Today in History.....June 1

On this day in …

* 1779, Benedict Arnold is court-martialed

* 1813, the commander of the U.S. frigate Chesapeake, Capt. James Lawrence, said, "Don't give up the ship" during a losing battle with a British frigate

* 1941, during World War II, Crete, the last Allied stronghold in Greece, is captured by German forces at high cost to both sides

* 1942, a Warsaw underground newspaper, the Liberty Brigade, makes public the news of the gassing of tens of thousands of Jews at Chelmno, a death camp in Poland --- almost seven months after extermination of prisoners began

* 1943, a civilian flight from Lisbon to London was shot down by the Germans during World War II, killing all aboard, including actor Leslie Howard

* 1944, the British Broadcasting Corp. aired a coded message intended to warn the French resistance that the D-Day invasion was imminent

* 1949, Lawrence Welk's band debuts on High Life Review

* 1958, during a French political crisis over the military and civilian revolt in Algeria, Charles de Gaulle is called out of retirement to head a new emergency government. Considered the only leader of sufficient strength and stature to deal with the perilous situation, the former war hero was made the virtual dictator of France, with power to rule by decree for six months

* 1971, in support of the Nixon Administration's conduct of the war, a group named the Vietnam Veterans for a Just Peace declares that it represents the majority of the U.S. veterans that had served in Southeast Asia, and calls the protests and congressional testimony of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War "irresponsible."

* 1977, the Soviet Union formally charged Jewish human rights activist Anatoly Shcharansky with treason. (Shcharansky was imprisoned, then released in 1986.)

* 1980, Cable News Network made its debut

* 1990, at a superpowers summit meeting in Washington, D.C., U.S.
President George H.W. Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev sign a historic agreement to end production of chemical weapons and begin the destruction of both nations' sizable reserves of them

* 1996, an estimated 200,000 participants, most of them schoolchildren, gathered at the Lincoln Memorial to protest government cuts for social and educational programs

* 2001, a suicide bomber -- a practitioner of that "religion of peace" -- attacked a Tel Aviv nightclub, murdering 21 Israelis