as the 52-20 clause. This enabled all former servicemen to receive $20 once a week for 52 weeks a year while they were looking for work. Less than 20 percent of the money set aside for the 52-20 Club was distributed. Rather, most returning servicemen quickly found jobs or pursued higher education.
217 BC – Battle of Raphia: Ptolemy IV Philopator of Egypt defeats Antiochus III the Great of the Seleucid kingdom.
168 BC – Battle of Pydna: Romans under Lucius Aemilius Paullus defeat and capture Macedonian King Perseus ending the Third Macedonian War.
1593 – Battle of Sisak: Allied Christian troops defeat the Turks.
1633 – The Holy Office in Rome forces Galileo Galilei to recant his view that the Sun, not the Earth, is the center of the Universe.
1783 – A poisonous cloud caused by the eruption of the Laki volcano in Iceland reaches Le Havre in France.
1807 – In the Chesapeake-Leopard Affair, the British warship HMS Leopard attacks and boards the American frigate USS Chesapeake.
1813 – War of 1812: After learning of American plans for a surprise attack on Beaver Dams in Ontario, Laura Secord sets out on a 30 km journey on foot to warn Lieutenant James FitzGibbon.
1825 – The British Parliament abolishes feudalism and the seigneurial system in British North America.
1844 – North American fraternity Delta Kappa Epsilon is founded at Yale University.
1848 – Beginning of the June Days Uprising in Paris.
1893 – The Royal Navy battleship HMS Camperdown accidentally rams the British Mediterranean Fleet flagship HMS Victoria which sinks taking 358 crew with her including the fleet’s commander, Vice-Admiral Sir George Tryon.
1897 – British colonial officers Charles Walter Rand and Lt. Charles Egerton Ayerst are assassinated in Pune, Maharashtra, India by the Chapekar brothers and Mahadeo Vinayak Ranade, who are later caught and hanged.
1898 – Spanish-American War: United States Marines land in Cuba.
1906 – The flag of Sweden is adopted.
1907 – The London Underground’s Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway opens.
1911 – George V and Mary of Teck are crowned King and Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
1918 – The Hammond Circus Train Wreck kills 86 and injures 127 near Hammond, Indiana.
1922 – Herrin massacre: 19 strikebreakers and 2 union miners are killed in Herrin, Illinois.
1940 – France is forced to sign the Second Compiégne armistice with Germany.
1941 – Germany invades the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa.
1941 – The June Uprising in Lithuania begins.
1941 – Various Communist and Socialist French Resistance movements merge to one group.
1942 – Erwin Rommel is promoted to Field Marshal after the capture of Tobruk.
1944 – Opening day of the Soviet Union’s Operation Bagration against the Army Group Centre.
1944 – U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs into law the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, commonly known as the G.I. Bill.
1945 – World War II: The Battle of Okinawa ends when organised resistance of Imperial Japanese Army forces collapses in the Mabuni area on the southern tip of the main island.
1957 – The Soviet Union launches an R-12 missile for the first time (in the Kapustin Yar).
1962 – An Air France Boeing 707 jet crashes in bad weather in Guadeloupe, West Indies, killing 113.
1969 – The Cuyahoga River catches fire, which triggers a crack-down on pollution in the river.
1976 – The Canadian House of Commons abolishes capital punishment.
1978 – Charon, a satellite of the dwarf planet Pluto, is discovered by American astronomer James Christy.
1984 – Virgin Atlantic Airways launches with its first flight from London Heathrow Airport.
1990 – Checkpoint Charlie is dismantled in Berlin.
2002 – An earthquake measuring 6.5 Mw strikes a region of northwestern Iran killing at least 261 people and injuring 1,300 others and eventually causing widespread public anger due to the slowness of the victims receiving aid and supplies.
2003 – The largest hailstone ever recorded falls in Aurora, Nebraska
2009 – Washington Metro train collision: Two Metro trains collide in Washington, D.C., USA, killing 9 and injuring over 80.
2009 – Eastman Kodak Company announces that it will discontinue sales of the Kodachrome Color Film, concluding its 74-year run as a photography icon.
* Anti-Fascist Struggle Day (Croatia)
* Christian Feast Day:
* Aaron of Aleth
* Alban
* Eusebius of Samosata (Orthodox Church)
* John Fisher (Catholic Church)
* Nicetas of Remesiana
* Paulinus of Nola
* Thomas More (Catholic Church)
* June 22 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
* Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Great Patriotic War (Belarus)
* Teachers’ Day (El Salvador)
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