This Day in History

[lordroel]

June 8th

218 – Battle of Antioch: With the support of the Syrian legions, Elagabalus defeats the forces of emperor Macrinus. He flees, but is captured near Chalcedon and later executed in Cappadocia.

452 – Italy invaded by Attila the Hun.

632 – Muhammad, Islamic prophet, dies in Medina.

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, one of the last Anglo-Saxon kings of England.

1191 – Richard I arrives in Acre, beginning his crusade.

1405 – Richard le Scrope, the Archbishop of York, and Thomas Mowbray, Earl of Norfolk, are executed in York on Henry IV's orders.

1776 – American Revolutionary War: American 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 – 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 HMS Bounty, arrives at Norfolk Island, commencing the Third Settlement of the Island.

1861 – American Civil War: Tennessee secedes from the Union.

1862 – American Civil War: Battle of Cross Keys: Confederate forces under General Stonewall Jackson save the Army of Northern Virginia from a Union assault on the James Peninsula led by General George B. McClellan.

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.

1906 – Theodore Roosevelt signs the Antiquities Act into law, authorizing the President to restrict the use of certain parcels of public land with historical or conservation value.

1912 – Carl Laemmle incorporates Universal Pictures.

1918 – Nova Aquilae, the brightest nova since Kepler's Supernova of 1604, is discovered.

1918 – A solar eclipse is observed at Baker City, Oregon by scientists and an artist hired by the United States Navy.

1928 – Second Northern Expedition: The National Revolutionary Army captures Peking, whose name is changed to Beijing ("Northern Capital").

1929 – Margaret Bondfield is appointed Minister of Labour. She is the first woman appointed to the Cabinet of the United Kingdom.

1940 – World War II: The completion of Operation Alphabet, the evacuation of Allied forces from Narvik at the end of the Norwegian Campaign.

1941 – World War II: The Allies commence the Syria–Lebanon Campaign against the possessions of Vichy France in the Levant.

1942 – World War II: The Japanese imperial submarines I-21 and I-24 shell the Australian cities of Sydney and Newcastle.

1943 – World War II: The two-day Battle of Porta between the Royal Italian Army and the Greek People's Liberation Army begins.

1949 – Helen Keller, Dorothy Parker, Danny Kaye, Fredric March, John Garfield, Paul Muni and Edward G. Robinson are named in an FBI report as Communist Party members.

1949 – George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four is published.

1953 – An F5 tornado hits Beecher, Michigan, killing 116, injuring 844, and destroying 340 homes.

1953 – The United States Supreme Court rules that restaurants in Washington, D.C. cannot refuse to serve black patrons.

1959 – The USS Barbero and United States Postal Service attempt the delivery of mail via Missile Mail.

1966 – An F-104 Starfighter collides with XB-70 Valkyrie prototype no. 2, destroying both aircraft during a photo shoot near Edwards Air Force Base. Joseph A. Walker, a NASA test pilot, and Carl Cross, a United States Air Force test pilot, are both killed.

1966 – Topeka, Kansas, is devastated by a tornado that registers as an "F5" on the Fujita scale: The first to exceed US$100 million in damages. Sixteen people are killed, hundreds more injured, and thousands of homes damaged or destroyed.

1966 – The National Football League and American Football League announced a merger effective in 1970.

1967 – Six-Day War: The USS Liberty incident occurs, killing 34 and wounding 171.

1972 – Vietnam War: Nine-year-old Phan Thị Kim Phúc is burned by napalm, an event captured by Associated Press photographer Nick Ut moments later while the young girl is seen running down a road, in what would become an iconic, Pulitzer Prize-winning photo.

1982 – Bluff Cove Air Attacks during the Falklands War: Fifty-six British servicemen are killed by an Argentine air attack on two landing ships, RFA Sir Galahad and RFA Sir Tristram.

1984 – Homosexuality is declared legal in the Australian state of New South Wales.

1987 – New Zealand's Labour government establishes a national nuclear-free zone under the New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act 1987.

1992 – The first World Oceans Day is celebrated, coinciding with the Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

1995 – Downed U.S. Air Force pilot Captain Scott O'Grady is rescued by U.S. Marines in Bosnia.

2001 – Mamoru Takuma kills eight and injures 15 in a mass stabbing at an elementary school in the Osaka Prefecture of Japan.

2004 – The first Venus Transit in well over a century takes place, the previous one being in 1882.

2007 – Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia, is hit by the State's worst storms and flooding in 30 years resulting in the death of nine people and the grounding of a trade ship, the MV Pasha Bulker.

2008 – At least 37 miners go missing after an explosion in a Ukrainian coal mine causes it to collapse.

2008 – At least seven people are killed and ten injured in a stabbing spree in Tokyo, Japan.

2009 – Two American journalists are found guilty of illegally entering North Korea and sentenced to 12 years of penal labour.

2014 – At least 28 people are killed in an attack at Jinnah International Airport, Karachi, Pakistan.

[lordroel]

June 9th

411 BC – The Athenian coup succeeds, forming a short-lived oligarchy.

AD 53 – The Roman emperor Nero marries Claudia Octavia.

AD 68 – Nero commits suicide, after quoting Homer's Iliad, thus ending the Julio-Claudian dynasty and starting the civil war known as the Year of the Four Emperors.

721 – Odo of Aquitaine defeats the Moors in the Battle of Toulouse.

747 – Abbasid Revolution: Abu Muslim Khorasani begins an open revolt against Umayyad rule, which is carried out under the sign of the Black Standard.

1311 – Duccio's Maestà, a seminal artwork of the early Italian Renaissance, is unveiled and installed in Siena Cathedral in Siena, Italy.

1523 – The Parisian Faculty of Theology fines Simon de Colines for publishing the Biblical commentary Commentarii initiatorii in quatuor Evangelia by Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples.

1534 – Jacques Cartier is the first European to describe and map the Saint Lawrence River.

1667 – Second Anglo-Dutch War: The Raid on the Medway by the Dutch fleet begins. It lasts for five days and results in the worst ever defeat of the Royal Navy.

1732 – James Oglethorpe is granted a royal charter for the colony of the future U.S. state of Georgia.

1762 – British forces begin the Siege of Havana and capture the city during the Seven Years' War.

1772 – The British schooner Gaspee is burned in Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island.

1798 – Irish Rebellion of 1798: Battles of Arklow and Saintfield.

1815 – End of the Congress of Vienna: The new European political situation is set.

1856 – Five hundred Mormons leave Iowa City, Iowa for the Mormon Trail.

1862 – American Civil War: Stonewall Jackson concludes his successful Shenandoah Valley Campaign with a victory in the Battle of Port Republic; his tactics during the campaign are now studied by militaries around the world.

1863 – American Civil War: Battle of Brandy Station, Virginia.

1885 – Treaty of Tientsin is signed to end the Sino-French War, with China eventually giving up Tonkin and Annam – most of present-day Vietnam – to France.

1900 – Indian nationalist Birsa Munda dies in a British prison of cholera

1915 – William Jennings Bryan resigns as Woodrow Wilson's Secretary of State over a disagreement regarding the United States' handling of the sinking of the RMS Lusitania.

1923 – Bulgaria's military takes over the government in a coup.

1928 – Charles Kingsford Smith completes the first trans-Pacific flight in a Fokker Trimotor monoplane, the Southern Cross.

1930 – A Chicago Tribune reporter, Jake Lingle, is killed during rush hour at the Illinois Central train station by Leo Vincent Brothers, allegedly over a $100,000 gambling debt owed to Al Capone.

1934 – Donald Duck makes his debut in The Wise Little Hen.

1944 – World War II: Ninety-nine civilians are hanged from lampposts and balconies by German troops in Tulle, France, in reprisal for maquisards attacks.

1944 – World War II: The Soviet Union invades East Karelia and the previously Finnish part of Karelia, occupied by Finland since 1941.

1948 – Foundation of the International Council on Archives under the auspices of the UNESCO.

1953 – The Flint–Worcester tornado outbreak sequence kills 94 people in Massachusetts.

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

1957 – First ascent of Broad Peak by Fritz Wintersteller, Marcus Schmuck, Kurt Diemberger, and Hermann Buhl.

1959 – The USS George Washington is launched. It is the first nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine.

1965 – The civilian Prime Minister of South Vietnam, Phan Huy Quát, resigns after being unable to work with a junta led by Nguyễn Cao Kỳ.

1965 – Vietnam War: The Viet Cong commences combat with the Army of the Republic of Vietnam in the Battle of Đồng Xoài, one of the largest battles in the war.

1967 – Six-Day War: Israel captures the Golan Heights from Syria.

1968 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson declares a national day of mourning following the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy.

1972 – Severe rainfall causes a dam in the Black Hills of South Dakota to burst, creating a flood that kills 238 people and causes $160 million in damage.

1973 – In horse racing, Secretariat wins the U.S. Triple Crown.

1978 – The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints opens its priesthood to "all worthy men", ending a 148-year-old policy of excluding black men.

1979 – The Ghost Train fire at Luna Park Sydney, Australia, kills seven.

1999 – Kosovo War: The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and NATO sign a peace treaty.

2008 – Two bombs explode at a train station near Algiers, Algeria, killing at least 13 people.

2009 – An explosion kills 17 people and injures at least 46 at a hotel in Peshawar, Pakistan.

2010 – At least 40 people are killed and more than 70 wounded in a suicide bombing at a wedding party in Arghandab, Kandahar.

[lordroel]

June 10th

671 – Emperor Tenji of Japan introduces a water clock (clepsydra) called Rokoku. The instrument, which measures time and indicates hours, is placed in the capital of Ōtsu.

1190 – Third Crusade: Frederick I Barbarossa drowns in the river Saleph while leading an army to Jerusalem.

1329 – The Battle of Pelekanon results in a Byzantine defeat by the Ottoman Empire.

1523 – Copenhagen is surrounded by the army of Frederick I of Denmark, as the city won't recognise him as the successor of Christian II of Denmark.

1539 – Council of Trent: Pope Paul III sends out letters to his bishops, delaying the Council due to war and the difficulty bishops had traveling to Venice.

1596 – Willem Barents and Jacob van Heemskerk discover Bear Island.

1619 – Thirty Years' War: Battle of Záblatí, a turning point in the Bohemian Revolt.

1624 – Signing of the Treaty of Compiègne between France and the Netherlands.

