June 1 · This Day in America
On June 1, 1792, Kentucky joins the Union as the 15th state. It is the first carved from the wilderness west of the Appalachians, a place that until now was mostly rumor and footpath and someone's brother who went over the Cumberland Gap and didn't come back. Settlers had crossed the spine of the continent on faith, drained the salt licks, raised cabins where there had been only canebrake. Now there is a constitution, written in Danville, and Isaac Shelby — a soldier of the Revolution — is sworn as the first governor. The map had ended at the mountains. Now it doesn't. A people who had just won a country were already restless to fill it, and the door they opened that day would not close again for a hundred years.
Source: www.congress.gov
Also on this day · 1980
On June 1, 1980, Ted Turner's Cable News Network begins broadcasting from Atlanta — the first channel to carry news 24 hours a day, every day, with no sign-off. Critics called it the "Chicken Noodle Network" and gave it months. Instead it changed what it meant to know something: from a thing you waited for at six o'clock to a thing happening, live, right now, all the time.
Source: www.loc.gov