June 1

  • 1495 – Friar John Cor recorded the first known batch of scotch whisky.
  • 1679 – The Scottish Covenanters defeated the forces of John Graham of Claverhouse at the Battle of Drumclog in South Lanarkshire, Scotland.
  • 1779 – Benedict Arnold, a general in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, was court-martialed for malfeasance.
  • 1794 – The Glorious First of June, the first and largest fleet action of the naval conflict between the Kingdom of Great Britain and the First French Republic during the French Revolutionary Wars, was fought.
  • 1813 – War of 1812: Mortally wounded during a battle against the Royal Navy frigate HMS Shannon, American naval commander James Lawrence of the USS Chesapeake ordered his crew "Don't give up the ship!", today a popular battle cry.
  • 1831 – British naval officer and explorer James Clark Ross successfully led the first expedition to reach the North Magnetic Pole.
  • 1868 – Long Walk of the Navajo: The United States signed the Treaty of Bosque Redondo, allowing the Navajos to return to their lands in Arizona and New Mexico.
  • 1922 – The Royal Ulster Constabulary, a police force in Northern Ireland, was founded.
  • 1938 – The first Superman comic was published.
  • 1941 – World War II: The Battle of Crete ended with Crete capitulating to Nazi German forces.
  • 1942 – World War II: The crews of three Japanese Ko-hyoteki class submarines scuttled and committed suicide after entering Sydney Harbour and launching a failed attack.
  • 1943 – Eight German Junkers Ju 88s shot down British Overseas Airways Corporation Flight 777 over the Bay of Biscay off the coast of Spain and France, killing actor Leslie Howard and several other notable passengers.
  • 1980 – CNN, the first network to provide 24-hour television news coverage, was launched.
  • 1989 – Oba Chandler murdered an Ohio woman and her two daughters during their Florida vacation, drowning them in Tampa Bay.
  • 2001 – Crown Prince Dipendra of Nepal killed King Birendra and several members of the Shah royal family in a shooting spree at the Narayanhity Royal Palace in Kathmandu.
  • 2005 – In their first national referendum in over two hundred years, Dutch voters rejected the ratification of the proposed Constitution of the European Union.

June 2

  • 455 – Following the death of Western Roman Emperor Valentinian III, the Vandals led by King Gaiseric sacked Rome, looting treasure from the city and taking Empress Licinia Eudoxia and her daughters hostage.
  • 1098 – First Crusade: The first Siege of Antioch ended as Crusader forces captured the city, but the Seljuk Turks would later start a second siege of Antioch a few days later.
  • 1763 – Pontiac's War: The local Ojibwe captured Fort Michilimackinac in present-day Mackinaw City, Michigan after diverting the garrison's attention with a game of stickball, then chasing a ball into the fort.
  • 1774 – Intolerable Acts: To restore imperial control over the Thirteen Colonies, the Parliament of Great Britain passed a second Quartering Act, reenacting a law requiring colonists to provide housing for British soldiers.
  • 1848 – As part of the Pan-Slavism movement, the Prague Slavic Congress began in Prague, one of the few times that voices from all Slav populations of Europe were heard in one place.
  • 1924 – U.S. President Calvin Coolidge signed the Indian Citizenship Act into law, granting citizenship to all Native Americans born within the territorial limits of the United States.
  • 1946 – Birth of the Italian Republic: Italy became a republic and abolished the monarchy, exiling King Umberto II.
  • 1966 – Surveyor 1 landed on the Moon, becoming the first American spacecraft to soft land on another world.
  • 1967 – German university student Benno Ohnesorg was killed during a protest in West Berlin against the visit of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Shah of Iran, sparking the formation of the militant group Movement 2 June.
  • 1995 – United States Air Force Captain Scott O'Grady was shot down by a Bosnian Serb Army SA-6 surface-to-air missile while patrolling the NATO no-fly zone over Bosnia in an F-16, but he was able to eject safely and was then rescued six days later.
  • 1999 – The Bhutan Broadcasting Service began broadcasting television transmissions, ending Bhutan's ban on TV.
  • 2003 – The Mars Express space probe, the first planetary mission of the European Space Agency, was launched.

June 3

  • 350 – Roman usurper Nepotianus of the Constantinian dynasty proclaimed himself Roman Emperor, entering Rome with a group of gladiators.
  • 1621 – The Dutch West India Company received a charter for a trade monopoly in the West Indies by the Dutch Republic.
  • 1770 – Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo, a historic Roman Catholic mission church in present-day Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, the site of the first Christian confirmation in Alta California, was established.
  • 1888 – American writer Ernest Thayer's baseball poem "Casey at the Bat" was first published in the San Francisco Examiner.
  • 1889 – The first long-distance electric power transmission line in the United States was constructed between Willamette Falls and downtown Portland, Oregon.
  • 1937 – Months after he abdicated the British throne, Edward, Duke of Windsor married American socialite Wallis Simpson in a private ceremony near Tours, France.
  • 1940 – World War II: The remaining Allied forces protecting the Dunkirk evacuation surrendered, giving the Germans a tactical victory in the Battle of Dunkirk.
  • 1962 – Air France's Chateau de Sully crashed while attempting to depart Paris-Orly Airport, killing 130 out of 132 passengers and crew members.
  • 1968 – American artist Andy Warhol and two others were shot and wounded at his New York City studio "The Factory" by radical feminist Valerie Solanas.
  • 1992 – The High Court of Australia delivered its decision in the landmark case Mabo v Queensland, recognising the land rights of Aborigines.
  • 1998 – An InterCityExpress high-speed train derailed near Eschede, Lower Saxony, Germany, causing 101 deaths and 100 injuries.
  • 2006 – Montenegro declared its independence, ending the union of Serbia and Montenegro.