1692 – Salem witch trials: Bridget Bishop is hanged at Gallows Hill near Salem, Massachusetts, for "certaine Detestable Arts called Witchcraft and Sorceries".

1719 – Jacobite risings: Battle of Glen Shiel.

1782 – King Buddha Yodfa Chulaloke (Rama I) of Siam (modern day Thailand) is crowned.

1786 – A landslide dam on the Dadu River created by an earthquake ten days earlier collapses, killing 100,000 in the Sichuan province of China.

1793 – The Jardin des Plantes museum opens in Paris. A year later, it becomes the first public zoo.

1793 – French Revolution: Following the arrests of Girondin leaders, the Jacobins gain control of the Committee of Public Safety installing the revolutionary dictatorship.

1805 – First Barbary War: Yusuf Karamanli signs a treaty ending the hostilities between Tripolitania and the United States.

1829 – The first Boat Race between the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge takes place on the Thames in London.

1838 – Myall Creek massacre: Twenty-eight Aboriginal Australians are murdered.

1854 – The United States Naval Academy graduates its first class of students.

1861 – American Civil War: Battle of Big Bethel: Confederate troops under John B. Magruder defeat a much larger Union force led by General Ebenezer W. Pierce in Virginia.

1864 – American Civil War: Battle of Brice's Crossroads: Confederate troops under Nathan Bedford Forrest defeat a much larger Union force led by General Samuel D. Sturgis in Mississippi.

1868 – Mihailo Obrenović III, Prince of Serbia is assassinated.

1871 – Sinmiyangyo: Captain McLane Tilton leads 109 US Marines in a naval attack on Han River forts on Kanghwa Island, Korea.

1878 – League of Prizren is established, to oppose the decisions of the Congress of Berlin and the Treaty of San Stefano, as a consequence of which the Albanian lands in the Balkans were being partitioned and given to the neighbor states of Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, and Greece.

1886 – Mount Tarawera in New Zealand erupts, killing 153 people and burying the famous Pink and White Terraces. Eruptions continue for three months creating a large, 17 km long fissure across the mountain peak.

1898 – Spanish–American War: U.S. Marines land on the island of Cuba.

1916 – The Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire was declared by Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca.

1918 – The Austro-Hungarian battleship SMS Szent István sinks off the Croatian coast after being torpedoed by an Italian MAS motorboat; the event is recorded by camera from a nearby vessel.

1924 – Fascists kidnap and kill Italian Socialist leader Giacomo Matteotti in Rome.

1935 – Dr. Robert Smith takes his last drink, and Alcoholics Anonymous is founded in Akron, Ohio, United States, by him and Bill Wilson.

1935 – Chaco War ends: A truce is called between Bolivia and Paraguay who had been fighting since 1932.

1940 – World War II: The Kingdom of Italy declares war on France and the United Kingdom.

1940 – World War II: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt denounces Italy's actions in his "Stab in the Back" speech at the graduation ceremonies of the University of Virginia.

1940 – World War II: Military resistance to the German occupation of Norway ends.

1942 – World War II: Nazis burn the Czech village of Lidice in reprisal for the killing of Reinhard Heydrich.

1944 – World War II: Six hundred forty-two men, women and children massacred at Oradour-sur-Glane, France.

1944 – World War II: In Distomo, Boeotia, Greece, 218 men, women and children are massacred by German troops.

1944 – In baseball, 15-year-old Joe Nuxhall of the Cincinnati Reds becomes the youngest player ever in a major-league game.

1945 – Australian Imperial Forces land in Brunei Bay to liberate Brunei.

1947 – Saab produces its first automobile.

1957 – John Diefenbaker leads the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada to a stunning upset in the Canadian federal election, 1957, ending 22 years of Liberal Party government.

1963 – The Equal Pay Act of 1963, aimed at abolishing wage disparity based on sex, was signed into law by John F. Kennedy as part of his New Frontier Program.

1964 – United States Senate breaks a 75-day filibuster against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, leading to the bill's passage.

1967 – The Six-Day War ends: Israel and Syria agree to a cease-fire.

1977 – James Earl Ray escapes from Brushy Mountain State Prison in Petros, Tennessee. He is recaptured three days later.

1980 – The African National Congress in South Africa publishes a call to fight from their imprisoned leader Nelson Mandela.

1982 – The Syrian Arab Army led by generals Ali and Habib Mahmood defeat the Israeli Defense Forces near Sultan Yacoub, Lebanon, during the 1982 Lebanon War resulting in 30 dead and three missing for the IDF, ten tanks lost and three APCs destroyed.

1990 – British Airways Flight 5390 lands safely at Southampton Airport after a blowout in the cockpit causes the captain to be partially sucked from the cockpit. There are no fatalities

1991 – Eleven-year-old Jaycee Lee Dugard is kidnapped in South Lake Tahoe, California; she would remain a captive until 2009.

1994 – China conducts a nuclear test for DF-31 warhead at Area C (Beishan), Lop Nur, its prominence being due to the Cox Report.

1996 – Peace talks begin in Northern Ireland without the participation of Sinn Féin.

1997 – Before fleeing his northern stronghold, Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot orders the killing of his defense chief Son Sen and 11 of Sen's family members.

1999 – Kosovo War: NATO suspends its airstrikes after Slobodan Milošević agrees to withdraw Serbian forces from Kosovo.

2001 – Pope John Paul II canonizes Lebanon's first female saint, Saint Rafqa.

2002 – The first direct electronic communication experiment between the nervous systems of two humans is carried out by Kevin Warwick in the United Kingdom.

2003 – The Spirit rover is launched, beginning NASA's Mars Exploration Rover mission.

2017 – The World Expo is opened in Astana, Kazakhstan.

[lordroel]

June 11th

1184 BC – Trojan War: Troy is sacked and burned, according to calculations by Eratosthenes.

173 – Marcomannic Wars: The Roman army in Moravia is encircled by the Quadi, who have broken the peace treaty (171). In a violent thunderstorm emperor Marcus Aurelius defeats and subdues them in the so-called "miracle of the rain".

631 – Emperor Taizong of Tang, the Emperor of China, sends envoys to the Xueyantuo bearing gold and silk in order to seek the release of enslaved Chinese prisoners captured during the transition from Sui to Tang from the northern frontier; this embassy succeeded in freeing 80,000 Chinese men and women who were then returned to China.

786 – A Hasanid Alid uprising in Mecca is crushed by the Abbasids at the Battle of Fakhkh. Idris ibn Abdallah flees to the Maghreb, where he later founds the Idrisid dynasty.

980 – Vladimir the Great consolidates the Kievan realm from Ukraine to the Baltic Sea. He is proclaimed ruler (knyaz) of all Kievan Rus'.

1011 – Lombard Revolt: Greek citizens of Bari rise up against the Lombard rebels led by Melus and deliver the city to Basil Mesardonites, Byzantine governor (catepan) of the Catepanate of Italy.

1118 – Roger of Salerno, Prince of Antioch, captures Azaz from the Seljuk Turks.

1157 – Albert I of Brandenburg, also called The Bear (Ger: Albrecht der Bär), becomes the founder of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, Germany and the first margrave.

1345 – The megas doux Alexios Apokaukos, chief minister of the Byzantine Empire, is lynched by political prisoners.

1429 – Hundred Years' War: Start of the Battle of Jargeau.

1488 – Battle of Sauchieburn: Fought between rebel Lords and James III of Scotland, resulting in the death of the king.

1509 – Henry VIII of England marries Catherine of Aragon.

1594 – Philip II recognizes the rights and privileges of the local nobles and chieftains in the Philippines, which paved way to the stabilization of the rule of the Principalía (an elite ruling class of native nobility in Spanish Philippines).

1748 – Denmark adopts the characteristic Nordic Cross flag later taken up by all other Scandinavian countries.

1770 – British explorer Captain James Cook runs aground on the Great Barrier Reef.

1775 – The American Revolutionary War's first naval engagement, the Battle of Machias, results in the capture of a small British naval vessel.

1776 – The Continental Congress appoints Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston to the Committee of Five to draft a declaration of independence.

1788 – Russian explorer Gerasim Izmailov reaches Alaska.

1805 – A fire consumes large portions of Detroit in the Michigan Territory.

1825 – The first cornerstone is laid for Fort Hamilton in New York City.

1837 – The Broad Street Riot occurs in Boston, fueled by ethnic tensions between Yankees and Irish.

1865 – The Naval Battle of the Riachuelo is fought on the rivulet Riachuelo (Argentina), between the Paraguayan Navy on one side and the Brazilian Navy on the other. The Brazilian victory was crucial for the later success of the Triple Alliance (Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina) in the Paraguayan War.

1892 – The Limelight Department, one of the world's first film studios, is officially established in Melbourne, Australia.

1895 – Paris–Bordeaux–Paris, sometimes called the first automobile race in history or the "first motor race", takes place.

1898 – The Hundred Days' Reform, a planned movement to reform social, political, and educational institutions in China, is started by the Guangxu Emperor, but is suspended by Empress Dowager Cixi after 104 days. (The failed reform led to the abolition of the Imperial examination in 1905.)

1901 – The boundaries of the Colony of New Zealand are extended by the UK to include the Cook Islands.

1903 – A group of Serbian officers stormed the royal palace and assassinated King Alexander Obrenović and his wife, Queen Draga.

1917 – King Alexander assumes the throne of Greece after his father, Constantine I, abdicates under pressure from allied armies occupying Athens.

1919 – Sir Barton wins the Belmont Stakes, becoming the first horse to win the U.S. Triple Crown.

1920 – During the U.S. Republican National Convention in Chicago, U.S. Republican Party leaders gathered in a room at the Blackstone Hotel to come to a consensus on their candidate for the U.S. presidential election, leading the Associated Press to coin the political phrase "smoke-filled room".

1935 – Inventor Edwin Armstrong gives the first public demonstration of FM broadcasting in the United States at Alpine, New Jersey.

1936 – The London International Surrealist Exhibition opens.

1937 – Great Purge: The Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin executes eight army leaders.

1938 – Second Sino-Japanese War: The Battle of Wuhan starts.

1942 – World War II: The United States agrees to send Lend-Lease aid to the Soviet Union.

1942 – Free French Forces retreat from Bir Hakeim after having successfully delayed the Axis advance.

1944 – USS Missouri, the last battleship built by the United States Navy and future site of the signing of the Japanese Instrument of Surrender, is commissioned.

