Victory in Battle
48 BC Battle of Dyrrhachium: Julius Caesar barely avoids a catastrophic defeat to Pompey near the city of Dyrrachium (in what is now Albania)
Julius Caesar
- 552 Origin of Armenian calendar
- 988 The city of Dublin is founded on the banks of the river Liffey
- 1040 Lady Godiva rides naked on horseback through Coventry, according to legend, to force her husband, the Earl of Mercia, to lower taxes
- 1212 The most severe of several early fires of London burns most of the city to the ground
- 1376 English "Good Parliament" ends, longest-sitting parliament at that time
- 1460 Wars of Roses: Richard of York defeats King Henry VI at Northampton
Treaty of Interest
1520 King Charles V France and King Henry VIII of England sign Treaty of Calais
Charles V
Henry VIII
- 1553 Lady Jane Grey, daughter of the Duke of Suffolk, proclaimed Queen of England, succeeds Edward VI, who proclaimed his half-sisters illegitimate. Reigns for nine days.
- 1568 Battle on Eems: Dutch Water garrison beats Spanish
- 1584 Spanish army leader Richebourg conquers Liefkenshoek, Belgium
- 1598 Spanish theater plays "Moros y Los Cristianos" in Rio Grande
- 1609 Catholic German monarchy forms Catholic League
Event of Interest
1627 English fleet under George Villiers reach La Rochelle [NS=June 20]
George Villiers
- 1629 1st non-Separatist Congregational Church in US founded (Salem, Massachusetts)
Victory in Battle
1645 Battle at Langport, Somerset: Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army beats Royalists
Oliver Cromwell
Event of Interest
1746 Bonnie Prince Charlie flees in disguise to Isle of Skye
Bonnie Prince Charlie
Event of Interest
1775 Horatio Gates issues order excluding blacks from Continental Army
Horatio Gates
Event of Interest
1780 The Comte de Rochambeau and his French force of 7,000 land at Newport, Rhode Island, to join the American Revolutionary War
Comte de Rochambeau
Scientific Discovery
1796 Carl Friedrich Gauss discovers that every positive integer is representable as a sum of at most three triangular numbers
Carl Friedrich Gauss
- 1800 The British Indian Government establishes the Fort William College to promote Urdu, Hindi and other vernaculars of sub continent
- 1806 The Vellore Mutiny is the first instance of a mutiny by Indian sepoys against the British East India Company
- 1832 President Jackson vetoed legislation to re-charter 2nd Bank of US
- 1847 Urbain Le Leverrier and John Couch Adams, co-discoverers of Neptune, meet for 1st time at home of John Herschel
Event of Interest
1850 Millard Fillmore sworn in as President of US (replacing Taylor)
Millard Fillmore
- 1861 Lincoln writes to Kentucky's militia and says Union troops will not enter that state
Event of Interest
1862 US begins construction of Central Pacific Railroad
Collis P. Huntington
Mark Hopkins
Leland Stanford
Event of Interest
1873 French poet Paul Verlaine wounds Arthur Rimbaud with pistol
Arthur Rimbaud
- 1877 The then villa of Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, formally receives its city charter from the Royal Crown of Spain
- 1886 George Goldie gets charter for Royal Niger Company
- 1890 Wyoming becomes 44th state of US (1st with female suffrage)
- 1892 1st concrete-paved street built (Bellefountaine, Ohio)
- 1898 Jean-Baptiste Marchands expedition reaches Fashoda at White Hippo
- 1905 Dutch Queen Wilhelmina opens Technical Hague court
- 1908 H Kamerlingh Onnes makes helium liquid (-269°C)
- 1911 105°F (41°C) at North Bridgton, Maine (state record)
- 1912 Hannes Kolehmainen runs world record 5000m (14:36.6)
- 1913 Romania declares war on Bulgaria
- 1913 World's official highest recorded temperature at Greenland Ranch, Death Valley, California at 134 °F (56.7 °C)
- 1915 British/South African troops march into German SW-Africa
- 1917 Emma Goldman imprisoned for obstructing draft
- 1918 Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic forms
- 1919 Dutch 1st Chamber approves woman suffrage
Treaty of Interest
1919 US President Woodrow Wilson personally delivers Treaty of Versailles to Senate
Woodrow Wilson
Event of Interest
1925 Jury selection takes place in US John T. Scopes evolution trial
John T. Scopes
- 1925 USSR's official news agency TASS forms
- 1925 Meher Baba begins his silence of 44 years. His followers still observe Silence Day on this date in commemoration.