June 4

  • 1039 – Henry III became Holy Roman Emperor following the death of his father, Conrad II.
  • 1615 – Forces under the shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu took Osaka Castle in Japan.
  • 1792 – Royal Navy Captain George Vancouver claimed Puget Sound in the Pacific Northwest for Great Britain.
  • 1878 – The United Kingdom and the Ottoman Empire signed the Cyprus Convention, giving Cyprus to Great Britain in exchange for their support of the Ottomans in the Russian-Turkish War.
  • 1913 – Emily Davison, an activist for Women's suffrage in the United Kingdom, was fatally injured when she was struck by King George V's horse at the Epsom Derby.
  • 1920 – The Kingdom of Hungary was split into five countries with the signing of the Treaty of Trianon in Paris.
  • 1928 – Zhang Zuolin, one of the major warlords of China, was assassinated by Japanese agents in Shenyang, a death kept secret for the next two weeks.
  • 1939 – The German ocean liner St. Louis, carrying 963 Jewish refugees seeking asylum from Nazi persecution, was denied permission to land in the United States, after already having been turned away from Cuba.
  • 1942 – The Battle of Midway, a major battle in the Pacific Theatre of World War II, began with a massive Imperial Japanese strike on Midway Atoll.
  • 1967 – A chartered aircraft owned by British Midland Airways crashed near Stockport, Greater Manchester, United Kingdom, killing 72 of the 84 passengers and crew on board.
  • 1989 – The People's Liberation Army violently cracked down on the Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing, leaving at least 241 dead and 7,000 wounded, and causing widespread international condemnation of the Chinese government.
  • 1989 – The victims of murderer Oba Chandler were found floating in Tampa Bay, Florida.
  • 1996 – The maiden flight of the Ariane 5 expendable launch system failed, with the rocket self-destructing 37 seconds after launch because of a malfunction in the control software, one of the most expensive computer bugs in history.
  • 1998 – Terry Nichols was sentenced to life in prison for his role in the Oklahoma City bombing.

June 5

  • 1257 – Kraków in Poland received city rights.
  • 1305 – Raymond Bertrand de Got became Pope Clement V, succeeding Pope Benedict XI who died one year earlier.
  • 1798 – In the Battle of New Ross, British forces prevented the United Irishmen from spreading the Irish Rebellion into Munster.
  • 1832 – The June Rebellion, an anti-monarchist uprising of students, broke out in Paris.
  • 1849 – A new constitution was introduced in Denmark, establishing a constitutional monarchy and the Rigsdag, a bicameral parliament consisting of the Landsting and the Folketing.
  • 1862 – As the Treaty of Saigon was signed, ceding parts of southern Vietnam to France, the guerrilla leader Truong Dinh decided to defy Emperor Tu Duc of Vietnam and fight on against the Europeans.
  • 1888 – An earthquake measuring 5.5 on the Richter scale shook the upper Río de la Plata floor.
  • 1956 – American singer Elvis Presley performed "Hound Dog" to a nationwide television audience on the The Milton Berle Show, an appearance that generated many letters of protest.
  • 1963 – The arrest of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini for publicly denouncing Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi sparked protests in Iran.
  • 1967 – The Six-Day War began with an Israeli Air Force preemptive strike that destroyed about 450 aircraft of the Egyptian, Jordanian and Syrian Air Forces on the ground.
  • 1968 – Palestinian immigrant Sirhan Sirhan fatally shot U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy inside the kitchen pantry of The Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, an event that has spawned a variety of conspiracy theories.
  • 1969 – The International communist conference began in Moscow.
  • 1989 – An anonymous rebel, later dubbed "Tank Man", achieved widespread international recognition as a heroic figure during the Tiananmen Square protests when he was videotaped and photographed in front of a column of Chinese tanks.
  • 1995 – A new phase of matter, the Bose–Einstein condensate, was produced for the first time by Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman at the University of Colorado's Boulder NIST–JILA lab.

June 6

  • 1513 – War of the League of Cambrai: Swiss mercenaries defeated the French in Novara, present-day Italy, forcing them to withdraw from Milan.
  • 1523 – Gustav Vasa became King of Sweden, marking the end of the Kalmar Union.
  • 1654 – Charles X Gustav succeeded his cousin Christina to the Swedish throne.
  • 1844 – The YMCA, today a worldwide movement of more than 45 million members from 124 national federations, was founded in London.
  • 1894 – Colorado Governor Davis Hanson Waite ordered his state militia to protect and support the miners engaged in the Cripple Creek miners' strike.
  • 1944 – World War II: The Invasion of Normandy, the largest amphibious military operation in history, began with Allied troops landing on the beaches of Normandy in France.
  • 1971 – Vietnam War: The Australian Army attacked a heavily fortified Vietnamese communist forces base camp in Long Khánh Province.
  • 1982 – A war in Lebanon began when Israeli forces invaded southern Lebanon to root out members of the Palestine Liberation Organisation.
  • 1982 – During the Falklands War, the British Royal Navy Type 42 destroyer Cardiff engaged and destroyed British Army Gazelle XX377 in a friendly fire incident.
  • 2004 – During a joint sitting of both houses of the Indian Parliament, President of India A. P. J. Abdul Kalam announced that Tamil was to be made the first legally recognised classical language of India.
  • 2005 – The U.S. Supreme Court delivered its landmark legal decision in Gonzales v. Raich, allowing the U.S. Congress to ban medical marijuana even in states that approve its use.