1955 – Eighty-three spectators are killed and at least 100 are injured after an Austin-Healey and a Mercedes-Benz collide at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the deadliest ever accident in motorsports.

1956 – Start of Gal Oya riots, the first reported ethnic riots that target minority Sri Lankan Tamils in the Eastern Province. The total number of deaths is reportedly 150.

1962 – Frank Morris, John Anglin and Clarence Anglin allegedly become the only prisoners to escape from the prison on Alcatraz Island.

1963 – American Civil Rights Movement: Governor of Alabama George Wallace defiantly stands at the door of Foster Auditorium at the University of Alabama in an attempt to block two black students, Vivian Malone and James Hood, from attending that school. Later in the day, accompanied by federalized National Guard troops, they are able to register.

1963 – Buddhist monk Thích Quảng Đức burns himself with gasoline in a busy Saigon intersection to protest the lack of religious freedom in South Vietnam.

1963 – John F. Kennedy addresses Americans from the Oval Office proposing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which would revolutionize American society by guaranteeing equal access to public facilities, ending segregation in education, and guaranteeing federal protection for voting rights.

1964 – World War II veteran Walter Seifert attacks an elementary school in Cologne, Germany, killing at least eight children and two teachers and seriously injuring several more with a home-made flamethrower and a lance.

1968 – Lloyd J. Old identified the first cell surface antigens that could differentiate among different cell types.

1970 – After being appointed on May 15, Anna Mae Hays and Elizabeth P. Hoisington officially receive their ranks as U.S. Army Generals, becoming the first females to do so.

1971 – The U.S. Government forcibly removes the last holdouts to the Native American Occupation of Alcatraz, ending 19 months of control.

1978 – Altaf Hussain founds the student political movement All Pakistan Muhajir Students Organisation (APMSO) in Karachi University.

1981 – A magnitude 6.9 earthquake at Golbaf, Iran, kills at least 2,000.

1987 – Diane Abbott, Paul Boateng and Bernie Grant are elected as the first black MPs in Great Britain.

1998 – Compaq Computer pays US$9 billion for Digital Equipment Corporation in the largest high-tech acquisition.

2001 – Timothy McVeigh is executed for his role in the Oklahoma City bombing.

2002 – Antonio Meucci is acknowledged as the first inventor of the telephone by the United States Congress.

2004 – Cassini–Huygens makes its closest flyby of the Saturn moon Phoebe.

2007 – Mudslides in Chittagong, Bangladesh, kill 130 people.

2008 – Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper makes a historic official apology to Canada's First Nations in regard to abuses at a Canadian Indian residential school.

2008 – The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is launched into orbit.

2010 – The first African FIFA World Cup kicks off in South Africa.

2012 – More than 80 people die in a landslide triggered by two earthquakes in Afghanistan; an entire village is buried.

2013 – Greece's public broadcaster ERT is shut down by then-prime minister Antonis Samaras.

2015 – Greece's public broadcaster ERT is reopened by then-prime minister Alexis Tsipras.

2018 – United States President Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un of North Korea held the first meeting between leaders of their two countries in Singapore.

2018 – 3 World Trade Center officially opens.

[lordroel]

June 12th

910 – Battle of Augsburg: The Hungarians defeat the East Frankish army under King Louis the Child, using the famous feigned retreat tactic of the nomadic warriors.

1240 – At the instigation of Louis IX of France, an inter-faith debate, known as the Disputation of Paris, starts between a Christian monk and four rabbis.

1381 – Peasants' Revolt: In England, rebels arrive at Blackheath.

1418 – Armagnac–Burgundian Civil War: Parisians slaughter Bernard VII, Count of Armagnac and his suspected sympathizers, along with all prisoners, foreign bankers, and students and faculty of the College of Navarre.

1429 – Hundred Years' War: On the second day of the Battle of Jargeau, Joan of Arc leads the French army in their capture of the city and the English commander, William de la Pole, 1st Duke of Suffolk.

1550 – The city of Helsinki, Finland (belonging to Sweden at the time) is founded by King Gustav I of Sweden.

1653 – First Anglo-Dutch War: The Battle of the Gabbard begins and lasts until June 13.

1665 – Thomas Willett is appointed the first mayor of New York City.

1758 – French and Indian War: Siege of Louisbourg: James Wolfe's attack at Louisbourg, Nova Scotia commences.

1772 – French explorer Marc-Joseph Marion du Fresne and 25 of his men killed by Māori in New Zealand.

1775 – American Revolution: British general Thomas Gage declares martial law in Massachusetts. The British offer a pardon to all colonists who lay down their arms. There would be only two exceptions to the amnesty: Samuel Adams and John Hancock, if captured, were to be hanged.

1776 – The Virginia Declaration of Rights is adopted.

1798 – Irish Rebellion of 1798: Battle of Ballynahinch.

1817 – The earliest form of bicycle, the dandy horse, is driven by Karl von Drais.

1821 – Badi VII, king of Sennar, surrenders his throne and realm to Isma'il Pasha, general of the Ottoman Empire, ending the existence of that Sudanese kingdom.

1830 – Beginning of the French colonization of Algeria: 34,000 French soldiers land 27 kilometers west of Algiers, at Sidi Ferruch.

1864 – American Civil War, Overland Campaign: Battle of Cold Harbor: Ulysses S. Grant gives the Confederate forces under Robert E. Lee a victory when he pulls his Union troops from their position at Cold Harbor, Virginia and moves south.

1898 – Philippine Declaration of Independence: General Emilio Aguinaldo declares the Philippines' independence from Spain.

1899 – New Richmond tornado: The eighth deadliest tornado in U.S. history kills 117 people and injures around 200.

1914 – Massacre of Phocaea: Turkish irregulars slaughter 50 to 100 Greeks and expel thousands of others in an ethnic cleansing operation in the Ottoman Empire.

1935 – A ceasefire is negotiated between Bolivia and Paraguay, ending the Chaco War.

1939 – Shooting begins on Paramount Pictures' Dr. Cyclops, the first horror film photographed in three-strip Technicolor.

1939 – The Baseball Hall of Fame opens in Cooperstown, New York.

1940 – World War II: Thirteen thousand British and French troops surrender to Major General Erwin Rommel at Saint-Valery-en-Caux.

1942 – Anne Frank receives a diary for her thirteenth birthday.

1943 – The Holocaust: Germany liquidates the Jewish Ghetto in Brzeżany, Poland (now Berezhany, Ukraine). Around 1,180 Jews are led to the city's old Jewish graveyard and shot.

1944 – World War II: Operation Overlord: American paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division secure the town of Carentan, Normandy, France.

1954 – Pope Pius XII canonises Dominic Savio, who was 14 years old at the time of his death, as a saint, making him at the time the youngest unmartyred saint in the Roman Catholic Church. In 2017 Jacinta and Francisco Marto, aged ten and nine at the time of their deaths, are declared saints.

1963 – NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers is murdered in front of his home in Jackson, Mississippi by Ku Klux Klan member Byron De La Beckwith during the civil rights movement.

1964 – Anti-apartheid activist and ANC leader Nelson Mandela is sentenced to life in prison for sabotage in South Africa.

1967 – The United States Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia declares all U.S. state laws which prohibit interracial marriage to be unconstitutional.

1975 – India, Judge Jagmohanlal Sinha of the city of Allahabad ruled that India's Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had used corrupt practices to win her seat in the Indian Parliament, and that she should be banned from holding any public office. Her main opponent for the Raebareli Constituency seat in 1971, Raj Narain had brought a petition to unseat her, charging that she had won the 1971 parliamentary election improperly. Mrs. Gandhi sent word that she refused to resign.

1979 – Bryan Allen wins the second Kremer prize for a man powered flight across the English Channel in the Gossamer Albatross.

1987 – The Central African Republic's former Emperor Jean-Bédel Bokassa is sentenced to death for crimes he had committed during his 13-year rule.

1987 – Cold War: At the Brandenburg Gate, U.S. President Ronald Reagan publicly challenges Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall.

1990 – Russia Day: The parliament of the Russian Federation formally declares its sovereignty.

1991 – Russians first democratically elected Boris Yeltsin as the President of Russia.

1991 – Kokkadichcholai massacre: The Sri Lankan Army massacres 152 minority Tamil civilians in the village of Kokkadichcholai near the eastern province town of Batticaloa.

1993 – An election takes place in Nigeria, presidential seat won by Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola which is later annulled by the military Government led by Ibrahim Babangida.

1994 – Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman are murdered outside Simpson's home in Los Angeles. Her estranged husband, O.J. Simpson is later charged with the murders, but is acquitted by a jury.

1997 – Queen Elizabeth II reopens the Globe Theatre in London.

1999 – Kosovo War: Operation Joint Guardian begins when a NATO-led United Nations peacekeeping force (KFor) enters the province of Kosovo in Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

2009 – A disputed presidential election in Iran leads to wide-ranging local and international protests.

2016 – Forty-nine civilians are killed and 58 others injured in an attack on a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida; the gunman, Omar Mateen, is killed in a gunfight with police.

2017 – American student Otto Warmbier returns home in a coma after spending 17 months in a North Korean prison and dies a week later.

[lordroel]

June 13th

313 – The Edict of Milan, signed by Constantine the Great and co-emperor Valerius Licinius granting religious freedom throughout the Roman Empire, is posted in Nicomedia.

1381 – The Peasants' Revolt led by Wat Tyler culminated in the burning of the Savoy Palace.

1514 – Henry Grace à Dieu, at over 1,000 tons the largest warship in the world at this time, built at the new Woolwich Dockyard in England, is dedicated.

1525 – Martin Luther marries Katharina von Bora, against the celibacy rule decreed by the Roman Catholic Church for priests and nuns.

1625 – King Charles I of England marries Catholic princess Henrietta Maria of France and Navarre, at Canterbury.

1740 – Georgia provincial governor James Oglethorpe begins an unsuccessful attempt to take Spanish Florida during the Siege of St. Augustine.

1774 – Rhode Island becomes the first of Britain's North American colonies to ban the importation of slaves.

1777 – American Revolutionary War: Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette lands near Charleston, South Carolina, in order to help the Continental Congress to train its army.

1805 – Lewis and Clark Expedition: scouting ahead of the expedition, Meriwether Lewis and four companions sight the Great Falls of the Missouri River.

1881 – The USS Jeannette is crushed in an Arctic Ocean ice pack.