- 1926 Lake Denmark, New Jersey arsenal explodes, kills 21, $75m damage
- 1928 Senator Milt Gaston hurls record tying 14-hit shutout
- 1929 US issues newer, smaller-sized paper currency
- 1932 Jack Burnett gets 9 hits, Eddie Rommel relieves in 2nd 18-17 victory in 18 as his A's beats Indians in longest relief job
- 1933 1st police radio system operated, Eastchester Township, NY
Franklin D. Roosevelt
- 1934 Carl Hubbell strikes out Ruth, Gehrig & Foxx in All star game
- 1936 109°F (43°C) Cumberland & Frederick, Maryland (state record)
- 1936 110°F (43°C) at Runyon, New Jersey (state record)
- 1936 111°F (44°C) Phoenixville, Pennsylvania (state record)
- 1936 112°F (44°C) at Martinsburg, West Virginia (state record)
- 1936 New Straits Convention allows Turkish re-armament of Dardanelles
Event of Interest
1938 Howard Hughes flies around the world in 91 hours
Howard Hughes
- 1940 Battle of Britain begins as Nazi forces attack shipping convoys in the English Channel
- 1941 Continuation War: Finland invades East Karelia as hostilities with the Soviet Union resume following the German invasion in June
- 1941 Jedwabne Pogrom: massacre of Jewish people living in and near the village of Jedwabne, Poland
Heinrich Himmler
Event of Interest
1944 "Father of Medicare" Tommy Douglas becomes the 7th Premier of Saskatchewan
Tommy Douglas
Event of Interest
1947 Muhammad Ali Jinnah is recommended as the first Governor General of Pakistan by then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Clement Attlee
Mohammed Ali Jinnah
Clement Attlee
- 1948 Lydda Airfield captured by Israeli army
- 1949 1st practical rectangular TV tube announced in Toledo, Ohio
- 1951 Armistice talks to end Korean conflict began at Kaesong
- 1956 650,000 US steel workers go on strike
- 1956 US performs atmospheric nuclear test at Bikini Island
- 1956 Solomon Kalushi Mahlangu, Mamelodi, east of Pretoria, South Africa, a soldier of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the armed wing of the ANC
- 1958 1st parking meters installed in England (625 installed)
- 1958 Ex-king Norodom Sihanoek appointed premier of Cambodia
- 1960 Belgium sends troops to Congo
Event of Interest
1962 Martin Luther King Jr. arrested during demonstration in Georgia
Martin Luther King Jr.
- 1962 Telstar, 1st geosynchronous communications satellite, launched
- 1962 US performs atmospheric nuclear test at Christmas Island
- 1964 Jesus Alou is 1st Giant in 40 years to get 6 hits in a game
- 1964 Moïse Tshombé, leader of the Confederation of Tribal Associations of Katanga, becomes Prime Minister of the Congo
- 1967 Bobbie Gentry records "Ode to Billie Joe" - single goes on to win 4 Grammys
- 1967 Uruguay becomes a member of the Berne Convention copyright treaty
- 1969 Chilean Association of Librarians created
- 1971 Failed assassination attempt on King Hassan II of Morocco, 101 killed
Event of Interest
1971 National Women's Political Caucus (NWPC) founded in US by women including Bella Abzug, Betty Friedan, Shirley Chisholm, Myrlie Evers-Williams and Gloria Steinem
- 1972 Democratic convention opens in Miami Beach Florida (McGovern)
- 1972 Herd of stampeding elephants kills 24, Chandka Forest India
- 1973 Bahamas declares Independence from UK & adopts constitution
- 1973 John Paul Getty III, grandson of oil tycoon J. Paul Getty, is kidnapped in Rome by Italian gangsters wanting a ransom
- 1974 OPEC ends oil boycott against Netherlands
- 1974 USSR performs nuclear test at Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk USSR
- 1976 Chemical factory in Seveso, near Milan explodes covering the surrounding area in dioxin
- 1976 One American and three British mercenaries are executed in Angola following the Luanda Trial
- 1978 Bloodless military coup in Mauritania, President Moktar flees
- 1979 Chuck Berry sentenced to 4 months for $200,000 in tax evasion
- 1980 Willie Jones hospitalized for heat stroke with record 46.5°C temperature
- 1980 Alexandra Palace in London burnt down for a second time
- 1981 CERN achieves 1st proton-antiproton beam collision (570 GeV)
- 1981 US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
- 1982 Miguel Vasquez makes 1st public quadruple somersault on trapeze
- 1982 Rangers Larry Parrish hits his 3rd grand slam of the week
Event of Interest
1982 Samuel Morse's "Gallery of the Louvre" sells for $3,250,000
Samuel Morse
The Sinking of the Rainbow Warrior
1985 French foreign intelligence agents blow up the Greenpeace boat Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbor, New Zealand to prevent it interfering with French nuclear tests in the South Pacific. Dutch photographer Fernando Pereira is killed.
