June 8

62 After divorcing his first wife Claudia Octavia, the Roman emperor Nero had her banished to the island of Pandateria (modern Ventotene) on a false charge of adultery with his former tutor Anicetus. On June 8, 62, Octavia was suffocated in an exceedingly hot vapor bath. Her sudden death brought much sorrow to Rome and prompted incidents of public protest.

Portrait head of Claudia Octavia, National Museum of Rome

632 In February 632 the Islamic prophet Muhammad left Medina on a farewell pilgrimage to Mecca, After completing the pilgrimage, Muhammad delivered a famous speech, known as the Farewell Sermon, at Mount Arafat east of Mecca. A few months after the farewell pilgrimage, Muhammad fell ill and suffered for several days with fever, head pain, and weakness. He died on Monday June 8, 632, in Medina, at the age of 62 or 63, in the house of his wife Aisha.

793 A Viking raid on Lindisfarne Abbey, located on the northeastern coast of England in the region of Northumbria marked the start of a series of raids, invasions, and settlements throughout the British Isles. The raid sent shockwaves throughout Europe and had a profound impact on the history and culture of the British Isles.

Ruins of Lindisfarne priory by Kim Traynor 

1043 Edward the Confessor became King of England on June 8, 1041 after his predecessor Hardicanute died of convulsions at a drinking party. The saintly king was ascetic and a man of great prayer. He was nicknamed “The Confessor”, that is one who bears witness to Christ by his life. During Edward's reign, power was held by his father in law, Earl Godwin and his brother in law, Harold, while the king devoted himself to a life of religious devotion.

1376 Prince Edward of Woodstock KG, better known as Edward the Black Prince, was the oldest son of Edward III. In 1371, his health declined to the point where his physicians advised him to leave Bordeaux and return home to England. The Prince’s health declined drastically and he would often faint because of weakness. Edward died at Westminster Palace on June 8, 1376 and was buried at Canterbury Cathedral on the south side of the shrine of Thomas Becket behind the quire.

Edward The Black Prince's tomb. By Jerrye & Roy Klotz, MD - Wikipedia Commons

1374 Geoffrey Chaucer was appointed Comptroller of the Customs for the port of London on June 8, 1374. This was a very substantial job, as it involved overseeing the collection of customs duties on all goods imported and exported through the port. Chaucer held this position for twelve and a half years, until December 1386.

1783 Iceland's Laki craters began an eight-month eruption on June 8, 1783, triggering major famine and massive fluorine poisoning. An estimated 122 megatonnes of sulphur dioxide was released, along with smaller amounts of other gases, from explosive fissures and vents and from lava flows.

1786 The first commercially made ice cream went on sale in New York in 1786. The New York Post Boy, of June 8, 1786, made this announcement: "Ladies and gentlemen may be supplied with ice cream every day at the City tavern by their humble servant, Joseph Cowe.”

Photo: John Gauder,. http://www.historicfood.com/ices.htm

1809 During the 1790s Thomas Paine wrote Rights of Man in defense of the French Revolution and The Age Of Reason where he criticized conventional Christianity and argued that the Bible is not the Word of God. In 1802, Paine left France for the US where an outcast and in ill health, he wandered from place to place until his death in New York on June 8, 1809. Only six mourners attended his funeral. The New York Citizen's obituary read in part: "He had lived long, did some good and much harm."

1810 The composer Robert Schumann was born on June 8, 1810, in Zwickau, Germany. Robert inherited a love of romantic poetry from his bookstore owning father. When he was 14 Robert published some verses, as well as writing an essay on the aesthetics of music. Robert began to study law at Leipzig, largely to please his mother, but his real interest lay in music, and in 1830 his piano teacher, Friedrich Wieck, persuaded Schumann's mother to let him give up law.

1845 The seventh President of the United States Andrew Jackson died at his plantation on June 8, 1845, at the age of 78, of chronic tuberculosis, dropsy, and heart failure. Jackson had taught his pet parrot, Poll, how to curse. During the former president's funeral, the parrot started to swear non-stop so it had to be removed.

Andrew Jackson Official White House Portrait Ralph E.W. Earl (1835) 

1867 Frank Lloyd Wright was born in the farming town of Richland Center, Wisconsin, United States, on June 8, 1867. His education included attending Madison High School. Wright turned to architecture on seeing their newly erected wing of the Wisconsin state capitol collapse. One of the outstanding architects of the 20th century, Wright influenced design over the world by his freedom from convention and rule.