1886 – A fire devastates much of Vancouver, British Columbia.

1893 – Grover Cleveland notices a rough spot in his mouth and on July 1 undergoes secret, successful surgery to remove a large, cancerous portion of his jaw; the operation was not revealed to the public until 1917, nine years after the president's death.

1898 – Yukon Territory is formed, with Dawson chosen as its capital.

1917 – World War I: The deadliest German air raid on London of the war is carried out by Gotha G.IV bombers and results in 162 deaths, including 46 children, and 432 injuries.

1927 – Aviator Charles Lindbergh receives a ticker tape parade down 5th Avenue in New York City.

1944 – World War II: The Battle of Villers-Bocage: German tank ace Michael Wittmann ambushes elements of the British 7th Armoured Division, destroying up to fourteen tanks, fifteen personnel carriers and two anti-tank guns in a Tiger I tank.

1944 – World War II: German combat elements, reinforced by the 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division, launch a counterattack on American forces near Carentan.

1944 – World War II: Germany launches the first V1 Flying Bomb attack on England. Only four of the eleven bombs strike their targets.

1952 – Catalina affair: A Swedish Douglas DC-3 is shot down by a Soviet MiG-15 fighter.

1966 – The United States Supreme Court rules in Miranda v. Arizona that the police must inform suspects of their rights before questioning them.

1967 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson nominates Solicitor-General Thurgood Marshall to become the first black justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.

1971 – Vietnam War: The New York Times begins publication of the Pentagon Papers.

1977 – Convicted Martin Luther King Jr. assassin James Earl Ray is recaptured after escaping from prison three days before.

1981 – At the Trooping the Colour ceremony in London, a teenager, Marcus Sarjeant, fires six blank shots at Queen Elizabeth II.

1982 – Fahd becomes King of Saudi Arabia upon the death of his brother, Khalid.

1982 – Battles of Tumbledown and Wireless Ridge, during the Falklands War.

1983 – Pioneer 10 becomes the first man-made object to leave the central Solar System when it passes beyond the orbit of Neptune.

1990 – First day of the June 1990 Mineriad in Romania. At least 240 strikers and students are arrested or killed in the chaos ensuing from the first post-Ceaușescu elections.

1994 – A jury in Anchorage, Alaska, blames recklessness by Exxon and Captain Joseph Hazelwood for the Exxon Valdez disaster, allowing victims of the oil spill to seek $15 billion in damages.

1996 – The Montana Freemen surrender after an 81-day standoff with FBI agents.

1997 – A jury sentences Timothy McVeigh to death for his part in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

2000 – President Kim Dae-jung of South Korea meets Kim Jong-il, leader of North Korea, for the beginning of the first ever inter-Korea summit, in the northern capital of Pyongyang.

2000 – Italy pardons Mehmet Ali Ağca, the Turkish gunman who tried to kill Pope John Paul II in 1981.

2002 – The United States withdraws from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

2007 – The Al Askari Mosque is bombed for a second time.

2010 – A capsule of the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa, containing particles of the asteroid 25143 Itokawa, returns to Earth.

2012 – A series of bombings across Iraq, including Baghdad, Hillah and Kirkuk, kills at least 93 people and wounds over 300 others.

2015 – A man opens fire at policemen outside the police headquarters in Dallas, Texas, while a bag containing a pipe bomb is also found. He was later shot dead by police.

[lordroel]

June 14th

1158 – Munich is founded by Henry the Lion on the banks of the river Isar.

1216 – First Barons' War: Prince Louis of France captures the city of Winchester and soon conquers over half of the Kingdom of England.

1276 – While taking exile in Fuzhou, away from the advancing Mongol invaders, the remnants of the Song dynasty court hold the coronation ceremony for Emperor Duanzong.

1285 – Second Mongol invasion of Vietnam: Forces led by Prince Trần Quang Khải of the Trần dynasty destroy most of the invading Mongol naval fleet in a battle at Chuong Duong.

1287 – Kublai Khan defeats the force of Nayan and other traditionalist Borjigin princes in East Mongolia and Manchuria.

1381 – Richard II of England meets leaders of Peasants' Revolt at Mile End. The Tower of London is stormed by rebels who enter without resistance.

1404 – Welsh rebel leader Owain Glyndŵr, having declared himself Prince of Wales, allies himself with the French against King Henry IV of England.

1618 – Joris Veseler prints the first Dutch newspaper Courante uyt Italien, Duytslandt, &c. in Amsterdam (approximate date).

1645 – English Civil War: Battle of Naseby: Twelve thousand Royalist forces are beaten by 15,000 Parliamentarian soldiers.

1667 – The Raid on the Medway by the Dutch fleet in the Second Anglo-Dutch War ends. It had lasted for five days and resulted in the worst ever defeat of the Royal Navy.

1690 – King William III of England (William of Orange) lands in Ireland to confront the former King James II.

1775 – American Revolutionary War: the Continental Army is established by the Continental Congress, marking the birth of the United States Army.

1777 – The Stars and Stripes is adopted by Congress as the Flag of the United States.

1789 – Mutiny on the Bounty: HMS Bounty mutiny survivors including Captain William Bligh and 18 others reach Timor after a nearly 7,400 km (4,600 mi) journey in an open boat.

1800 – The French Army of First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte defeats the Austrians at the Battle of Marengo in Northern Italy and re-conquers Italy.

1807 – Emperor Napoleon's French Grande Armée defeats the Russian Army at the Battle of Friedland in Poland (modern Russian Kaliningrad Oblast) ending the War of the Fourth Coalition.

1821 – Badi VII, king of Sennar, surrenders his throne and realm to Ismail Pasha, general of the Ottoman Empire, bringing the 300 year old Sudanese kingdom to an end.

1822 – Charles Babbage proposes a difference engine in a paper to the Royal Astronomical Society.

1830 – Beginning of the French colonization of Algeria: Thirty-four thousand French soldiers begin their invasion of Algiers, landing 27 kilometers west at Sidi Fredj.

1839 – Henley Royal Regatta: the village of Henley-on-Thames, on the River Thames in Oxfordshire, stages its first regatta.

1846 – Bear Flag Revolt begins: Anglo settlers in Sonoma, California, start a rebellion against Mexico and proclaim the California Republic.

1863 – American Civil War: Second Battle of Winchester: A Union garrison is defeated by the Army of Northern Virginia in the Shenandoah Valley town of Winchester, Virginia.

1863 – Second Assault on the Confederate works at the Siege of Port Hudson during the American Civil War.

1872 – Trade unions are legalized in Canada.

1881 – The White Rajahs territories become the British protectorate of Sarawak.

1900 – Hawaii becomes a United States territory.

1900 – The second German Naval Law calls for the Imperial German Navy to be doubled in size.

1907 – Norway grants women the right to vote.

1919 – John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown depart from St. John's, Newfoundland on the first nonstop transatlantic flight.

1926 – Brazil leaves the League of Nations.

1937 – Pennsylvania becomes the first (and only) state of the United States to celebrate Flag Day officially as a state holiday.

1937 – U.S. House of Representatives passes the Marihuana Tax Act.

1940 – World War II: The German occupation of Paris begins.

1940 – The Soviet Union presents an ultimatum to Lithuania resulting in Lithuanian loss of independence.

1940 – Seven hundred twenty-eight Polish political prisoners from Tarnów become the first inmates of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

1941 – June deportation: the first major wave of Soviet mass deportations and murder of Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians, begins.

1944 – World War II: After several failed attempts, the British Army abandons Operation Perch, its plan to capture the German-occupied town of Caen.

1945 – World War II: Filipino troops of the Philippine Commonwealth Army liberate the captured in Ilocos Sur and start the Battle of Bessang Pass in Northern Luzon.

1949 – Albert II, a rhesus monkey, rides a V-2 rocket to an altitude of 134 km (83 mi), thereby becoming the first monkey in space.

1951 – UNIVAC I is dedicated by the U.S. Census Bureau.

1954 – U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs a bill into law that places the words "under God" into the United States Pledge of Allegiance.

1955 – Chile becomes a signatory to the Buenos Aires copyright treaty.

1959 – Disneyland Monorail System, the first daily operating monorail system in the Western Hemisphere, opens to the public in Anaheim, California.

1959 – Dominican exiles depart from Cuba and land in the Dominican Republic to overthrow the totalitarian government of Rafael Trujillo. All but four are killed or executed.

1962 – The European Space Research Organisation is established in Paris – later becoming the European Space Agency.

1966 – The Vatican announces the abolition of the Index Librorum Prohibitorum ("index of prohibited books"), which was originally instituted in 1557.

1967 – Mariner program: Mariner 5 is launched towards Venus.

1982 – Falklands War: Argentine forces in the capital Stanley conditionally surrender to British forces.

1986 – The Mindbender derails and kills three riders at the Fantasyland (known today as Galaxyland) indoor amusement park in Edmonton, Alberta.

1994 – The 1994 Vancouver Stanley Cup riot occurs after the New York Rangers win the Stanley Cup from Vancouver, causing an estimated C$1.1 million, leading to 200 arrests and injuries.

2002 – Near-Earth asteroid 2002 MN misses the Earth by 75,000 miles (121,000 km), about one-third of the distance between the Earth and the Moon.

2014 – A Ukraine military Ilyushin Il-76 airlifter is shot down, killing all 49 people on board.

2017 – London: A fire in a high-rise apartment building in North Kensington leaves 72 people dead and another 74 injured.

2017 – In Alexandria, Virginia, Republican member of Congress and House Majority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana is shot while practicing for charity baseball.

[lordroel]

June 15th

763 BC – Assyrians record a solar eclipse that is later used to fix the chronology of Mesopotamian history.

844 – Louis II is crowned as king of Italy at Rome by pope Sergius II.

923 – Battle of Soissons: King Robert I of France is killed and King Charles the Simple is arrested by the supporters of Duke Rudolph of Burgundy.

1184 – King Magnus V of Norway is killed at the Battle of Fimreite.

1215 – King John of England puts his seal to Magna Carta.

1219 – Northern Crusades: Danish victory at the Battle of Lindanise (modern-day Tallinn) establishes the Danish Duchy of Estonia.

1246 – With the death of Frederick II, Duke of Austria, the Babenberg dynasty ends in Austria.

1300 – The city of Bilbao is founded.

1312 – At the Battle of Rozgony, King Charles I of Hungary wins a decisive victory over the family of Palatine Amade Aba.

