June 5 in History

Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin began appearing in serial form in the abolitionist newspaper National Era on June 5, 1851, running for 40 weekly installments until April 1, 1852. Published as a book in March 1852, it sold 300,000 copies in its first year in the United States and 1.5 million copies in Britain, making it the best-selling novel of the 19th century. The story humanized enslaved people for Northern readers who had never witnessed slavery firsthand, generating intense emotional opposition to the Fugitive Slave Act. Southern critics denounced it as propaganda, and several authors published "anti-Tom" novels defending slavery. When Lincoln met Stowe in 1862, he allegedly said "So you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war."

Congress passed House Joint Resolution 192 on June 5, 1933, voiding the gold clause in public and private debt contracts, effectively ending the domestic gold standard. Creditors could no longer demand payment in gold coin or its equivalent. The resolution was part of President Roosevelt's broader New Deal strategy to combat deflation during the Great Depression. By severing the dollar's link to gold, the government gained the ability to increase the money supply and stimulate economic activity. The Supreme Court upheld the resolution in the Gold Clause Cases of 1935, though Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes described the government's actions as going "to the very brink of the Constitution." The international gold standard was formally abandoned under the Bretton Woods system in 1971.

Elvis Presley performed "Hound Dog" on The Milton Berle Show on June 5, 1956, in a performance that scandalized America and cemented rock and roll as a cultural force. Elvis discarded his guitar and performed the song with suggestive hip movements that the camera filmed from the waist up (a restriction later imposed on his Ed Sullivan Show appearances). An estimated 40 million viewers watched. Newspaper critics were savage: the New York Daily News called him "an unspeakably untalented and vulgar young entertainer." The controversy drove record sales through the roof: "Hound Dog" sold over four million copies. The performance demonstrated that television could amplify cultural rebellion in a way radio could not, and it established the template for the music video generation that followed.

Israel launched a preemptive air strike against Egyptian, Jordanian, and Syrian air forces on June 5, 1967, destroying 452 aircraft, mostly on the ground, within the first three hours. The Six-Day War ended on June 10 with Israel in control of the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights, tripling its territory. The war killed approximately 20,000 Arab soldiers and 800 Israeli soldiers. Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza created a situation where millions of Palestinians lived under military control without citizenship rights, a condition that persists in the West Bank today. UN Security Council Resolution 242, calling for Israeli withdrawal from territories occupied in the conflict, remains the framework for peace negotiations over half a century later.

Sirhan Bishara Sirhan shot Robert F. Kennedy in the pantry of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles at 12:15 AM on June 5, 1968, moments after Kennedy declared victory in the California Democratic presidential primary. Kennedy had just told supporters "On to Chicago, and let's win there." Three bullets hit Kennedy, one fatally entering behind his right ear. Five bystanders were also wounded. Kennedy died at Good Samaritan Hospital 26 hours later at age 42. Sirhan, a Palestinian Christian immigrant, said he acted because of Kennedy's support for Israel. Kennedy's assassination, coming just two months after Martin Luther King Jr.'s murder, deepened the national sense that American democracy was unraveling. Hubert Humphrey won the Democratic nomination at the chaotic Chicago convention but lost to Richard Nixon.

The first medical report describing what would become known as AIDS appeared on June 5, 1981, in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Dr. Michael Gottlieb described five young, previously healthy gay men in Los Angeles who had developed Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, a rare fungal infection typically seen only in severely immunocompromised patients. Two had already died. Within weeks, similar cases were reported in New York and San Francisco, along with a rare cancer called Kaposi's sarcoma. The disease was initially called GRID (Gay-Related Immune Deficiency) before being renamed AIDS in 1982. The virus (HIV) was identified in 1983. AIDS has killed over 40 million people worldwide. Antiretroviral therapy, introduced in 1996, transformed it from a death sentence into a manageable chronic condition.

Ugandan and Rwandan military forces, formerly allies in overthrowing Zaire's Mobutu Sese Seko, fought a destructive six-day battle in Kisangani, Democratic Republic of the Congo, beginning on June 5, 2000. Both countries had troops deployed in eastern Congo ostensibly supporting different Congolese rebel factions but actually competing for control of diamond and coltan mining operations. The fighting destroyed much of the city center and killed over 1,000 Congolese civilians caught in crossfire. The International Court of Justice later ruled that Uganda owed reparations to the DRC for the destruction. The Kisangani battles exposed how the Second Congo War, which involved nine African nations, was driven as much by competition for mineral wealth as by political ideology.