June 7

  • 1099 – Members of the First Crusade reached Jerusalem and began a five-week siege of the city against the Fatimids.
  • 1494 – Spain and Portugal signed the Treaty of Tordesillas, dividing the newly discovered lands of the Americas and Africa between the two countries.
  • 1628 – The Petition of Right, a major English constitutional document that set out specific liberties of the subject, was granted the Royal Assent by Charles I.
  • 1692 – A 7.5 Mw earthquake struck Port Royal, Jamaica, killing about 2,000 people.
  • 1776 – Virginia statesman Richard Henry Lee presented a resolution to the Second Continental Congress, which called for the Thirteen Colonies to declare independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain.
  • 1880 – War of the Pacific: Chilean forces captured Morro de Arica from Peru.
  • 1905 – Following growing dissatisfaction with the union between Sweden and Norway, the Norwegian parliament unanimously declared its dissolution.
  • 1940 – King Haakon VII of Norway, Crown Prince Olav, and the Norwegian government left Tromsø for exile in London, following the World War II German invasion.
  • 1948 – Rather than sign the Ninth-of-May Constitution making his nation a Communist state, Edvard Beneš chose to resign as President of Czechoslovakia.
  • 1965 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Griswold v. Connecticut that a Connecticut law that prohibited the use of contraceptives violated the "right to marital privacy".
  • 1975 – The inaugural Cricket World Cup began in England.
  • 1981 – The Israeli Air Force attacked and disabled the Osirak nuclear reactor, assuming it was producing plutonium to further an Iraqi nuclear weapons programme.
  • 1982 – Graceland, Elvis Presley's mansion in Memphis, Tennessee, opened to the public.

June 8

  • 1405 – Richard le Scrope, Archbishop of York, was executed on Henry IV of England's orders.
  • 1776 – American Revolutionary War: British forces defeated the Continental Army at the Battle of Trois-Rivières, the last major battle fought on Quebec soil that was part of the American colonists' invasion of Quebec.
  • 1783 – Iceland's Laki craters began an eight-month eruption, triggering major famine and massive fluorine poisoning.
  • 1906 – Theodore Roosevelt signed the Antiquities Act into law, giving the President of the United States authority to restrict the use of particular public land owned by the federal government by executive order, bypassing oversight by the U.S. Congress.
  • 1912 – Filmmaker Carl Laemmle merged his movie studio with eight smaller companies to form what is known today as Universal Studios.
  • 1949 – Nineteen Eighty-Four, a dystopian political novel by English writer George Orwell about life in the fictional totalitarian government of Oceania, was first published.
  • 1950 – Thomas Blamey became Australia's first, and currently only, Field Marshal.
  • 1953 – Two tornadoes killed more than 200 people in Flint, Michigan and Worcester, Massachusetts.
  • 1959 – The U.S. Navy submarine USS Barbero fired a Regulus cruise missile, equipped with U.S Post Office Department containers, in an attempt to deliver mail via "rocket mail".
  • 1982 – Falklands War: The Argentine Air Force attacked British transport ships as they were unloading their supplies off Bluff Cove in the Falkland Islands, killing 56 British servicemen and wounding 150 others.
  • 1995 – Danish-Greenlandic programmer Rasmus Lerdorf released the first public version of the scripting language PHP for producing dynamic web pages.
  • 2004 – Ethiopian distance runner Kenenisa Bekele broke the world record for outdoor 10,000 m in Ostrava, Czech Republic.

June 9

  • 1310 – Italian artist Duccio's Maestà with Twenty Angels and Nineteen Saints, a seminal artwork of the early Italian Renaissance, was unveiled and installed in Siena Cathedral in Siena, Italy.
  • 1667 – Second Anglo-Dutch War: The Dutch began the Raid on the Medway, attacking the largest English naval ships that were laid up in the dockyards of their main naval base near Chatham.
  • 1772 – In an act of defiance against the Navigation Acts, American patriots led by Abraham Whipple attacked and burned the British schooner Gaspée.
  • 1815 – The Congress of Vienna ended, redrawing the political map of Europe after the defeat of Napoleon in the Napoleonic Wars.
  • 1856 – Mormon pioneers began leaving Iowa City, Iowa, and headed west for Salt Lake City, Utah, carrying all their possessions in two-wheeled handcarts.
  • 1885 – A peace treaty was signed to end the Sino-French War, with China eventually giving up Tonkin and Annam, most of present-day Vietnam, to France.
  • 1928 – Australian aviator Charles Kingsford Smith and his crew landed their Southern Cross aircraft in Brisbane, completing the first ever trans-Pacific flight from the United States mainland to Australia.
  • 1934 – Donald Duck debuted in The Wise Little Hen.
  • 1946 – Bhumibol Adulyadej ascended to the throne of Thailand, currently the world's longest active reigning monarch.
  • 1973 – Secretariat won the Belmont Stakes by 31 lengths, achieving the first American Triple Crown victory in a quarter-century, and lowering the track and world record times for 1 1/2 mile distance races to 2:24.

