Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/June 8
June 8: Dragon Boat Festival (2008); World Ocean Day.
- 1783 - The Laki craters of Iceland began an eight-month eruption, triggering a major famine.
- 1887 - Herman Hollerith (pictured) received a patent for his punch card calculator.
- 1950 - Thomas Blamey became Australia's first (and only) Field Marshal.
- 1967 - The Israeli Air Force attacked the U.S. Navy intelligence ship USS Liberty in international waters, killing 34 and wounding at least 173.
- 1995 - Programmer Rasmus Lerdorf released the first public version of the programming language PHP.
- 2004 - Ethiopian distance runner Kenenisa Bekele broke the world record for outdoor 10,000 m in Ostrava, Czech Republic.