Moments in Time: Rock and Roll Ban
The History Channel
On June 2, 1997, U.S. Army veteran Timothy McVeigh was convicted on 15 counts of murder and conspiracy for his role two years earlier in the terrorist bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. He was executed by lethal injection on June 11, 2001.
On June 3, 1956, authorities in Santa Cruz, California, put the city in the national spotlight by declaring a complete ban on rock and roll at public gatherings, labeling the music "detrimental to both the health and morals of our youth and community" after a policeman at a dance party the night before described the teen crowd as "engaged in suggestive, stimulating and tantalizing motions induced by the provocative rhythms of an all-negro band."
On June 4, 1940, 22-year-old Carson McCullers' debut novel, "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter," about misfits in a Georgia mill town, was published to widespread acclaim.
On June 5, 1888, President Grover Cleveland vetoed a bill that would have given a widow's pension to Johanna Loewinger, whose husband had passed away 14 years after being discharged from the army. Because he died by suicide and not from a disability caused by his military service, her request was denied.
On June 6, 2002, a high-energy upper atmosphere explosion now known as the Eastern Mediterranean Event, similar in power to a small atomic bomb, occurred over the Mediterranean Sea between Libya and Crete when a small, undetected asteroid disintegrated while approaching Earth. There were concerns that if the explosion had occurred closer to Pakistan or India, it could have sparked a nuclear war between the countries, as they were engaged in a standoff at the time.
On June 7, 1968, just two days after the assassination of Democratic presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy, Fred Rogers, the popular host of the children's public television show "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood," dedicated an episode to explaining the tragedy to his young audience.
On June 8, 1191, King Richard I of England arrived in Acre, Israel, beginning the Third Crusade, an attempt co-led by France's King Philip II and Emperor Frederick Barbarossa to reconquer the Holy Land following Jerusalem's capture by the Ayyubid sultan Saladin in 1187.
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