June 10

  • 1190 – The Third Crusade: Frederick I Barbarossa drowned in the Saleph River in Anatolia.
  • 1692 – Bridget Bishop became the first person executed for witchcraft in the Salem witch trials.
  • 1719 – Jacobite risings: British forces defeated an alliance of Jacobites and Spaniards at the Battle of Glen Shiel in the Scottish Highlands.
  • 1805 – The United States signed a treaty with Yussif Karamanli, the Pasha of Tripoli, ending the First Barbary War and agreeing to pay Yusuf 60,000 in exchange for the American prisoners of war.
  • 1829 – In rowing, Oxford defeated Cambridge in the first Boat Race held on the Thames in London.
  • 1838 – More than 25 Australian Aborigines were massacred near Inverell, New South Wales.
  • 1864 – American Civil War: Confederates defeated a much larger Union force at the Battle of Brice's Crossroads near Baldwyn, Mississippi.
  • 1886 – Mount Tarawera, a volcanic mountain in the North Island of New Zealand, erupted, killing over 120 people and destroying the Pink and White Terraces.
  • 1924 – Fascists kidnapped and killed Italian socialist leader Giacomo Matteotti in Rome.
  • 1935 – American physician Bob Smith had his last alcoholic drink, marking the traditional founding date of Alcoholics Anonymous.
  • 1957 – In the Canadian federal election, the Progressive Conservative Party led by John Diefenbaker won a plurality of the seats in the Canadian House of Commons, bringing an end to 22 years of Liberal Party rule.
  • 1967 – The Six-Day War ended with Israel and Syria agreeing to sign a ceasefire.
  • 2008 – War in Afghanistan: An airstrike by the United States resulted in the deaths of eleven paramilitary troops of the Pakistan Army Frontier Corps and eight Taliban fighters in Pakistan's tribal areas.

June 11

  • 1345 – Inspecting a new prison without being escorted by his bodyguard, Byzantine megas doux Alexios Apokaukos was lynched and killed by the prisoners.
  • 1492 – Hundred Years' War: Joan of Arc's first offensive battle, the Battle of Jargeau, began.
  • 1770 – The Great Barrier Reef first became known to Europeans when the HM Bark Endeavour, captained by English explorer James Cook, ran aground there, sustaining considerable damage.
  • 1847 – Afonso, died at age two, leaving his father Pedro II, the last emperor of Brazil, without a male heir.
  • 1892 – The Salvation Army's Limelight Department, one of the world's earliest film studios, was officially established in Melbourne, Australia.
  • 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 first coin the political phrase "smoke-filled room".
  • 1937 – Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky and several senior officers of the Red Army were convicted in the Case of Trotskyist Anti-Soviet Military Organisation, a secret trial during the Great Purge in the Soviet Union.
  • 1938 – The Battle of Wuhan began, lasting four and a half months, the longest and largest battle of the entire Second Sino-Japanese War.
  • 1955 – More than 80 people were killed after Pierre Levegh and Lance Macklin collided during the 23rd running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans sports car endurance race.
  • 1956 – The six-day Gal Oya riots, the first ethnic riots that targeted the minority Sri Lankan Tamils in post-independent Sri Lanka, began, eventually resulting in the deaths of at least 150 people and 100 injuries.
  • 1963 – The University of Alabama was desegregated as Governor of Alabama George Wallace stepped aside after a stand in the schoolhouse door.
  • 1972 – An excursion train derailed on a sharp curve at Eltham Well Hall station in Eltham, London, killing 6 people and injuring 126 others.
  • 1978 – A group of Urdu-speaking students led by Altaf Hussain founded the All Pakistan Muhajir Student Organisation political student organisation, a forerunner to the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, at the University of Karachi.

June 12

  • 1864 – Union General Ulysses S. Grant pulled his troops out of the Battle of Cold Harbour in Hanover County, Virginia, ending one of the bloodiest, most lopsided battles in the American Civil War.
  • 1889 – In one of Europe's worst rail disasters, runaway passenger carriages collided with a following train near Armagh, present-day Northern Ireland, killing 88 people.
  • 1899 – The New Richmond tornado killed 117 people and injured 125 others in the northern Great Plains of the United States.
  • 1942 – On her thirteenth birthday, Anne Frank began keeping her diary during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.
  • 1963 – African American civil rights activist Medgar Evers was murdered by Ku Klux Klan member Byron De La Beckwith.
  • 1964 – Nelson Mandela and other leaders of the African National Congress were found guilty for sabotaging the apartheid system in South Africa.
  • 1967 – The U.S. Supreme Court delivered its decision in the landmark civil rights case Loving v. Virginia, striking down laws restricting interracial marriage in the United States.
  • 1987 – The Cold War: During a speech at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate by the Berlin Wall, U.S. President Ronald Reagan challenged Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this wall".
  • 1991 – Members of the Sri Lankan military massacred over 150 Sri Lankan Tamil civilians in the village Kokkadichcholai near the eastern province town of Batticaloa.
  • 1994 – The Boeing 777, the world's largest twinjet, made its first flight.
  • 1999 – In the aftermath of the bombing of Yugoslavia and the Kosovo War, the NATO-led Kosovo Force entered Kosovo with a mandate of establishing a secure environment in the territory.