1389 – Battle of Kosovo: The Ottoman Empire defeats Serbs and Bosnians.

1410 – In a decisive battle at Onon River, the Mongol forces of Oljei Temur were decimated by the Chinese armies of the Yongle Emperor.

1502 – Christopher Columbus lands on the island of Martinique on his fourth voyage.

1520 – Pope Leo X threatens to excommunicate Martin Luther in Exsurge Domine.

1648 – Margaret Jones is hanged in Boston for witchcraft in the first such execution for the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

1667 – The first human blood transfusion is administered by Dr. Jean-Baptiste Denys.

1670 – The first stone of Fort Ricasoli is laid down in Malta.

1752 – Benjamin Franklin proves that lightning is electricity (traditional date, the exact date is unknown).

1776 – Delaware Separation Day: Delaware votes to suspend government under the British Crown and separate officially from Pennsylvania.

1800 – The Provisional Army of the United States is dissolved.

1804 – New Hampshire approves the Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratifying the document.

1808 – Joseph Bonaparte becomes King of Spain.

1836 – Arkansas is admitted as the 25th U.S. state.

1844 – Charles Goodyear receives a patent for vulcanization, a process to strengthen rubber.

1846 – The Oregon Treaty establishes the 49th parallel as the border between the United States and Canada, from the Rocky Mountains to the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

1859 – Pig War: Ambiguity in the Oregon Treaty leads to the "Northwestern Boundary Dispute" between United States and British/Canadian settlers.

1864 – American Civil War: The Second Battle of Petersburg begins.

1864 – Arlington National Cemetery is established when 200 acres (0.81 km2) around Arlington Mansion (formerly owned by Confederate General Robert E. Lee) are officially set aside as a military cemetery by U.S. Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton.

1877 – Henry Ossian Flipper becomes the first African American cadet to graduate from the United States Military Academy.

1878 – Eadweard Muybridge takes a series of photographs to prove that all four feet of a horse leave the ground when it runs; the study becomes the basis of motion pictures.

1888 – Crown Prince Wilhelm becomes Kaiser Wilhelm II; he will be the last Emperor of the German Empire. Due to the death of his predecessors Wilhelm I and Frederick III, 1888 is the Year of the Three Emperors.

1896 – The deadliest tsunami in Japan's history kills more than 22,000 people.

1904 – A fire aboard the steamboat SS General Slocum in New York City's East River kills 1,000.

1916 – United States President Woodrow Wilson signs a bill incorporating the Boy Scouts of America, making them the only American youth organization with a federal charter.

1919 – John Alcock and Arthur Brown complete the first nonstop transatlantic flight when they reach Clifden, County Galway, Ireland.

1920 – A new border treaty between Germany and Denmark gives northern Schleswig to Denmark.

1921 – Bessie Coleman earns her pilot's license, becoming the first female pilot of African-American descent.

1934 – The United States Great Smoky Mountains National Park is founded.

1936 – First flight of the Vickers Wellington bomber.

1937 – A German expedition led by Karl Wien loses sixteen members in an avalanche on Nanga Parbat. It is the worst single disaster to occur on an 8000m peak.

1940 – World War II: Operation Ariel begins: Allied troops start to evacuate France, following Germany's takeover of Paris and most of the nation.

1944 – World War II: Battle of Saipan: The United States invade Japanese-occupied Saipan.

1944 – In the Saskatchewan general election, the CCF, led by Tommy Douglas, is elected and forms the first socialist government in North America.

1970 – Charles Manson goes on trial for the Sharon Tate murders.

1972 – Red Army Faction co-founder Ulrike Meinhof is captured by police in Langenhagen.

1977 – After the death of dictator Francisco Franco in 1975, the first democratic elections took place in Spain on this day.

1978 – King Hussein of Jordan marries American Lisa Halaby, who takes the name Queen Noor.

1985 – Rembrandt's painting Danaë is attacked by a man (later judged insane) who throws sulfuric acid on the canvas and cuts it twice with a knife.

1991 – In the Philippines, Mount Pinatubo erupts in the second largest volcanic eruption of the 20th century, killing over 800 people.

1992 – The United States Supreme Court rules in United States v. Álvarez-Machaín that it is permissible for the United States to forcibly extradite suspects in foreign countries and bring them to the United States for trial, without approval from those other countries.

1994 – Israel and Vatican City establish full diplomatic relations.

1996 – The Troubles: The Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) detonates a powerful truck bomb in the middle of Manchester, England, devastating the city centre and injuring 200 people.

2001 – Leaders of the People's Republic of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan formed the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.

2012 – Nik Wallenda becomes the first person to successfully tightrope walk directly over Niagara Falls.

2013 – A bomb explodes on a bus in the Pakistani city of Quetta, killing at least 25 people and wounding 22 others.

[lordroel]

June 16th

363 – Emperor Julian marches back up the Tigris and burns his fleet of supply ships. During the withdrawal Roman forces suffered several attacks from the Persians.

632 – Yazdegerd III ascends to the throne as king (shah) of the Persian Empire. He becomes the last ruler of the Sasanian dynasty (modern Iran).

1407 – Ming–Hồ War: Retired King Hồ Quý Ly and his son King Hồ Hán Thương of Hồ dynasty are captured by the Ming armies.

1487 – Battle of Stoke Field, the final engagement of the Wars of the Roses.

1586 – Mary, Queen of Scots, recognizes Philip II of Spain as her heir and successor.

1654 – Queen Christina abdicates the Swedish throne and is succeeded by her cousin Charles X Gustav.

1745 – War of the Austrian Succession: New England colonial troops under the command of William Pepperrell capture the Fortress of Louisbourg in Louisbourg, New France (Old Style date).

1746 – War of the Austrian Succession: Austria and Sardinia defeat a Franco-Spanish army at the Battle of Piacenza.

1755 – French and Indian War: The French surrender Fort Beauséjour to the British, leading to the expulsion of the Acadians.

1774 – Foundation of Harrodsburg, Kentucky.

1779 – Spain declares war on the Kingdom of Great Britain, and the Great Siege of Gibraltar begins.

1795 – French Revolutionary Wars: In what became known as Cornwallis's Retreat, a British Royal Navy squadron led by Vice Admiral William Cornwallis strongly resists a much larger French Navy force and withdraws largely intact, setting up the French Navy defeat at the Battle of Groix six days later.

1811 – Survivors of an attack the previous day by Tla-o-qui-aht on board the Pacific Fur Company's ship Tonquin intentionally detonate a powder magazine on the ship, destroying it and killing about 100 attackers.

1815 – Battle of Ligny and Battle of Quatre Bras, two days before the Battle of Waterloo.

1819 – A major earthquake strikes the Kutch district of western India, killing over 1,543 people and raising a 6 m high, 6 km wide, ridge, extending for at least 80 km, that was known as the Allah Bund ("Dam of God").

1836 – The formation of the London Working Men's Association gives rise to the Chartist Movement.

1846 – The Papal conclave of 1846 elects Pope Pius IX, beginning the longest reign in the history of the papacy.

1858 – Abraham Lincoln delivers his House Divided speech in Springfield, Illinois.

1858 – The Battle of Morar takes place during the Indian Mutiny.

1871 – The Universities Tests Act 1871 allows students to enter the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Durham without religious tests (except for those intending to study theology).

1883 – The Victoria Hall theatre panic in Sunderland, England kills 183 children.

1884 – The first purpose-built roller coaster, LaMarcus Adna Thompson's "Switchback Railway", opens in New York's Coney Island amusement park.

1897 – A treaty annexing the Republic of Hawaii to the United States is signed; the Republic would not be dissolved until a year later.

1903 – The Ford Motor Company is incorporated.

1903 – Roald Amundsen commences the first east-west navigation of the Northwest Passage, leaving Oslo, Norway.

1904 – Eugen Schauman assassinates Nikolay Bobrikov, Governor-General of Finland.

1904 – Irish author James Joyce begins a relationship with Nora Barnacle and subsequently uses the date to set the actions for his novel Ulysses; this date is now traditionally called "Bloomsday".

1911 – IBM founded as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company in Endicott, New York.

1922 – General election in the Irish Free State: The pro-Treaty Sinn Féin win a large majority.

1925 – The most famous Young Pioneer camp of the Soviet Union, Artek, is established.

1930 – Sovnarkom establishes decree time in the USSR.

1933 – The National Industrial Recovery Act is passed in the United States, allowing businesses to avoid antitrust prosecution if they established voluntary wage, price, and working condition regulations on an industry-wide basis. Large portions of the law are later declared unconstitutional.

1940 – World War II: Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain becomes Chief of State of Vichy France (Chef de l'État Français).

1940 – A Communist government is installed in Lithuania.

1944 – At age 14, George Junius Stinney, Jr. becomes the youngest person executed in the United States in the 20th century.

1948 – Members of the Malayan Communist Party kill three British plantation managers in Sungai Siput; in response, British Malaya declares a state of emergency.

1955 – In a futile effort to topple Argentine President Juan Perón, rogue aircraft pilots of the Argentine Navy drop several bombs upon an unarmed crowd demonstrating in favor of Perón in Buenos Aires, killing 364 and injuring at least 800. At the same time on the ground, some soldiers attempt to stage a coup but are suppressed by loyal forces.

1958 – Imre Nagy, Pál Maléter and other leaders of the 1956 Hungarian Uprising are executed.

1961 – Rudolf Nureyev defects from the Soviet Union.

1963 – Soviet Space Program: Vostok 6 Mission: Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova becomes the first woman in space.

1972 – The largest single-site hydroelectric power project in Canada is inaugurated at Churchill Falls Generating Station.

1976 – Soweto uprising: A non-violent march by 15,000 students in Soweto, South Africa turns into days of rioting when police open fire on the crowd.

1977 – Oracle Corporation is incorporated in Redwood Shores, California, as Software Development Laboratories (SDL) by Larry Ellison, Bob Miner and Ed Oates.

1981 – U.S. President Ronald Reagan awards the Congressional Gold Medal to Ken Taylor, Canada's former ambassador to Iran, for helping six Americans escape from Iran during the hostage crisis of 1979-81; he is the first foreign citizen bestowed the honor.

1989 – Revolutions of 1989: Imre Nagy, the former Hungarian Prime Minister, is reburied in Budapest following the collapse of Communism in Hungary.

1997 – Daïat Labguer (M'sila) massacre in Algeria: Fifty people die.

