June 5

Renfield’s hobby is catching flies, and Dr. Seward asks him to stop. Renfield takes it “in simple seriousness”: “May I have three days? I shall clear them away.” Seward notes his “selfishness, secrecy, and purpose”, and decides to watch him.

Alexander Kellas, a Scottish chemist who had climbed more high Himalayan peaks than anyone and had studied oxygen at altitude, had fallen ill on the approach. He died of heart failure while being carried over a pass above Kampa Dzong, and was buried there.

You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. Printed and handed to each of the 175,000 men of the assault forces as they boarded.

Convoys from ports between Falmouth and Felixstowe met at Area Z, nicknamed Piccadilly Circus, south-east of the Isle of Wight, then turned south down channels swept by minesweepers. Operation Neptune, the naval part of the invasion, used nearly 7,000 vessels.

Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops.… If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone. Eisenhower pencilled a statement in case the landings failed, and misdated it “July 5”. He never needed it; an aide…

At the final meeting Stagg confirmed his forecast, and Eisenhower gave the order for 6 June. His exact words vary by witness: “OK, let's go”, “OK, we'll go”, or simply “Let's go.”

The invasion needed a late-rising moon for the paratroops and a low tide at dawn to expose the beach obstacles; only 5, 6 and 7 June offered both that month. A storm blew in over the Channel on the 4th.

On the evening of 5 June Eisenhower walked among the paratroopers of the 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment. A photograph of him talking with Lieutenant Wallace Strobel became one of the best-known images of the war.

Among the personal messages the BBC read out to the French Resistance was the second line of Verlaine's “Chanson d'automne”: “Blessent mon cœur d'une langueur monotone.” (Some accounts say the words read on air were “Bercent mon cœur”, from Charles Trenet's song setting.) German Fifteenth Army…

Bombers of No. 617 and No. 218 Squadrons flew exact, slowly advancing circuits dropping strips of foil (“Window”), so German radar saw convoys approaching Cap d'Antifer and Boulogne. Elsewhere, Operation Titanic dropped dummy paratroopers to draw German reserves away.

The first Allied soldiers into Normandy were the pathfinders, who jumped to mark the drop zones with lights and radar beacons. Captain Frank Lillyman of the 101st is usually named as the first American to land.

About 24,000 paratroops and glider troops landed on the flanks: the American 82nd and 101st Airborne behind Utah, the British 6th Airborne east of the Orne. Cloud and flak scattered most of them far from their drop zones.

Three Horsa gliders carrying Major John Howard's company of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry landed within yards of the Caen Canal bridge at Bénouville. They took it, and the Orne river bridge nearby, in about ten minutes. Lieutenant Den Brotheridge, shot crossing the bridge, is…

The 101st came in over the Cotentin in a cloud bank and then flak; pilots climbed, dived and broke formation. Paratroopers landed miles from their zones, some in flooded fields where the weight of their kit drowned them. By dawn Major General Maxwell Taylor had gathered only about 1,100 of his…

The British 3rd and 5th Parachute Brigades jumped to hold the eastern flank: destroy the bridges over the Dives, silence the Merville battery and hold the ground between the Orne and the Dives. Ranville, taken by the 13th Parachute Battalion, claims to be the first village liberated in France.

The 82nd was to seize crossings on the Merderet river. Its drops west of the river were the most scattered of all, into marshes the Germans had flooded. Only the 505th Parachute Infantry, east of the river, landed largely where planned.

In a speech of barely ten minutes, Secretary of State George Marshall offered American money to rebuild Europe. Stalin kept Poland and Czechoslovakia out, and the plan paid about $13 billion to sixteen Western European countries from 1948 to 1952.

Alvin is commissionedAlvin

A three-person submersible for Woods Hole, named after its champion, Allyn Vine. Rebuilt again and again, it has made more than 5,000 dives and is still working.

A seventeen-year-old from Wichita became the first high-school runner under four minutes, ten years after Bannister.

James Meredith set out to walk alone from Memphis to Jackson and was shot and wounded on the second day. King, SNCC and CORE finished the march for him, registering voters along the way, and some 15,000 rallied at the Mississippi capitol at the end.

From the first report to the Vancouver conference, no drug could hold the virus back for long. A diagnosis of AIDS meant death, usually within two years. New infections worldwide peaked during this span, at 3.5 million in 1994 (UNAIDS range 2.7–4.7 million).

Michael Gottlieb of UCLA and colleagues reported Pneumocystis pneumonia in five previously healthy young gay men. The CDC’s editorial note suggested “a cellular-immune dysfunction related to a common exposure”. It is the first published report of the epidemic; the date is now HIV’s anniversary.

The CDC’s weekly report described five young men treated in Los Angeles for Pneumocystis pneumonia, an infection almost never seen in healthy adults; two had already died. The syndrome was named AIDS the following year.

Nintendo sold 3.5 million in its first four days, the fastest start of any console it had made.