June 13

  • 1525 – Martin Luther married Katharina von Bora, against the celibacy discipline decreed by the Roman Catholic Church for priests.
  • 1881 – An Arctic Ocean ice pack crushed the USS Jeannette during its expedition to the North Pole.
  • 1886 – King Ludwig II of Bavaria was found dead in Lake Starnberg near Munich under mysterious circumstances.
  • 1898 – The Yukon Territory was formed in Canada, splitting from the Northwest Territories after the area's population substantially increased due to the Klondike Gold Rush.
  • 1935 – In one of the biggest upsets in championship boxing, underdog James J. Braddock defeated Max Baer to become the heavyweight champion of the world.
  • 1966 – The Miranda v. Arizona landmark ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court established the Miranda warning, requiring law enforcement officials to advise a suspect in custody of his rights to remain silent and to obtain an attorney.
  • 1969 – Governor of Texas Preston Smith signed a bill into law converting the former Southwest Centre for Advanced Studies, originally founded as a research arm of Texas Instruments, into the University of Texas at Dallas.
  • 1971 – The New York Times began to publish the Pentagon Papers, a 7,000-page top-secret United States Department of Defence history of the United States' political and military involvement in the Vietnam War.
  • 1983 – Pioneer 10 became the first man-made object to leave the solar system.
  • 1997 – In one of the worst fire tragedies in recent Indian history, 59 people died and 103 others were seriously injured during a premiere screening of the film Border at the Uphaar Cinema in Green Park, South Delhi.

June 14

  • 1285 – Forces led by Prince Tran Quang Khai of Vietnam's Tran Dynasty destroyed most of the invading Mongol naval fleet in a battle at Chuong Duong.
  • 1645 – English Civil War: In the Battle of Naseby, the main army of King Charles I was defeated by the Parliamentarian New Model Army under Sir Thomas Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell.
  • 1777 – The Second Continental Congress adopted the stars and stripes design for the flag of the United States.
  • 1807 – In the last major battle in the War of the Fourth Coalition, the French defeated the Russians at the Battle of Friedland near present-day Pravdinsk, Russia.
  • 1822 – In a paper presented to the Royal Astronomical Society, English mathematician Charles Babbage proposed a difference engine, an automatic, mechanical calculator designed to tabulate polynomial functions.
  • 1846 – Anglo-American settlers in the Town of Sonoma began a rebellion against Mexico, proclaiming the California Republic and eventually raising a homemade flag with a bear and star.
  • 1982 – Argentine forces surrendered to the British, essentially ending the Falklands War.
  • 1985 – TWA Flight 847 was hijacked shortly after takeoff from Athens, where it with its passengers and crew then endured a three-day intercontinental ordeal as they were forced to travel back and forth several times between Beirut and Algiers.

June 15

  • 1215 – King John of England put his seal on the Magna Carta.
  • 1219 – Northern Crusades: According to a popular Danish legend, the Dannebrog (Flag of Denmark), today one of the oldest state flags in the world still in use, fell from the sky and gave the Danish forces renewed hope to defeat the Estonians at the Battle of Lyndanisse.
  • 1667 – French physician Jean-Baptiste Denys administered the first fully documented human blood transfusion, giving the blood of a sheep to a 15-year old boy.
  • 1844 – American inventor Charles Goodyear received a patent for vulcanisation, a process to strengthen rubber.
  • 1846 – To settle the Oregon boundary dispute, the United Kingdom and the United States signed the Oregon Treaty, extending the United States – British North America border west along the 49th parallel north that was first established by the Treaty of 1818.
  • 1896 – A 7.2 Ms earthquake and a subsequent tsunami struck Japan, destroying about 9,000 homes and causing at least 22,000 deaths.
  • 1904 – The steamship General Slocum burned in New York's East River, killing over 1,000 people.
  • 1954 – The Union of European Football Associations, the administrative and controlling body for European football, was founded in Basel, Switzerland.
  • 1978 – King Hussein of Jordan married American Lisa Halaby, who became known as Queen Noor of Jordan.
  • 1996 – The Provisional Irish Republican Army detonated a bomb in the commercial centre of Manchester, England, injuring over 200 people and causing widespread damage to buildings.
  • 2001 – Leaders of the People's Republic of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan formed the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.

June 16

  • 1487 – Lancastrian forces defeated Yorkist supporters at the Battle of Stoke Field in East Stoke, Nottinghamshire, England, the final battle of the Wars of the Roses.
  • 1745 – King George's War: British colonial forces led by William Pepperrell captured the French stronghold at Fortress Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island after a six-week siege.
  • 1815 – Napoleonic Wars: French forces under Napoléon defeated Blücher's larger Prussian army in the Battle of Ligny, while French Marshal Michel Ney earned a strategic victory against the Anglo-Dutch army in the Battle of Quatre Bras.
  • 1846 – Pius IX was elected pope, beginning the longest reign of all popes (not counting the Apostle St. Peter).
  • 1858 – United States Senate candidate Abraham Lincoln delivered his "House Divided Speech" in Springfield, Illinois, referring to the division of the country between Slave states and free states as "A house divided against itself cannot stand".
  • 1883 – Over 180 out of 1,100 children died in the Victoria Hall disaster in Sunderland, England when they stampeded down the stairs to collect gifts from the entertainers after the end of a variety show.
  • 1904 – Irish author James Joyce began his relationship with Nora Barnacle, and subsequently used the date to set the actions for his 1922 novel Ulysses.
  • 1924 – The Whampoa Military Academy officially opened under the Kuomintang in the Republic of China.
  • 1948 – The Catalina seaplane Miss Macao became the victim of the first hjiacking of a commercial aircraft.
  • 1960 – The thriller/horror film Psycho, directed by Alfred Hitchcock and based on a novel of the same name by Robert Bloch, was released.
  • 1963 – Aboard Vostok 6, Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space.
  • 1976 – Apartheid in South Africa: Police in Soweto opened fire on schoolchildren protesting against the imposition of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in township schools, triggering a series of nationwide demonstrations, strikes, riots and violence.
  • 1999 – Thabo Mbeki was inaugurated President of South Africa.

