While waiting in the oppessive heat at the railroad station that was summer in Washington, D.C., President James Garfield was gunned down by a person who some called a mad man. The date was July 2, 1881. Garfield, was born in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, the last of the “log cabin presidents”, in 1831. He served from Ohio in the House of Representatives beginning in 1862 after a brief stint in the military during the Civil War. In 1880, he became a dark horse candidate for the office of the president on the 36th ballot. That fall he won a narrow victory over Democrat Winfield Scott Hancock also a veteran of…

By MATT DUNHAM Associated Press LONDON July 1, 2011 (AP) ABC Article Admirers of the late Princess Diana gathered outside Kensington Palace on Friday, a bright sunny day that would have been the troubled royal’s 50th birthday. Cards, a cake, a collage and other mementoes were among the gifts left at the gates of Kensington Palace, where Diana once lived — an echo of the massive, makeshift memorial set up there following her 1997 death in a Paris car crash. “She would’ve been so popular still. Everyone would have been here to help celebrate,” said Kathy Martin, a 49-year-old childcare worker from Australia. “We’ll never get to see her grow…

Labor unrest hits three states on this day. Steel workers in Pennsylvania strike against Homestead Mill on the Monongahela River. The mill is owned by Andrew Carnegie. Strikes occur in Tennessee and Idaho as well. The strike at the Homestead Mill will last five months, but no real tangible gains are achieved by labor.

by KATHY LOHR Listen to the Story at All Things Considered    Hulton Archive/Getty Images Margaret Mitchell’s novel Gone with the Wind was published 75 years ago this month. A 1936 promotional poster for the book shows heroine Scarlett O’Hara running through the streets as Atlanta burns.  June 29, 2011 As a child growing up just south of Atlanta, Margaret Mitchell used to sit on the front porch, listening to adults tell stories about the Civil War as they passed still summer nights in Clayton County. Those stories went on to help inspire one of the most famous novels of all time —Gone with the Wind, which was published 75 years ago…

First World War erupts. (2011). The History Channel website. Retrieved 9:42, June 25, 2011, from http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-world-war-erupts. On June 28, 1914, in an event that is widely regarded as sparking the outbreak of World War I, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian empire, was shot to death with his wife by Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo, Bosnia. Ferdinand had been inspecting his uncle’s imperial armed forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina, despite the threat of Serbian nationalists who wanted these Austro-Hungarian possessions to join newly independent Serbia. Austria-Hungary blamed the Serbian government for the attack and hoped to use the incident as justification for settling the problem of Slavic nationalism once and…

On June 28th, 1898, Congress passed the Curtis Act which included in the body of the legislation allotment to the Five Civilized Tribes and ending them as sovereign nations by March 4, 1906. The act also abolished tribal courts and forbade enforcement of tribal laws in federal courts. The act forced the tribes to begin enrolling tribal members and to take up allotments by the 1906 deadline. Ironically, the act was authored by Kaw tribal member Charles Curtis, Congressman from Kansas.

By Annie Lowrey  Posted Friday, June 24, 2011, at 5:18 PM EThttp://www.slate.com/id/2297513?wpisrc=xs_wp_0001 Since even before Arthur Laffer drew his curve on a napkin, Republicans and Democrats have been having the same fight about taxes and growth. Republican politicians insist that tax cuts “pay for themselves,” increasing receipts by goosing economic growth. Democrats and virtually all economists say they’re wrong. Today, this very dispute animates the showdown between Republicans and Democrats over whether to include any tax increases in the long-term plan to reduce the deficit. But there are a few cases where tax cuts have arguably raised receipts. These cases are instructive, as they are so specific and so rare.  Let’s…

The Constitution’s framers were flawed like today’s politicians, so it’s high time we stop embalming them in infallibility. by Simon Schama June 26, 2011     http://www.newsweek.com/2011/06/26/the-founding-fathers-were-flawed.html   He may have written the Declaration of Independence, but were he around today Thomas Jefferson wouldn’t have a prayer of winning the Republican nomination, much less the presidency. It wouldn’t be his liaison with the teenage daughter of one of his slaves nor the love children she bore him that would be the stumbling block. Nor would it be Jefferson’s suspicious possession of an English translation of the Quran that might doom him to fail the Newt Gingrich loyalty test. No, it would…

by JAMES FALLOWS James Fallows is a national correspondent for The Atlantic and has written for the magazine since the late 1970s. He has reported extensively from outside the United States, and once worked as President Carter’s chief speechwriter. The French National Library has a wonderful exhibit of prints from 1910, imagining the wonderful new world of the year 2000. For instance, how we would learn:  And, le train électrique Paris-Pekin*: Studies of “how the past imagined the future” make up a rich and established field — for instance, with David Gelernter’s 1995 book about the “futuristic” 1939 New York World’s Fair. Or in a different way Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward. But if the library’s…