Learn More >>
Election of Interest
1991 Boris Yeltsin sworn in as 1st elected President of the Russian Federation
Boris Yeltsin
- 1991 L'Express Airlines Beechcraft C-99 crashes in Alabama, killing 13
- 1991 Foreign Minister R.F. Botha of South Africa signs accession to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty on behalf of South Africa
- 1992 Spaceship Giotto (Halley 1986) approaches comet Grigg-Skjellerup
- 1992 SuriPop VII, Suriname Popular Song Festival
- 1993 Melchior Ndadaye becomes 1st Hutu Burundi President, Sylvie Kinigi Prime Minister
- 1993 Yobes Ondieki runs world record 10km (26:58.38)
- 1994 Nepal premier Girija Prasadkoirala resigns
- 1994 Sonia O'Sullivan runs female world record 2K (5:25.36)
- 1997 Louise Woodward's trial begins in Massachusetts Nanny murder trial
- 1997 RJR Nabisco announces it will replace Joe Camel in new ads
- 1997 Spain, Partido Popular member Miguel Ángel Blanco is kidnapped in the Basque city of Ermua by ETA members, sparking widespread protests
- 1998 Roman Catholic sexual abuse cases: The Diocese of Dallas agrees to pay $23.4 million to nine former altar boys who claimed they were sexually abused by former priest Rudolph Kos
- 2000 EADS, the world's second largest aerospace group is formed by the merger of Aérospatiale-Matra, DASA, and CASA
- 2000 A leaking southern Nigerian petroleum pipeline explodes, killing about 250 villagers scavenging gasoline
- 2001 Amerada Hess agrees to acquire Triton Energy for $2.7 billion in cash
- 2002 At a Sotheby's auction, Peter Paul Rubens' painting The Massacre of the Innocents is sold for £49.5million (US$76.2 million) to Kenneth, Lord Thomson
- 2003 Neoplan bus, owned by Kowloon Motor Bus, collides with a truck, falls off bridge on Tuen Mun Road, Hong Kong, and plunges into the underlying valley, killing 21 people. Deadliest Hong Kong traffic accident .
- 2005 Hurricane Dennis slams into the Florida Panhandle causing billions of dollars in damage
- 2006 Pakistan International Flight PK-688 crashes in Multan, Pakistan shortly after takeoff, killing all 45 people on board
- 2008 Former Macedonian Interior Minister Ljube Boškoski is acquitted of all charges by a UN Tribunal accusing him of war crimes
- 2011 British tabloid News of the World publishes its last edition after 168 years in the wake of a phone hacking scandal.
- 2012 The American Episcopal Church becomes the first to approve a rite for blessing gay marriages
- 2013 40 people are buried in landslides in Sichuan Province, China
- 2014 Yair Lapid warns of Israeli Defense Force ground operation if Gazan rocket fire do not stop
- 2015 The Confederate flag is taken down for the last time from South Carolina Capitol grounds 1 day after the state legislature ordered it removed.
- 2015 23 people are killed & 50 are injured in a stampede at a free clothing drive in Mymensingh, Bangladesh
- 2017 NASA's Juno spacecraft makes closest ever pass over Jupiter's Great Red Spot at 9,000 kilometers overhead
- 2018 The final 4 boys and their coach are rescued from Tham Luang Nang Non cave, Thailand after being trapped there for 18 days by monsoon flooding
- 2018 Original sketch of Winnie-the-Pooh's Hundred Acre Wood by EH Shepard sells for £430,000 in London, record price for a book illustration
- 2019 Earliest evidence of modern humans outside Africa found with 210,000 year old skull from Apidima Cave, southern Greece published in "Nature"
- 2019 British ambassador to the US Sir Kim Darroch resigns after his secret cables calling the US president "inept" were published
Hagia Sophia
2020 Sixth century cathedral Hagia Sophia turned into a mosque by decree issued by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (converted to a mosque 1453-1934)
Learn More >>