June 17

  • 1462 – Forces led by Vlad III Dracula of Wallachia attacked an Ottoman camp at night in an attempt to assassinate Mehmed II.
  • 1579 – English explorer Francis Drake landed in a region of present-day California, naming it New Albion and claiming it for England.
  • 1775 – American Revolutionary War: British forces took Bunker Hill outside of Boston.
  • 1789 – French Revolution: The Third Estate of France declared itself the National Assembly.
  • 1930 – U.S. President Herbert Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act into law, raising tariffs on over 20,000 imported goods to record levels.
  • 1953 – The Group of Soviet Forces in Germany and the Volkspolizei violently suppressed an uprising in Berlin against the East German government.
  • 1961 – Canada's New Democratic Party was founded with the merger of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation and organised labour.
  • 1963 – The Supreme Court of the United States ruled in Abington School District v. Schempp that school-sponsored Bible reading in public schools in the United States to be unconstitutional.
  • 1963 – Buddhist crisis: Riots involving around 2000 people broke out in South Vietnam, despite the signing of the Joint Communique to resolve the crisis one day earlier.
  • 1972 – Five men were arrested for attempted burglary on the offices of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C., igniting the Watergate scandal that ultimately led to the resignation of U.S. President Richard Nixon more than two years later.
  • 1982 – The body of Italian banker Roberto Calvi, known as "God's Banker" due to his close association with the Vatican, was found hanging from scaffolding beneath London's Blackfriars Bridge.
  • 1987 – "Orange Band", the last Dusky Seaside Sparrow, died.
  • 1991 – The Parliament of South Africa repealed the Population Registration Act, which required that each inhabitant of South Africa be classified and registered in accordance with their racial characteristics as part of the system of apartheid.
  • 1994 – Following a police chase along Los Angeles freeways and a failed suicide attempt, actor and former American football player O.J. Simpson was arrested for the murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman.

June 18

  • 618 – Li Yuan became Emperor Gaozu of Tang, initiating three centuries of the Tang Dynasty in China.
  • 1178 – Five Canterbury monks observed what was possibly the Giordano Bruno crater, a small lunar impact crater on the far side of the Moon, being formed.
  • 1264 – The Parliament of Ireland met at Castledermot in County Kildare, the first definitively known meeting of this Irish legislature.
  • 1812 – The United States declared war against the United Kingdom for a combination of various reasons, officially beginning the War of 1812.
  • 1815 – War of the Seventh Coalition: Napoléon Bonaparte fought and lost his final battle, the Battle of Waterloo in Belgium.
  • 1858 – Charles Darwin received a manuscript by fellow naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace on natural selection, which prompted Darwin to publish his theory of evolution.
  • 1908 – The University of the Philippines, the national university of the Philippines, was established.
  • 1940 – World War II: General Charles de Gaulle, leader of the Free French Forces, made an appeal to the French people following the fall of France to Nazi Germany, rallying them to support the Resistance.
  • 1972 – British European Airways Flight 548 crashed near the town of Staines less than three minutes after departing from London Heathrow Airport, killing all 118 aboard, at the time the worst air disaster in the UK.
  • 1979 – The United States and the Soviet Union signed the SALT II treaty, placing specific limits on each side's stock of nuclear weapons.
  • 1983 – Aboard Space Shuttle Challenger, astronaut Sally Ride became the first American woman in space, and the third one overall after Soviet cosmonauts Valentina Tereshkova and Svetlana Savitskaya.

June 19

  • 1306 – Wars of Scottish Independence: The Earl of Pembroke's English army defeated Robert the Bruce's Scottish army at the Battle of Methven.
  • 1846 – The first officially recorded baseball game using modern rules was played in Hoboken, New Jersey, US, with the New York Nine defeating the New York Knickerbockers, 23–1.
  • 1850 – Louise of the Netherlands married Crown Prince Karl of Sweden-Norway.
  • 1867 – Maximilian I of the Second Mexican Empire was executed by firing squad in Querétaro.
  • 1939 – Former American baseball player Lou Gehrig was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, now commonly known in the United States as "Lou Gehrig's Disease".
  • 1944 – World War II: The navies of the United States and Imperial Japan engaged each other off the Mariana Islands in the Philippine Sea.
  • 1953 – Americans Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed as spies who passed U.S. nuclear weapons secrets to the Soviet Union.
  • 1961 – Kuwait declared independence from the United Kingdom.
  • 1970 – The Patent Cooperation Treaty, an international law treaty, was signed, providing a unified procedure for filing patent applications to protect inventions.
  • 1978 – Garfield, created by American cartoonist Jim Davis, made its debut, eventually becoming one of the world's most widely syndicated comic strips.
  • 2005 – Only six race cars competed in the United States Grand Prix at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Indianapolis, Indiana, after all the Michelin-shod entrants were withdrawn due to safety concerns.
  • 2006 – The prime ministers of Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Iceland participated in a ceremonial "laying of the first stone" of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Spitsbergen, Norway.
  • 2009 – The War in Afghanistan: British forces began Operation Panther's Claw, in which more than 350 troops made an aerial assault on Taliban positions in Southern Afghanistan.