2000 – Israel complies with United Nations Security Council Resolution 425 22 years after its issuance, which calls on Israel to completely withdraw from Lebanon. Israel does so, except the disputed Shebaa farms.

2010 – Bhutan becomes the first country to institute a total ban on tobacco.

2012 – China successfully launches its Shenzhou 9 spacecraft, carrying three astronauts, including the first female Chinese astronaut Liu Yang, to the Tiangong-1 orbital module.

2012 – The United States Air Force's robotic Boeing X-37B spaceplane returns to Earth after a classified 469-day orbital mission.

2013 – A multi-day cloudburst centered on the North Indian state of Uttarakhand caused devastating floods and landslides becoming the country's worst natural disaster since the 2004 tsunami.

2016 – Shanghai Disneyland Park, the first Disney Park in Mainland China opens to the public.

[lordroel]

June 17th

653 – Pope Martin I is arrested in the Lateran Palace before being taken to Constantinople and tried for high treason.

1244 – Following the Disputation of Paris, twenty-four carriage loads of Jewish religious manuscripts were burnt in Paris.

1397 – The Kalmar Union is formed under the rule of Margaret I of Denmark.

1462 – Vlad III the Impaler attempts to assassinate Mehmed II (The Night Attack at Târgovişte), forcing him to retreat from Wallachia.

1497 – Battle of Deptford Bridge: Forces under King Henry VII defeat troops led by Michael An Gof.

1565 – Matsunaga Hisahide assassinates the 13th Ashikaga shōgun, Ashikaga Yoshiteru.

1579 – Sir Francis Drake claims a land he calls Nova Albion (modern California) for England.

1596 – The Dutch explorer Willem Barentsz discovers the Arctic archipelago of Spitsbergen.

1631 – Mumtaz Mahal dies during childbirth. Her husband, Mughal emperor Shah Jahan I, will spend the next 17 years building her mausoleum, the Taj Mahal.

1665 – Battle of Montes Claros: Portugal definitively secured independence from Spain in the last battle of the Portuguese Restoration War.

1673 – French explorers Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet reach the Mississippi River and become the first Europeans to make a detailed account of its course.

1767 – Samuel Wallis, an English sea captain, sights Tahiti and is considered the first European to reach the island.

1773 – Cúcuta, Colombia, is founded by Juana Rangel de Cuéllar.

1775 – American Revolutionary War: Colonists inflict heavy casualties on British forces while losing the Battle of Bunker Hill.

1789 – In France, the Third Estate declares itself the National Assembly.

1794 – Foundation of Anglo-Corsican Kingdom.

1795 – The burghers of Swellendam expel the Dutch East India Company magistrate and declare a republic.

1839 – In the Kingdom of Hawaii, Kamehameha III issues the edict of toleration which gives Roman Catholics the freedom to worship in the Hawaiian Islands. The Hawaii Catholic Church and the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace are established as a result.

1843 – The Wairau Affray, the first serious clash of arms between Māori and British settlers in the New Zealand Wars, takes place.

1861 – American Civil War: Battle of Vienna, Virginia.

1863 – American Civil War: Battle of Aldie in the Gettysburg Campaign.

1876 – American Indian Wars: Battle of the Rosebud: One thousand five hundred Sioux and Cheyenne led by Crazy Horse beat back General George Crook's forces at Rosebud Creek in Montana Territory.

1877 – American Indian Wars: Battle of White Bird Canyon: The Nez Perce defeat the U.S. Cavalry at White Bird Canyon in the Idaho Territory.

1885 – The Statue of Liberty arrives in New York Harbor.

1898 – The United States Navy Hospital Corps is established.

1900 – Boxer Rebellion: Western Allied and Japanese forces capture the Taku Forts in Tianjin, China.

1901 – The College Board introduces its first standardized test, the forerunner to the SAT.

1910 – Aurel Vlaicu pilots an A. Vlaicu nr. 1 on its first flight.

1922 – Portuguese naval aviators Gago Coutinho and Sacadura Cabral complete the first aerial crossing of the South Atlantic.

1929 – The town of Murchison, New Zealand Is rocked by a 7.8 magnitude earthquake killing 17. At the time it was New Zealand's worst natural disaster.

1930 – U.S. President Herbert Hoover signs the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act into law.

1932 – Bonus Army: Around a thousand World War I veterans amass at the United States Capitol as the U.S. Senate considers a bill that would give them certain benefits.

1933 – Union Station massacre: In Kansas City, Missouri, four FBI agents and captured fugitive Frank Nash are gunned down by gangsters attempting to free Nash.

1939 – Last public guillotining in France: Eugen Weidmann, a convicted murderer, is guillotined in Versailles outside the Saint-Pierre prison.

1940 – World War II: RMS Lancastria is attacked and sunk by the Luftwaffe near Saint-Nazaire, France. At least 3,000 are killed in Britain's worst maritime disaster.

1940 – World War II: The British Army's 11th Hussars assault and take Fort Capuzzo in Libya, Africa from Italian forces.

1940 – The three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania fall under the occupation of the Soviet Union.

1944 – Iceland declares independence from Denmark and becomes a republic.

1948 – A Douglas DC-6 carrying United Airlines Flight 624 crashes near Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania, killing all 43 people on board.

1953 – Cold War: East Germany Workers Uprising: In East Germany, the Soviet Union orders a division of troops into East Berlin to quell a rebellion.

1958 – The Ironworkers Memorial Second Narrows Crossing, in the process of being built to connect Vancouver and North Vancouver (Canada), collapses into the Burrard Inlet killing many of the ironworkers and injuring others.

1960 – The Nez Perce tribe is awarded $4 million for 7 million acres (28,000 km2) of land undervalued at four cents/acre in the 1863 treaty.

1963 – The United States Supreme Court rules 8–1 in Abington School District v. Schempp against requiring the reciting of Bible verses and the Lord's Prayer in public schools.

1963 – A day after South Vietnamese President Ngô Đình Diệm announced the Joint Communiqué to end the Buddhist crisis, a riot involving around 2,000 people breaks out. One person is killed.

1967 – Nuclear weapons testing: The People's Republic of China announces a successful test of its first thermonuclear weapon.

1972 – Watergate scandal: Five White House operatives are arrested for burgling the offices of the Democratic National Committee, in an attempt by some members of the Republican party to illegally wiretap the opposition.

1985 – Space Shuttle program: STS-51-G mission: Space Shuttle Discovery launches carrying Sultan bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the first Arab and first Muslim in space, as a payload specialist.

1987 – With the death of the last individual of the species, the dusky seaside sparrow becomes extinct.

1991 – Apartheid: The South African Parliament repeals the Population Registration Act which required racial classification of all South Africans at birth.

1992 – A "joint understanding" agreement on arms reduction is signed by U.S. President George Bush and Russian President Boris Yeltsin (this would be later codified in START II).

1994 – Following a televised low-speed highway chase, O. J. Simpson is arrested for the murders of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman.

2015 – Nine people are killed in a mass shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

2017 – A series of wildfires in central Portugal kill at least 64 people and injure 204 others.

[lordroel]

June 18th

618 – Li Yuan becomes Emperor Gaozu of Tang, initiating three centuries of Tang dynasty rule over China.

656 – Ali becomes Caliph of the Rashidun Caliphate

860 – Byzantine–Rus' War: A fleet of about 200 Rus' vessels sails into the Bosphorus and starts pillaging the suburbs of the Byzantine capital Constantinople.

1053 – Battle of Civitate: Three thousand horsemen of Norman Count Humphrey rout the troops of Pope Leo IX.

1178 – Five Canterbury monks see what is possibly the Giordano Bruno crater being formed. It is believed that the current oscillations of the Moon's distance from the Earth (on the order of meters) are a result of this collision.

1264 – The Parliament of Ireland meets at Castledermot in County Kildare, the first definitively known meeting of this Irish legislature.

1265 – A draft Byzantine–Venetian treaty is concluded between Venetian envoys and Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos, but is not ratified by Doge Reniero Zeno.

1429 – French forces under the leadership of Joan of Arc defeat the main English army under Sir John Fastolf at the Battle of Patay. This turns the tide of the Hundred Years' War.

1633 – Charles I is crowned King of Scots at St Giles' Cathedral, Edinburgh.

1684 – The charter of the Massachusetts Bay Colony is revoked via a scire facias writ issued by an English court.

1757 – Battle of Kolín between Prussian forces under Frederick the Great and an Austrian army under the command of Field Marshal Count Leopold Joseph von Daun in the Seven Years' War.

1778 – American Revolutionary War: British troops abandon Philadelphia.

1799 – Action of 18 June 1799: A frigate squadron under Rear-admiral Perrée is captured by the British fleet under Lord Keith

1812 – The United States declaration of war upon the United Kingdom is signed by President James Madison.

1815 – Napoleonic Wars: The Battle of Waterloo results in the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte by the Duke of Wellington and Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher forcing him to abdicate the throne of France for the second and last time.

1822 – Constantine Kanaris blows up the Ottoman navy's flagship at Chios, killing the Kapudan Pasha Nasuhzade Ali Pasha.

1858 – Charles Darwin receives a paper from Alfred Russel Wallace that includes nearly identical conclusions about evolution as Darwin's own, prompting Darwin to publish his theory.

1859 – First ascent of Aletschhorn, second summit of the Bernese Alps.

1873 – Susan B. Anthony is fined $100 for attempting to vote in the 1872 presidential election.

1887 – The Reinsurance Treaty between Germany and Russia is signed.

1900 – Empress Dowager Cixi of China orders all foreigners killed, including foreign diplomats and their families.

1908 – Japanese immigration to Brazil begins when 781 people arrive in Santos aboard the ship Kasato-Maru.

1908 – The University of the Philippines is established.

1923 – Checker Taxi puts its first taxi on the streets.

1928 – Aviator Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly in an aircraft across the Atlantic Ocean (she is a passenger; Wilmer Stultz is the pilot and Lou Gordon the mechanic).

1930 – Groundbreaking ceremonies for the Franklin Institute are held.

1935 – Police in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, clash with striking longshoremen, resulting in a total 60 injuries and 24 arrests.

1940 – Appeal of 18 June by Charles de Gaulle.

1940 – The "Finest Hour" speech is delivered by Winston Churchill.

1945 – William Joyce ("Lord Haw-Haw") is charged with treason for his pro-German propaganda broadcasting during World War II.

