June 9 in History

Nero drove a dagger into his own throat on June 9, 68 AD, with the help of his secretary Epaphroditus, while a cavalry detachment sent to arrest him pounded on the door of a freedman’s villa outside Rome. His final words, according to the historian Suetonius, were "Qualis artifex pereo" — "What an artist dies in me." Even in death, the last emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty could not resist the performance. Nero’s reign had begun promisingly in 54 AD when he took the throne at sixteen under the guidance of the philosopher Seneca and the Praetorian prefect Burrus. The first five years, the quinquennium Neronis, were remembered as a period of competent governance. Tax reform, judicial improvements, and a relatively restrained foreign policy marked the early reign. The descent began after Burrus died and Seneca retired around 62 AD. Nero murdered his mother Agrippina, executed his first wife Octavia, and kicked his pregnant second wife Poppaea to death, acts that alienated the senatorial class and eroded the loyalty of his generals. The Great Fire of Rome in July 64 AD destroyed ten of the city’s fourteen districts and gave rise to the persistent rumor that Nero had ordered the blaze to clear land for his vast Domus Aurea palace complex. Whether or not Nero started the fire, he exploited the catastrophe, and his scapegoating of Christians as arsonists produced the first organized Roman persecution of the new religion. The subsequent revolt of Gaius Julius Vindex in Gaul in March 68 was poorly organized and quickly suppressed, but it exposed the fragility of Nero’s support. When Servius Sulpicius Galba, the governor of Hispania, declared himself emperor, the Praetorian Guard switched allegiance. The Senate declared Nero a public enemy, and the 30-year-old emperor fled Rome disguised in rags. His death triggered the Year of the Four Emperors, a civil war in which Galba, Otho, Vitellius, and Vespasian successively seized power. Vespasian prevailed and founded the Flavian dynasty, but the chaos of 69 AD demonstrated how thoroughly Nero had damaged the structures of Roman governance.

Thailand’s twenty-year-old King Ananda Mahidol was found dead in his bed with a single bullet wound to the forehead on the morning of June 9, 1946. A Colt .45 pistol lay near his body. The circumstances of his death remain the most sensitive and least resolved mystery in modern Thai history, and public discussion of the case is effectively prohibited under Thailand’s strict lese-majeste laws. Ananda, known as Rama VIII, had been king since 1935 but spent most of his reign studying in Switzerland while regents governed in his name. He returned to Thailand in December 1945 at a time of intense political instability. The country was recovering from Japanese occupation, the military and civilian factions were maneuvering for power, and the role of the monarchy in the postwar order was uncertain. Ananda’s death came just days before he was scheduled to return to Switzerland to complete his studies. Three theories competed for acceptance: suicide, accident, and assassination. The government initially suggested an accidental discharge. The trajectory and position of the wound made accident unlikely. Suicide was plausible but unsupported by evidence of motive. The assassination theory implicated various political factions, and in 1954, two royal pages and a former secretary to the king were convicted of regicide and executed, though the evidence against them was widely regarded as thin. No definitive explanation has ever been established. Ananda’s eighteen-year-old brother, Bhumibol Adulyadej, ascended the throne as Rama IX on the same day. He would reign for seventy years, until his death in 2016, making him the longest-reigning monarch in Thai history and one of the longest-serving heads of state in the modern world. Bhumibol transformed the Thai monarchy from a weakened institution into a powerful unifying force in national life. The mystery of his brother’s death, never fully resolved, remains a subject that Thai citizens approach with extreme caution, if they approach it at all.

King Haakon VII refused to surrender for sixty-two days, making Norway the country that resisted the Nazi invasion the longest before capitulating. Norwegian armed forces officially laid down their weapons on June 9, 1940, after a campaign that began with Germany’s surprise invasion on April 9. The king, the government, and the gold reserves of the national bank had already been evacuated to Britain, from where the Norwegian government-in-exile would continue the fight for five more years. Germany’s invasion of Norway was one of the boldest operations of the war. On a single morning, German forces simultaneously attacked six Norwegian ports, from Oslo in the south to Narvik above the Arctic Circle. The heavy cruiser Blucher was sunk by torpedoes and guns from the Oscarsborg fortress in the Oslo fjord, delaying the capture of the capital long enough for the royal family and parliament to escape by train to Hamar. The German minister in Oslo, Curt Brauer, demanded that Haakon appoint Vidkun Quisling, the leader of Norway’s fascist party, as prime minister. Haakon refused, telling his cabinet he would abdicate rather than comply. Norwegian, British, French, and Polish forces fought a confused campaign across the mountainous terrain of central and northern Norway throughout April and May. Allied forces actually recaptured Narvik on May 28, the first town taken back from the Germans in the war. But the German invasion of France and the Low Countries on May 10 made Norway a strategic sideshow. Allied troops were withdrawn to defend France, and without them, Norway’s position was untenable. The Norwegian merchant fleet, one of the largest in the world, sailed to British ports and spent the war carrying Allied supplies across the Atlantic, a contribution far out of proportion to Norway’s small population. The resistance movement inside occupied Norway conducted sabotage operations, most famously the destruction of the Norsk Hydro heavy water plant at Vemork in 1943, which disrupted Germany’s nuclear research program. Quisling governed as a puppet minister-president until liberation in May 1945. He was tried for treason and executed by firing squad in October of that year. His surname entered the English language as a synonym for traitor.