June 20

  • 451 – A coalition led by Roman General Flavius Aetius and Visigothic king Theodoric I clashed violently with the Hunnic alliance commanded by Attila the Hun at the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains, the last major military operation of the Western Roman Empire.
  • 1685 – Monmouth Rebellion: The Duke of Monmouth declared himself King of England at Bridgwater.
  • 1756 – A garrison of the British army in India was imprisoned in the Black Hole of Calcutta.
  • 1782 – The Congress of the Confederation adopted the Great Seal of the United States, used to authenticate certain documents issued by the federal government.
  • 1789 – French Revolution: Meeting on a tennis court near the Palace of Versailles, members of France's Third Estate took the Tennis Court Oath, pledging not to separate until a new constitution was established.
  • 1837 – Victoria succeeded to the British throne, starting a reign that lasted for more than 63 years.
  • 1863 – American Civil War: West Virginia was admitted to the Union after it seceded from Virginia and the rest of the Confederacy.
  • 1947 – A Mafia hitman murdered gangster Bugsy Siegel in Beverly Hills, California, United States.
  • 1973 – Snipers fired into a crowd of Peronists near the Ezeiza Airport in Buenos Aires, killing at least 13 people and injuring 365 others.

June 21

  • 1734 – A black slave known as Marie-Joseph Angélique, after having been convicted of setting the fire that destroyed much of Montreal, was tortured and then hanged in New France.
  • 1798 – New Hampshire ratified the U.S. Constitution and was admitted as the ninth U.S. state.
  • 1798 – Over 15,000 British soldiers launched an attack on Vinegar Hill, the largest camp and headquarters of the County Wexford United Irish rebels, marking a turning point in the Irish Rebellion.
  • 1813 – Laura Secord set out to warn British forces of an impending American attack at Queenston, Ontario.
  • 1813 – Peninsular War: The Marquess of Wellington's combined British, Portuguese, and Spanish allied army defeated the French near Vitoria, Spain.
  • 1826 – Greek War of Independence: A combined Egyptian and Ottoman army began their invasion of the Mani Peninsula, but they were initially held off by the Maniots at the fortifications of Vergas.
  • 1864 – New Zealand land wars: The Tauranga Campaign ended.
  • 1898 – In a bloodless event during the Spanish–American War, the United States captured Guam from Spain.
  • 1948 – The Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine, the world's first stored-programme computer, ran its first computer programme.
  • 1973 – The U.S. Supreme Court delivered its decision in the landmark case Miller v. California, establishing the "Miller test" for determining what is obscene material.
  • 1985 – Greenland officially adopted its own flag, adding support to its independence movement from Denmark.
  • 2004 – SpaceShipOne completed the first privately funded human spaceflight.

June 22

  • 168 BC – Third Macedonian War: Roman forces defeated Macedonian King Perseus at the Battle of Pydna.
  • 217 BC – Syrian Wars: Forces under Ptolemy IV of Egypt defeated Antiochus III the Great of the Seleucid Empire at the Battle of Raphia.
  • 1854 – The Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada abolished the seigneurial system of New France.
  • 1893 – The Royal Navy battleship HMS Camperdown accidentally collided with and sank the British Mediterranean Fleet flagship HMS Victoria, taking 358 crew members with her.
  • 1911 – George V and Mary of Teck were crowned King and Queen of the United Kingdom at Westminster Abbey in London.
  • 1937 – Camille Chautemps became Prime Minister of France in the second Popular Front ministry.
  • 1941 – World War II: As over 4.5 million Axis troops began their invasion of the Soviet Union, the Lithuanian Activist Front took the opportunity to start an uprising to liberate Lithuania from Soviet occupation and establish a new government.
  • 1969 – Ohio's Cuyahoga River caught on fire, triggering a crack-down on pollution in the river.
  • 1978 – Working at the U.S. Naval Observatory, American astronomer James W. Christy discovered Charon, then considered the sole moon of Pluto.
  • 1986 – Argentine footballer Diego Maradona scored both the "Hand of God goal" and the "Goal of the Century" against England during the quarter-final match of the FIFA World Cup in Mexico City.
  • 2002 – An earthquake measuring 6.5 Mw struck a region of northwestern Iran, killing at least 261 people and injuring 1,300 others, and eventually causing widespread public anger due to the slowness of the victims receiving aid and supplies.
  • 2009 – Citing declining sales due to the emergence of digital photography, the Eastman Kodak Company announced that it would discontinue sales of the Kodachrome reversal film, concluding its 74-year run as a photography icon.

June 23

  • 1713 – After Queen Anne's War, French residents of Acadia were given one year to declare allegiance to Britain or leave Nova Scotia.
  • 1757 – Seven Years' War: British forces under Robert Clive defeated troops under Siraj ud-Daulah at the Battle of Plassey, allowing the British East India Company to annex Bengal.
  • 1858 – Edgardo Mortara, a six-year-old Jewish boy, was seized by Papal authorities and taken to be raised as a Roman Catholic.
  • 1887 – The Parliament of Canada passed the Rocky Mountains Park Act, creating Banff National Park as Canada's first national park.
  • 1894 – Led by French historian Pierre de Coubertin, an international congress at the Sorbonne in Paris founded the International Olympic Committee to reinstate the ancient Olympic Games.
  • 1919 – Estonian War of Independence: Estonian troops engaged the forces of the Pro-German Government of Latvia near Cesis, Latvia, recapturing the area four days later.
  • 1946 – Canada's largest onshore earthquake, measuring 7.3 Mw, struck Vancouver Island, but only caused two casualties since there were no heavily populated areas near its epicentre.
  • 1956 – Gamal Abdel Nasser became President of Egypt.
  • 1961 – The Antarctic Treaty, which sets aside Antarctica as a scientific preserve and bans military activity on the continent, came into force.
  • 1985 – A bomb destroyed Air India Flight 182 above the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 329 on board.
  • 1991 – The video game Sonic the Hedgehog was first released, propelling the Sega Genesis 16-bit console into mass popularity.