1946 – Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia, a Socialist, calls for a Direct Action Day against the Portuguese in Goa.

1948 – Columbia Records introduces the long-playing record album in a public demonstration at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City.

1953 – The Egyptian revolution of 1952 ends with the overthrow of the Muhammad Ali dynasty and the declaration of the Republic of Egypt.

1953 – A United States Air Force C-124 crashes and burns near Tachikawa, Japan, killing 129.

1954 – Carlos Castillo Armas leads an invasion force across the Guatemalan border, setting in motion the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état.

1965 – Vietnam War: The United States uses B-52 bombers to attack National Liberation Front guerrilla fighters in South Vietnam.

1972 – Staines air disaster: One hundred eighteen are killed when a BEA H.S. Trident crashes two minutes after take off from London's Heathrow Airport.

1979 – SALT II is signed by the United States and the Soviet Union.

1981 – The Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk, the first operational aircraft initially designed around stealth technology, makes its first flight.

1982 – Italian banker Roberto Calvi's body is discovered hanging beneath Blackfriars Bridge in London, England.

1983 – Space Shuttle program: STS-7, Astronaut Sally Ride becomes the first American woman in space.

1983 – Mona Mahmudnizhad together with nine other Bahá'í women, is sentenced to death and hanged in Shiraz, Iran over her religious beliefs.

1984 – A major clash between about 5,000 police and a similar number of miners takes place at Orgreave, South Yorkshire, during the 1984–85 UK miners' strike.

1994 – The Troubles: Members of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) attack a crowded pub with assault rifles in Loughinisland, Northern Ireland. Six Catholic civilians are killed and five wounded. It was crowded with people watching the 1994 FIFA World Cup.

2006 – The first Kazakh space satellite, KazSat-1 is launched.

2007 – The Charleston Sofa Super Store fire happened in Charleston, South Carolina, killing nine firefighters.

2009 – The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), a NASA robotic spacecraft is launched.

2018 – An earthquake of magnitude 6.1 strikes northern Osaka.

[lordroel]

June 19th

325 – The original Nicene Creed was adopted at the First Council of Nicaea.

1179 – The Norwegian Battle of Kalvskinnet outside Nidaros. Earl Erling Skakke is killed, and the battle changes the tide of the civil wars.

1269 – King Louis IX of France orders all Jews found in public without an identifying yellow badge to be fined ten livres of silver.

1306 – The Earl of Pembroke's army defeats Bruce's Scottish army at the Battle of Methven.

1586 – English colonists leave Roanoke Island, after failing to establish England's first permanent settlement in North America.

1800 – War of the Second Coalition Battle of Höchstädt results in a French victory over Austria.

1816 – Battle of Seven Oaks between North West Company and Hudson's Bay Company, near Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.

1821 – Decisive defeat of the Filiki Eteria by the Ottomans at Drăgășani (in Wallachia).

1846 – The first officially recorded, organized baseball game is played under Alexander Cartwright's rules on Hoboken, New Jersey's Elysian Fields with the New York Base Ball Club defeating the Knickerbockers 23–1. Cartwright umpired.

1850 – Princess Louise of the Netherlands marries Crown Prince Karl of Sweden–Norway.

1862 – The U.S. Congress prohibits slavery in United States territories, nullifying Dred Scott v. Sandford.

1865 – Over two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, slaves in Galveston, Texas, United States, are finally informed of their freedom. The anniversary is still officially celebrated in Texas and 41 other contiguous states as Juneteenth.

1867 – Maximilian I of the Second Mexican Empire is executed by a firing squad in Querétaro, Querétaro.

1875 – The Herzegovinian rebellion against the Ottoman Empire begins.

1903 – Benito Mussolini, then a radical Socialist, arrested by Bern police for advocating a violent general strike.

1910 – The first Father's Day is celebrated in Spokane, Washington.

1913 – Natives Land Act, 1913 in South Africa implemented.

1915 – USS Arizona (BB-39) is launched.

1934 – The Communications Act of 1934 establishes the United States' Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

1943 – The Philadelphia Eagles and Pittsburgh Steelers in the NFL merge for one season due to player shortages caused by World War II.

1944 – World War II: First day of the Battle of the Philippine Sea.

1949 – The first ever NASCAR race was held at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

1953 – Cold War: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are executed at Sing Sing, in New York.

1961 – Kuwait declares independence from the United Kingdom.

1964 – The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is approved after surviving an 83-day filibuster in the United States Senate.

1965 – Nguyễn Cao Kỳ becomes Prime Minister of South Vietnam at the head of a military junta; General Nguyễn Văn Thiệu becomes the figurehead chief of state.

1978 – Garfield, holder of the Guinness World Record for the world's most widely syndicated comic strip, makes its debut.

1985 – Members of the Revolutionary Party of Central American Workers, dressed as Salvadoran soldiers, attack the Zona Rosa area of San Salvador.

1987 – Basque separatist group ETA commits one of its most violent attacks, in which a bomb is set off in a supermarket, Hipercor, killing 21 and injuring 45.

1988 – Pope John Paul II canonizes 117 Vietnamese Martyrs.

1990 – The current international law defending indigenous peoples, Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989, is ratified for the first time by Norway.

1990 – The Communist Party of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic is founded in Moscow.

1991 – The Soviet occupation of Hungary ends.

2007 – The al-Khilani Mosque bombing in Baghdad leaves 78 people dead and another 218 injured.

2009 – Mass riots involving over 10,000 people and 10,000 police officers break out in Shishou, China, over the dubious circumstances surrounding the death of a local chef.

2009 – War in North-West Pakistan: The Pakistani Armed Forces open Operation Rah-e-Nijat against the Taliban and other Islamist rebels in the South Waziristan area of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

2012 – WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange requested asylum in London's Ecuadorian Embassy for fear of extradition to the US after publication of previously classified documents including footage of civilian killings by the US army.

2018 – The 10,000,000th United States Patent is issued.

[lordroel]

June 20th

451 – Battle of Chalons: Flavius Aetius' battles Attila the Hun. After the battle, which was inconclusive, Attila retreats, causing the Romans to interpret it as a victory.

1180 – First Battle of Uji, starting the Genpei War in Japan.

1620 – The Battle of Höchst takes place during the Thirty Years' War.

1631 – The Sack of Baltimore: The Irish village of Baltimore is attacked by Algerian pirates.

1652 – Tarhoncu Ahmed Pasha is appointed Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire.

1685 – Monmouth Rebellion: James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth declares himself King of England at Bridgwater.

1756 – A British garrison is imprisoned in the Black Hole of Calcutta.

1782 – The U.S. Congress adopts the Great Seal of the United States.

1787 – Oliver Ellsworth moves at the Federal Convention to call the government the 'United States'.

1789 – Deputies of the French Third Estate take the Tennis Court Oath.

1819 – The U.S. vessel SS Savannah arrives at Liverpool, United Kingdom. It is the first steam-propelled vessel to cross the Atlantic, although most of the journey is made under sail.

1837 – Queen Victoria succeeds to the British throne.

1840 – Samuel Morse receives the patent for the telegraph.

1862 – Barbu Catargiu, the Prime Minister of Romania, is assassinated.

1863 – American Civil War: West Virginia is admitted as the 35th U.S. state.

1877 – Alexander Graham Bell installs the world's first commercial telephone service in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

1893 – Lizzie Borden is acquitted of the murders of her father and stepmother.

1895 – The Kiel Canal, crossing the base of the Jutland peninsula and the busiest artificial waterway in the world, is officially opened.

1900 – Boxer Rebellion: The Imperial Chinese Army begins a 55-day siege of the Legation Quarter in Beijing, China.

1900 – Baron Eduard Toll, leader of the Russian Polar Expedition of 1900, departs Saint Petersburg in Russia on the explorer ship Zarya, never to return.

1921 – Workers of Buckingham and Carnatic Mills in the city of Chennai, India, begin a four-month strike.

1941 – The United States Army Air Corps is deprecated to being the American training and logistics section of what is known until 1947 as the United States Army Air Forces, just two days before Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union.

1942 – The Holocaust: Kazimierz Piechowski and three others, dressed as members of the SS-Totenkopfverbände, steal an SS staff car and escape from the Auschwitz concentration camp.

1943 – The Detroit race riot breaks out and continues for three more days.

1943 – World War II: The Royal Air Force launches Operation Bellicose, the first shuttle bombing raid of the war. Lancaster bombers damage the V-2 rocket production facilities at the Zeppelin Works while en route to an air base in Algeria.

1944 – World War II: The Battle of the Philippine Sea concludes with a decisive U.S. naval victory. The lopsided naval air battle is also known as the "Great Marianas Turkey Shoot".

1944 – Continuation War: The Soviet Union demands an unconditional surrender from Finland during the beginning of partially successful Vyborg–Petrozavodsk Offensive. The Finnish government refuses.

1944 – The experimental MW 18014 V-2 rocket reaches an altitude of 176 km, becoming the first man-made object to reach outer space.

1945 – The United States Secretary of State approves the transfer of Wernher von Braun and his team of Nazi rocket scientists to the U.S. under Operation Paperclip.

1948 – The Deutsche Mark is introduced in Western Allied-occupied Germany. The Communists respond by imposing the Berlin Blockade four days later.

1956 – A Venezuelan Super-Constellation crashes in the Atlantic Ocean off Asbury Park, New Jersey, killing 74 people.

1959 – A rare June hurricane strikes Canada's Gulf of St. Lawrence killing 35.

1960 – The Mali Federation gains independence from France (it later splits into Mali and Senegal).

1963 – Following the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Soviet Union and the United States sign an agreement to establish the so-called "red telephone" link between Washington and Moscow.

1972 – Watergate scandal: An 18½-minute gap appears in the tape recording of the conversations between U.S. President Richard Nixon and his advisers regarding the recent arrests of his operatives while breaking into the Watergate complex.

1973 – Snipers fire upon left-wing Peronists in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in what is known as the Ezeiza massacre. At least 13 are killed and more than 300 are injured.

1975 – The film Jaws is released in the United States, becoming the highest-grossing film of that time and starting the trend of films known as "summer blockbusters".

1979 – ABC News correspondent Bill Stewart is shot dead by a Nicaraguan soldier under the regime of Anastasio Somoza Debayle. The murder is caught on tape and sparks an international outcry against the regime.

