Today in History: George Orwell's ‘1984' first published

Chicago Tribune

5 hours ago

Today is Sunday, June 8, the 159th day of 2025. There are 206 days left in the year.
Today in history:
On June 8, 1949, George Orwell's novel '1984' was first published.
Also on this date:
In 1789, in an address to the U.S. House of Representatives, James Madison proposed amending the Constitution to include a Bill of Rights.
In 1966, a merger was announced between the National and American Football Leagues, to take effect in 1970.
In 1967, during the Six-Day War, 34 American crew members were killed when Israel attacked the USS Liberty, a Navy intelligence-gathering ship in the Mediterranean Sea. (Israel later said the Liberty had been mistaken for an Egyptian vessel.)
In 1968, U.S. authorities announced the capture in London of James Earl Ray, the suspected assassin of civil rights leader the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
In 1978, a jury in Clark County, Nevada, ruled the so-called 'Mormon Will,' purportedly written by the late billionaire Howard Hughes, was a forgery.
In 1995, U.S. Marines rescued Capt. Scott O'Grady, whose F-16C fighter jet had been shot down by Bosnian Serbs on June 2.
In 2009, North Korea's highest court sentenced American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee to 12 years' hard labor for trespassing and 'hostile acts.' (The women were pardoned in early August 2009 after a trip to Pyongyang by former President Bill Clinton.)
In 2017, former FBI Director James Comey, testifying before Congress, asserted that President Donald Trump fired him to interfere with Comey's investigation of Russia's ties to the Trump campaign.
In 2021, Ratko Mladić, the military chief known as the 'Butcher of Bosnia' for orchestrating genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in the Balkan nation's 1992-95 war, lost his final legal battle when U.N. judges rejected his appeal and affirmed his life sentence.
In 2023, Donald Trump was indicted by a grand jury in Miami on 37 felony counts related to the alleged mishandling of classified documents that had been moved to Mar-a-Lago, Trump's Florida home. (The case against Trump was abandoned following Trump's November 2024 presidential election victory.)
Today's Birthdays: Singer Nancy Sinatra is 85. Musician Boz Scaggs is 81. Pianist Emanuel Ax is 76. Actor Sonia Braga is 75. Actor Kathy Baker is 75. Singer Bonnie Tyler is 73. Computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee is 70. Actor Griffin Dunne is 70. 'Dilbert' creator Scott Adams is 68. Actor-director Keenen Ivory Wayans is 67. Singer Mick Hucknall (Simply Red) is 65. Musician Nick Rhodes (Duran Duran) is 63. Actor Julianna Margulies is 59. Former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, a Democrat from Arizona, is 55. Tennis Hall of Famer Lindsay Davenport is 49. TV personality-host Maria Menounos is 47. Country singer-songwriter Sturgill Simpson is 47. Guitarist-songwriter Derek Trucks is 46. Tennis Hall of Famer Kim Clijsters is 42. U.S. Olympic track gold medalist Athing Mu-Nikolayev is 23.