Good morning. It's June 11th — let's begin where we always do: on this very date in history.
📅 On This Day — June 11
🌽 (It's also National Corn on the Cob Day — fire up the grill.)
1962 — Three inmates — Frank Morris and brothers John and Clarence Anglin — slip out of Alcatraz on a raft stitched from raincoats, leaving papier-mâché dummy heads tucked in their bunks. They're never seen again.
1982 — Steven Spielberg's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial opens — a glowing fingertip, a flying bicycle, and "phone home" lodged in the heart of a generation.
1993 — Exactly eleven years later to the day, Spielberg does it again: Jurassic Park stomps into theaters and brings the dinosaurs roaring back to life.
2010 — The FIFA World Cup kicks off in South Africa — the first ever held on African soil — and Siphiwe Tshabalala's thunderbolt against Mexico sends a whole continent into raptures.
Now, let's set the dial back to…
⏪ REWIND: 2005
George W. Bush is early in his second term, gas runs a little over $2 a gallon, iPods are everywhere, and the whole country has picked a side: Team Aniston or Team Jolie. Here's the world that year.
📰 The Headlines Today brings a genuine landmark: the world's wealthiest nations — the G8 — agree to cancel the debts of eighteen of the planet's poorest countries, wiping out roughly $40 billion so those nations can spend on their own people instead of interest. It's the signature win of the "Make Poverty History" year, just weeks before the all-star Live 8 concerts.
🎬 At the Movies Topping the box office: Mr. & Mrs. Smith, the slick action-comedy about married assassins secretly hired to kill each other — and the film whose off-screen sparks between Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie set the tabloids ablaze. And next week, a brooding reboot called Batman Begins arrives to reinvent the Dark Knight for good.
🎵 On the Charts Sitting at #1 this week: "We Belong Together" by Mariah Carey — the aching ballad that completes one of pop's great comebacks and goes on to rule the chart for fourteen weeks as the song of the summer of '05.
🏆 In Sports At Belmont Park today, Afleet Alex — the colt who'd stumbled to his knees in the Preakness three weeks earlier and somehow stayed up to win — leaves no doubt this time, romping home by seven lengths to take the Belmont Stakes. That same night, a 38-year-old Mike Tyson quits on his stool against journeyman Kevin McBride, quietly closing the book on one of boxing's most turbulent careers.
— a couple of quick things before you go —
👟 Step Challenge: it starts tomorrow! The Yesterday Today Summer 2026 Step Challenge kicks off June 12 — grab the free Pacer app and get in now so you're ready on day one. → Join the challenge (Already have Pacer? Club code E42727228.)
💡 Health Snap: 2005 was the year the iPod nano landed and everybody had earbuds in. Turns out a good playlist is still one of the simplest ways to make a walk fly by — line up a few favorites and let them set your pace.
🎉 Born on a June 11th — or know someone who was?
Forward this to them right now — there's no better "this is the day you were born" gift than a little time travel.
🎂 In good company: other June 11 babies include Jacques Cousteau, Gene Wilder, Joe Montana, Hugh Laurie, and Peter Dinklage.
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