June 1 in Military History

Lord Howe's Channel Fleet defeated the French Atlantic Fleet, capturing six ships of the line in the first major naval battle of the French Revolutionary Wars.

In a fierce fifteen-minute action off Boston Harbor, HMS Shannon defeated USS Chesapeake. Captain James Lawrence's dying words, "Don't give up the ship", became a lasting motto of the United States Navy.

The Battle of Seven Pines ended inconclusively outside Richmond, but Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston was severely wounded, leading President Davis to appoint Robert E. Lee to command what he renamed the Army of Northern Virginia.

The largest naval battle of World War I ended after two days of fighting. Britain lost more ships but maintained strategic control of the North Sea for the rest of the war.

The U.S. 2nd Division's 4th Marine Brigade reached the front line near Belleau Wood to blunt the German advance on Paris, opening what would become the Marine Corps' defining battle of World War I.

The new T-class submarine HMS Thetis flooded through an open torpedo tube during diving trials in Liverpool Bay, trapping 103 men aboard. Only four escaped; 99 drowned or suffocated in one of Britain's worst peacetime naval accidents.

The Royal Navy completed the evacuation of roughly 16,500 Allied troops from the southern Cretan port of Sphakia, ending an operation that cost the fleet three cruisers and six destroyers to German dive bombers.

Eight Luftwaffe Ju 88s attacked a civilian airliner over the Bay of Biscay, killing all 17 aboard including British actor Leslie Howard. It was speculated the Germans believed Winston Churchill was on board.

Charles de Gaulle was invested as Prime Minister of France after a near-coup by French army commanders in Algeria threatened to topple the Fourth Republic. He would use the crisis to create the Fifth Republic and end the Algerian War.

Israel appointed the one-eyed war hero Moshe Dayan as Minister of Defense just four days before the Six-Day War, signaling the shift from diplomacy to military action and boosting Israeli morale during the crisis.

President George H.W. Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev signed a bilateral agreement to halt production of chemical weapons and destroy 80 percent of their stockpiles, a major Cold War arms control step.