June 8

218 – Battle of Antioch: With the support of the Syrian legions, Elagabalus defeats the forces of emperor Macrinus. 452 – Attila leads a Hun army in the invasion of Italy, devastating the northern provinces as he heads for Rome. 793 – Vikings raid the abbey at Lindisfarne in Northumbria, commonly accepted as the beginning of Norse activity in the British Isles. 1042 – Edward the Confessor becomes King of England – the country's penultimate Anglo-Saxon king. 1191 – Richard I arrives in Acre, beginning the Third Crusade. 1663 – Portuguese Restoration War: Portuguese victory at the Battle of Ameixial ensures Portugal's independence from Spain. 1772 – Alexander Fordyce flees to France to avoid debt repayment, triggering the credit crisis of 1772 in the British Empire and the Dutch Republic. 1776 – American Revolutionary War: Continental Army attackers are driven back at the Battle of Trois-Rivières. 1783 – Laki, a volcano in Iceland, begins an eight-month eruption which kills over 9,000 people and starts a seven-year famine. 1789 – James Madison introduces twelve proposed amendments to the United States Constitution in Congress. 1794 – Maximilien Robespierre inaugurates the French Revolution's new state religion, the Cult of the Supreme Being, with large organized festivals all across France. 1856 – A group of 194 Pitcairn Islanders, descendants of the mutineers of , arrives at Norfolk Island, commencing the Third Settlement of the Island. 1861 – American Civil War: Tennessee secedes from the Union. 1862 – American Civil War: A Confederate victory by forces under General Stonewall Jackson at the Battle of Cross Keys, along with the Battle of Port Republic the next day, prevents Union forces from reinforcing General George B. McClellan in his Peninsula campaign. 1867 – Coronation of Franz Joseph as King of Hungary following the Austro-Hungarian compromise (Ausgleich). 1887 – Herman Hollerith applies for US patent #395,781 for the 'Art of Compiling Statistics', which was his punched card calculator.