History for June 26

History for June 26 - On-This-Day.com
Pearl S. Buck 1892, William P. Lear 1902, Peter Lorre 1904


Col. Tom Parker 1909, Babe Didrikson Zaharias 1914, Greg LeMond 1961


1936 - The Focke-Wulf Fw 61 made its first flight. It is often considered the first practical helicopter.


1942 - The Grumman F6F Hellcat fighter was flown for the first time.


1948 - The Berlin Airlift began as the U.S., Britain and France started ferrying supplies to the isolated western sector of Berlin.


1959 - U.S. President Eisenhower joined Britain's Queen Elizabeth II in ceremonies officially opening the St. Lawrence Seaway.


1963 - U.S. President John Kennedy announced "Ich bin ein Berliner" (I am a Berliner) at the Berlin Wall.


1974 - In Troy, Ohio, a Marsh supermarket installed the first bar code scanning equipment, made by IBM, and a product with a bar code was scanned for the first time. The product was Juicy Fruit gum.


1976 - In Toronto, Canada, the CN Tower opened to the public. The official opening date is listed as October 1, 1976. It was the world's tallest free-standing stucture and the world's tallest tower until 2010.


2000 - The Human Genome Project and Celera Genomics Corp. jointly announced that they had created a working draft of the human genome.