June 9

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  1861: Physicist, mathematician, and historian Pierre Duhem born. He will write: "A theory of physics is not an explanation. It is a system of mathematical propositions, deduced from a small number of principles, which have for their aim to represent as simply, as completely and as exactly as possible, a group of experimental laws."

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  1950: Novelist and screenwriter Dalton Trumbo is photographed Bureau of Prisons authorities. Trumbo will serve eleven months in the federal penitentiary in Ashland, Wisconsin for refusing to testify before House Un-American Activities Committee.

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  1953: Singer-physicist J. R. Oppenheimer's song "Destroyer of Worlds" is condemned by the House Un-American Activities Committee as "pernicious satire which knowingly demeans the national security state."

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  1954: "You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?" —Joseph Welch, special counsel for the United States Army, lashes out at Senator Joseph McCarthy during hearings on whether Communism has infiltrated the Army. See McCarthyism.