Secretariat won the Belmont Stakes by thirty-one lengths. On June 9, 1973, the three-year-old chestnut colt pulled away from the field entering the final turn and kept accelerating, crossing the finish line so far ahead of the nearest competitor that the margin remains the largest in any Triple Crown race in history. His time of 2:24 flat for a mile and a half shattered the Belmont record by more than two seconds. When veterinarians examined his body after his death in 1989, they found a heart nearly three times the normal size: 22 pounds, compared to a typical Thoroughbred’s 7 to 8 pounds. The colt had won the Kentucky Derby in 1:59.4, the first horse to break two minutes for the distance, and the Preakness Stakes two weeks later. But entering the Belmont, the Triple Crown had been unclaimed for 25 years, and recent history suggested the mile-and-a-half Belmont distance would expose whatever weaknesses the shorter races had concealed. Four horses had won the Derby and Preakness since 1948 and lost the Belmont. Sham, who had run a strong second in both previous races, was considered a serious threat. Jockey Ron Turcotte let Secretariat run. Rather than rating the horse and conserving energy for a final stretch drive, Turcotte allowed him to set his own pace from the start. Secretariat reached the first quarter mile in 23.4 seconds, the half in 46.4, and continued accelerating through each successive quarter. Sham, who tried to stay with him, collapsed to last place and finished the race as a broken horse who would never run competitively again. CBS announcer Chic Anderson’s call, "He is moving like a tremendous machine," became one of the most replayed lines in sports broadcasting. Secretariat’s Belmont performance is widely regarded as the single greatest race ever run by a Thoroughbred. His sectional times showed the rarest quality in any athlete: he ran each quarter mile faster than the one before it over a distance that exhausts most horses. Penny Chenery, who owned the horse and had resisted pressure to sell him after the Kentucky Derby, called the Belmont the race she wanted people to remember. No one who saw it has forgotten.

Union cavalry launched a surprise dawn attack across the Rappahannock River on June 9, 1863, catching J.E.B. Stuart’s Confederate horsemen unprepared and initiating the largest cavalry battle ever fought on American soil. Approximately 20,000 mounted troops clashed across the fields and ridges around Brandy Station, Virginia, in a swirling, twelve-hour engagement that produced over 1,200 casualties and shattered the myth of Confederate cavalry superiority in the eastern theater. Stuart, the flamboyant commander of Robert E. Lee’s cavalry corps, had staged an elaborate review of his 9,500 troopers at Brandy Station on June 5 and 8, complete with mock charges and a formal ball. The grand display was preparation for Lee’s second invasion of the North, which would lead to Gettysburg three weeks later. Stuart’s cavalry was supposed to screen Lee’s army as it moved northward through the Shenandoah Valley, and the reviews were partly a morale exercise, partly a show of force. General Alfred Pleasonton’s Union cavalry force of 8,000 troopers and 3,000 infantry crossed the Rappahannock at two points at dawn on June 9, achieving near-total surprise. Stuart’s pickets barely provided warning. The fighting at Fleetwood Hill, the dominant terrain feature, was chaotic and intensely personal, with troopers fighting at close quarters with sabers, pistols, and carbines. The hill changed hands multiple times before the Confederates finally consolidated their hold in the late afternoon. Pleasonton withdrew across the river. Stuart held the field and technically won the battle, but the engagement humiliated him. Southern newspapers, which had lavished praise on his cavalry for two years, now mocked his carelessness. Stuart’s desire to restore his reputation may have contributed to his controversial ride around the Union army during the Gettysburg campaign, which deprived Lee of cavalry reconnaissance during the most critical days of the battle. Brandy Station’s lasting consequence was psychological: Union cavalrymen discovered they could stand against Stuart’s legendary horsemen and fight them to a draw.