1870 Charles Dickens never recovered from a heavy schedule of public readings in the late 1860s. On June 8, 1870, he collapsed with a stroke. Biographer Claire Tomalin has suggested Dickens was actually with his 31-year-old actress mistress  Nelly Ternan at her Peckham house when he suffered the stroke. Nelly and her maids hoisted him into a two-horse carriage, which took him back to his Gad's Hill so the public would not know the truth about their relationship.

1876 French writer George Sand died at Nohant, near Châteauroux, in France's Indre département on June 8, 1876, at the age of 71. After her death, George Sand was buried in the private graveyard behind the chapel at Nohant-Vic, her estate in Nohant. The estate, including the chapel and her grave, has become a place of pilgrimage for admirers of her work.

Sand, as photographed in 1864 by Nadar

1913 Suffragette Emily Davidson was arrested nine times. While serving a six-month sentence in Holloway Prison for setting fire to post boxes, she threw herself down an iron staircase in protest at being force-fed. She died on June 8, 1913, four days after being hit by King George V's horse Anmer at the Epsom Derby. Hailed as a martyr, historians question whether Davidson meant to kill herself, and suggest that she may have been attempting to attach a ‘Votes For Women’ scarf to the racehorse.

1924 George Mallory may have been the first person to reach the summit of Mount Everest. He was last seen 800 vertical feet (245 m) from the summit on June 8, 1924 but never returned. Mallory carried a picture of his wife with him that he said he would leave at the summit which he did not have when his body was found 75 years later.

1929 On June 8, 1929, Mrs Margaret Bondfield became Britain’s first woman cabinet minister when she was appointed Minister of Labour in Ramsay Macdonald’s Labour government. She played a crucial role in implementing social welfare reforms and advocating for workers' rights during her time in office. 

1944 On June 8, 1944, the U.S. First Army established in Normandy the first American cemetery on European soil in World War II. France later granted the US permanent, rent-free possession of the cemetery. It contains the remains of 9,387 fallen troops plus a memorial to 1,557 killed there whose remains were either not found or not identified.

1948 On June 8, 1948 in Saskatchewan, Canada a farmer named Cecil George Harris was pinned under his tractor. He used his pocket knife to scratch the words "In case I die in this mess, I leave all to the wife. Cecil Geo Harris" onto the fender. Harris did die and the message was accepted in court. It has served as a precedent ever since for cases of holographic wills.

1948 Ferdinand Porsche was a member of the Nazi party and was arrested by the French authorities at the end of World War II. He spent two years in prison, during which his son Ferry Porsche ran their company. Aided by the postwar Volkswagen enterprise, Ferry Porsche created the first high-end cars that are uniquely associated with the company. A hand-built aluminium prototype labelled "No. 1″ was the first Porsche sports vehicle ever built on June 8, 1948.

1949 In 1947 George Orwell moved to the Scottish island of Jura in the Outer Hebrides, where he tried to support himself by growing vegetables. Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four there away from the phone and other distractions. It was published June 8, 1949. Many of the sadistic details of Room 101 were developed from Orwell's conversations with an ex Japanese Prisoner of war neighbor. The Julia character was based on his second wife Sonia.

1969 In 1892 the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius married 17-year-old Aino Jarnefelt. They moved into their new home Ainola (Aino's Place) twelve years later. Aino continued to live in Ainola after her husband's death of a brain hemorrhage in 1957 during which she sorted out family papers and helped biographers of her late husband. Aino died at Ainola some two months before her 98th birthday on June 8, 1969, and is buried alongside Sibelius in their garden.

Ainola in 1915

1972 Associated Press photographer Nick Ut took his Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of a naked 9-year-old Phan Thị Kim Phúc and other children running down a road after being burned by napalm on June 8, 1972. After taking the iconic picture, Ut put down his Leica and drove the injured children to hospital.

1987 Karen Wetterhahn was a professor of chemistry at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire who specialized in toxic metal exposure. She died on June 8, 1997 of mercury poisoning at the age of 48 within a year of exposure to merely two drops of dimethyl mercury on her gloved hand.

1992 June 8 is World Oceans Day. The day was first celebrated in 1992 coinciding with the Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and officially recognized by the United Nations in 2008. The International day supports the implementation of worldwide Sustainability Development Goals, and fosters public interest in the management of the ocean and its resources.