#TodayInHistory – June 9

June 9 – Some important events on this day.

68 👉🏼 Roman Emperor Nero commits suicide, imploring his secretary Epaphroditos to slit his throat to evade a Senate-imposed death by flogging.
He was Roman Emperor from 54 to 68, and the last in the Julio-Claudian dynasty. He is infamously known as the Emperor who “fiddled while Rome burned” and as an early persecutor of Christians. His rule is often associated with tyranny and extravagance, and he was known for executing people he perceived as enemies, including his own mother.
His death ended the Julio-Claudian Dynasty, sparking a brief period of civil wars known as the Year of the Four Emperors.

721 👉🏼 Odo of Aquitaine defeats the Moors in the Battle of Toulouse
1456 👉🏼 23rd recorded perihelion passage of Halley’s Comet ☄️
1529 👉🏼 Zurich declares war on Catholic kantons 🇨🇭

1549 👉🏼 Book of Common Prayer is adopted by the Church of England.
The Book of Common Prayer was first produced in England in 1549 during the reign of Edward VI and reflected England’s split from the Roman Catholic Church under the previous monarch Henry VIII.
It was put together by a religious committee headed by Thomas Cranmer the Archbishop of Canterbury, and marked the first time a book of service has been written in English. It was extensively revised a number of times, the last in 1662 and has remained the official prayer book of the Anglican Church ever since.

1650 👉🏼 The Harvard Corporation, the more powerful of the two administrative boards of Harvard, is established. First legal corporation in the Americas.
1815 👉🏼 End of the Congress of Vienna: New European political situation is set
1856 👉🏼 500 Mormons leave Iowa City, Iowa, and head west for Salt Lake City, Utah, carrying all their possessions in two-wheeled handcarts.

1869 👉🏼 Charles E. Hires sells his 1st root beer, in Philadelphia.
The first person to brew root beer commercially, he created the eponymous Hires Root Beer beverage.

1902 👉🏼 1st Automat restaurant opens (818 Chestnut St, Philadelphia)
1934 👉🏼 1st appearance of Donald Duck in a cartoon, “The Wise Little Hen” 📺
1942 👉🏼 Nazis kill all inhabitants of Lidice, which had been implicated in the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, Nazi controller of Bohemia and Moravia, to “teach the Czechs a final lesson of subservience and humility”
1977 👉🏼 Silver jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain celebrated with fireworks 💥
1978 👉🏼 Johannes Gutenberg’s Bible, the first book produced using the printing press, (1 of 21 complete versions) sells for $2.4 million, London 💰
1997 👉🏼 British lease on the New Territories in Hong Kong expires
2019 👉🏼 Over 1 million people protest in Hong Kong over proposed new extradition laws to China in one of largest-ever protests in the city.