June in history according to an eternal pessimist.

1st June 4000 BCE

In what is now Ukraine, in Dereivka on the Dnieper River, the first horse was domesticated. The exact date and place are purely hypothetical, but nevertheless there are archaeological finds that support it, such as the oldest ever horse teeth found on the site, showing signs of wear and tear from the bridle. I wonder if the horses that pull tourists in carriages around New York’s Central Park nowadays would want to kick their ancestral ‘historical hero’ in the teeth…

2nd June 455

The Vandals spilled into Rome, plundering it for two weeks. These days, sightseeing doesn’t take quite as long.

3rd June 1948

Korczak Ziółkowski – a Polish-American sculptor – began to chisel away at the rock in the Black Hills of South Dakota to create a gigantic statue of the Indian chief Crazy Horse. It’s so huge that the