1982 – The Argentine Corbeta Uruguay base on Southern Thule surrenders to Royal Marine commandos in the final action of the Falklands War.

1990 – Asteroid Eureka is discovered.

1990 – The 7.4 Mw  Manjil–Rudbar earthquake affects northern Iran with a maximum Mercalli intensity of X (Extreme), killing 35,000–50,000, and injuring 60,000–105,000.

1991 – German Bundestag votes to move seat of government from the former West German capital of Bonn to the present capital Berlin.

1994 – The 1994 Imam Reza shrine bomb explosion in Iran leaves at least 25 dead and 70 to 300 injured.

2003 – The Wikimedia Foundation is founded in St. Petersburg, Florida.[2]

[lordroel]

June 21st

533 – A Byzantine expeditionary fleet under Belisarius sails from Constantinople to attack the Vandals in Africa, via Greece and Sicily (approximate date).

1307 – Külüg Khan is enthroned as Khagan of the Mongols and Wuzong of the Yuan.

1529 – French forces are driven out of northern Italy by Spain at the Battle of Landriano during the War of the League of Cognac.

1582 – Sengoku period: Oda Nobunaga, the most powerful of the Japanese daimyōs, was forced to commit suicide by his own general Akechi Mitsuhide.

1621 – Execution of 27 Czech noblemen on the Old Town Square in Prague as a consequence of the Battle of White Mountain.

1734 – In Montreal in New France, a slave known by the French name of Marie-Joseph Angélique is put to death, having been convicted of setting the fire that destroyed much of the city.

1749 – Halifax, Nova Scotia, is founded.

1768 – James Otis, Jr. offends the King and Parliament in a speech to the Massachusetts General Court.

1788 – New Hampshire becomes the ninth state to ratify the Constitution of the United States.

1791 – King Louis XVI of France and his immediate family begin the Flight to Varennes during the French Revolution.

1798 – Irish Rebellion of 1798: The British Army defeats Irish rebels at the Battle of Vinegar Hill.

1813 – Peninsular War: Wellington defeats Joseph Bonaparte at the Battle of Vitoria.

1824 – Greek War of Independence: Egyptian forces capture Psara in the Aegean Sea.

1826 – Maniots defeat Egyptians under Ibrahim Pasha in the Battle of Vergas.

1848 – In the Wallachian Revolution, Ion Heliade Rădulescu and Christian Tell issue the Proclamation of Islaz and create a new republican government.

1864 – American Civil War: The Battle of Jerusalem Plank Road begins.

1898 – The United States captures Guam from Spain.

1900 – Boxer Rebellion. China formally declares war on the United States, Britain, Germany, France and Japan, as an edict issued from the Empress Dowager Cixi.

1915 – The U.S. Supreme Court hands down its decision in Guinn v. United States 238 US 347 1915, striking down Oklahoma grandfather clause legislation which had the effect of denying the right to vote to blacks.

1919 – The Royal Canadian Mounted Police fire a volley into a crowd of unemployed war veterans, killing two, during the Winnipeg general strike.

1919 – Admiral Ludwig von Reuter scuttles the German fleet at Scapa Flow, Orkney. The nine sailors killed are the last casualties of World War I.

1929 – An agreement brokered by U.S. Ambassador Dwight Whitney Morrow ends the Cristero War in Mexico.

1930 – One-year conscription comes into force in France.

1940 – World War II: Italy begins an unsuccessful invasion of France.

1942 – World War II: Tobruk falls to Italian and German forces.

1942 – World War II: A Japanese submarine surfaces near the Columbia River in Oregon, firing 17 shells at Fort Stevens in one of only a handful of attacks by Japan against the United States mainland.

1945 – World War II: The Battle of Okinawa ends when the organized resistance of Imperial Japanese Army forces collapses in the Mabuni area on the southern tip of the main island.

1952 – The Philippine School of Commerce, through a republic act, is converted to Philippine College of Commerce, later to be the Polytechnic University of the Philippines.

1957 – Ellen Fairclough is sworn in as Canada's first female Cabinet Minister.

1963 – Cardinal Giovanni Battista Montini is elected as Pope Paul VI.

1964 – Three civil rights workers, Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Mickey Schwerner, are murdered in Neshoba County, Mississippi, United States, by members of the Ku Klux Klan.

1970 – Penn Central declares Section 77 bankruptcy, largest ever US corporate bankruptcy up to this date.

1973 – In handing down the decision in Miller v. California 413 US 15, the Supreme Court of the United States establishes the Miller test for obscenity in U.S. law.

1978 – The original production of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical, Evita, based on the life of Eva Perón, opened at the Prince Edward Theatre, London.

1982 – John Hinckley is found not guilty by reason of insanity for the attempted assassination of U.S. President Ronald Reagan.

1989 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Texas v. Johnson that American flag-burning was a form of political protest protected by the First Amendment.

2000 – Section 28 (of the Local Government Act 1988), outlawing the 'promotion' of homosexuality in the United Kingdom, is repealed in Scotland with a 99 to 17 vote.

2001 – A federal grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, indicts 13 Saudis and a Lebanese in the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 American servicemen.

2004 – SpaceShipOne becomes the first privately funded spaceplane to achieve spaceflight.

2005 – Edgar Ray Killen, who had previously been unsuccessfully tried for the murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Mickey Schwerner, is convicted of manslaughter 41 years afterwards (the case had been reopened in 2004).

2006 – Pluto's newly discovered moons are officially named Nix and Hydra.

2009 – Greenland assumes self-rule.

2012 – A boat carrying more than 200 migrants capsized in the Indian Ocean between the Indonesian island of Java and Christmas Island, killing 17 people and leaving 70 others missing.

[lordroel]

June 22nd

217 BC – Battle of Raphia: Ptolemy IV Philopator of Egypt defeats Antiochus III the Great of the Seleucid kingdom.

168 BC – Battle of Pydna: Romans under Lucius Aemilius Paullus defeat Macedonian King Perseus who surrenders after the battle, ending the Third Macedonian War.

813 – Battle of Versinikia: The Bulgars led by Krum defeat the Byzantine army near Edirne. Emperor Michael I is forced to abdicate in favor of Leo V the Armenian.

910 – The Hungarians defeat the East Frankish army near the Rednitz River, killing its leader Gebhard, Duke of Lotharingia (Lorraine).

1527 – Fatahillah expels Portuguese forces from Sunda Kelapa, now regarded as the foundation of Jakarta.

1593 – Battle of Sisak: Allied Christian troops defeat the Ottomans.

1633 – The Holy Office in Rome forces Galileo Galilei to recant his view that the Sun, not the Earth, is the center of the Universe in the form he presented it in, after heated controversy.

1774 – The British pass the Quebec Act, setting out rules of governance for the colony of Quebec in British North America.

1783 – A poisonous cloud caused by the eruption of the Laki volcano in Iceland reaches Le Havre in France.

1807 – In the Chesapeake–Leopard Affair, the British warship HMS Leopard attacks and boards the American frigate USS Chesapeake.

1813 – War of 1812: After learning of American plans for a surprise attack on Beaver Dams in Ontario, Laura Secord sets out on a 30 kilometer journey on foot to warn Lieutenant James FitzGibbon.

1839 – Cherokee leaders Major Ridge, John Ridge, and Elias Boudinot are assassinated for signing the Treaty of New Echota, which had resulted in the Trail of Tears.

1870 – The United States Department of Justice is created by the U.S. Congress.

1893 – The Royal Navy battleship HMS Camperdown accidentally rams the British Mediterranean Fleet flagship HMS Victoria which sinks taking 358 crew with her, including the fleet's commander, Vice-Admiral Sir George Tryon.

1897 – British colonial officers Charles Walter Rand and Lt. Charles Egerton Ayerst are assassinated in Pune, Maharashtra, India by the Chapekar brothers and Mahadeo Vinayak Ranade, who are later caught and hanged.

1898 – Spanish–American War: The US Fifth Army Corps lands in Cuba.

1907 – The London Underground's Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway opens.

1911 – George V and Mary of Teck are crowned King and Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

1918 – The Hammond Circus Train Wreck kills 86 and injures 127 near Hammond, Indiana.

1921 – Rif War: The Spanish Army suffers its worst military defeat in modern times to the Berbers of the Rif region of Spanish Morocco.

1940 – World War II: France is forced to sign the Second Compiègne armistice with Germany, in the same railroad car in which the Germans signed the Armistice in 1918.

1941 – World War II: Nazi Germany invades the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa.

1942 – World War II: Erwin Rommel is promoted to Field Marshal after the capture of Tobruk.

1942 – The Pledge of Allegiance is formally adopted by US Congress.

1944 – World War II: Opening day of the Soviet Union's Operation Bagration against the Army Group Centre.

1944 – U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs into law the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, commonly known as the G.I. Bill.

1945 – World War II: The Battle of Okinawa comes to an end.

1948 – The ship HMT Empire Windrush brought the first group of 802 West Indian immigrants to Tilbury, marking the start of modern immigration to the United Kingdom.

1969 – The Cuyahoga River catches fire in Cleveland, Ohio, drawing national attention to water pollution, and spurring the passing of the Clean Water Act and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency.

1978 – Charon, Pluto's first satellite, was discovered at the United States Naval Observatory by James W. Christy.

1984 – Virgin Atlantic Airways launches with its first flight from London Gatwick Airport.

1986 – The famous Hand of God goal, scored by Diego Maradona in the quarter-finals of the 1986 FIFA World Cup match between Argentina and England, ignites controversy. This was later followed by the Goal of the Century. Argentina wins 2–1 and later goes on to win the World Cup.

1990 – Cold War: Checkpoint Charlie is dismantled in Berlin.

2002 – An earthquake measuring 6.5 Mw strikes a region of northwestern Iran killing at least 261 people and injuring 1,300 others and eventually causing widespread public anger due to the slow official response.

2009 – A Washington D.C Metro train traveling southbound near Fort Totten station collides into another train waiting to enter the station. Nine people are killed in the collision (eight passengers and the train operator) and at least 80 others are injured.

2012 – Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo is removed from office by impeachment and succeeded by Federico Franco.

2012 – A Turkish Air Force McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II fighter plane is shot down by the Syrian Armed Forces, killing both of the plane's pilots and worsening already-strained relations between Turkey and Syria.

2015 – The Afghan National Assembly building is attacked by gunmen after a suicide bombing. All six of the gunmen are killed and 18 people are injured.