June 24

  • 1128 – Alfonso I of Portugal fought the Battle of São Mamede, the first step toward Portuguese independence.
  • 1314 – In the decisive battle in the First War of Scottish Independence, Scottish forces led by Robert the Bruce defeated English troops under Edward II near Bannockburn, Scotland.
  • 1340 – Hundred Years' War: The English fleet commanded by King Edward III almost totally destroyed the French fleet at the Battle of Sluys.
  • 1440 – Eton College in Berkshire, England, was founded by King Henry VI to provide free education to poor students who would then go on to King's College, Cambridge.
  • 1535 – The Anabaptist state of Münster was conquered and subsequently disbanded.
  • 1597 – The first Dutch voyage to the East Indies reached Bantam on Java.
  • 1812 – Napoleonic Wars: The French Grande Armée under Napoleon crossed the Neman River, marking the start of their invasion of Russia.
  • 1880 – "O Canada", today the national anthem of Canada, was first performed in Quebec City, Quebec, during a Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day banquet.
  • 1894 – Italian anarchist Sante Geronimo Caserio fatally stabbed Marie François Sadi Carnot, President of the French Third Republic, after Carnot delivered a speech at a public banquet in Lyon, France.
  • 1937 – The United States' first two "fast battleships", the North Carolina, were ordered from the New York and Philadelphia Naval Shipyards.
  • 1945 – The Soviet Red Army held a victory parade in Moscow to celebrate the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II.
  • 1947 – In one of the first widely reported unidentified flying object sightings in the United States, businessman and pilot Kenneth Arnold saw nine luminous disks in the form of saucers flying above the U.S. state of Washington near Mount Rainier.
  • 1948 – Cold War: The Soviet Union blocked access to the American, British, and French sectors of Berlin, cutting off all rail and road routes going into Soviet-controlled territory in Germany.
  • 1957 – The U.S. Supreme Court delivered its decision in Roth v. United States, ruling that obscenity is not protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
  • 1981 – The Humber Bridge opened connecting the East Riding of Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire in England, at the time the longest single-span suspension bridge.
  • 1982 – British Airways Flight 9 flew into a cloud of volcanic ash thrown up by the eruption of Indonesia's Mount Galunggung, resulting in the failure of all four of its engines.
  • 1994 – A United States Air Force B-52 Stratofortress based at Fairchild Air Force Base in Spokane County, Washington, US, crashed, killing all four crew members, and later providing a case study on the importance of compliance with safety regulations.

June 25

  • 1530 – The Augsburg Confession, the primary confession of faith of the Lutheran Church, was presented to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Augsburg.
  • 1678 – Venetian mathematician Elena Cornaro Piscopia became the first woman to receive a doctor of philosophy degree.
  • 1865 – Stand Watie was the last Confederate general to surrender in the American Civil War.
  • 1876 – Black Hills War: United States Army Colonel George Armstrong Custer was killed at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in present-day Big Horn County, Montana.
  • 1913 – More than 50,000 Union and Confederate veterans gathered at the Gettysburg Battlefield near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, the largest combined reunion of American Civil War veterans ever held.
  • 1938 – Douglas Hyde became the first President of Ireland after the office was established by the Constitution of Ireland in 1937.
  • 1944 – World War II: The Battle of Tali-Ihantala, the largest battle ever fought in the Nordic Countries, began in the Karelian Isthmus of Finland.
  • 1950 – The Korean War began with North Korean forces launching a pre-dawn raid over the 38th parallel into South Korea.
  • 1967 – Over 400 million people around the globe watched Our World, the first live, international, satellite television production.
  • 1975 – More than a year after the Carnation Revolution, a bloodless coup against the Estado Novo regime, Mozambique officially gained independence from Portugal.
  • 1993 – Kim Campbell became the first female Prime Minister of Canada.
  • 1996 – The Khobar Towers bombing in Khobar, Saudi Arabia, left 19 American servicemen and one Saudi dead and 372 of many nationalities wounded.
  • 1998 – The Supreme Court of the United States delivered its decision in Clinton v. City of New York, ruling that the line-item veto as granted in the Line Item Veto Act of 1996 violated the United States Constitution.
  • 2006 – Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was kidnapped in a cross border raid from the Gaza Strip on the crossing Kerem Shalom, and has been held hostage by Hamas ever since.
  • 2009 – Singer Michael Jackson died after he suffered cardiac arrest at his Los Angeles home, which authorities later declared a homicide caused by the combination of drugs in his body.

June 26

  • 363 – Roman Emperor Julian the Apostate was killed during the retreat from his campaign against the Sassanid Empire.
  • 1409 – In an attempt to end the Western Schism, during which Gregory XII in Rome and Benedict XIII in Avignon simultaneously claimed to be the true pope, the Council of Pisa instead ended up electing a third one, Alexander V.
  • 1541 – Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro was assassinated in Lima by supporters of his rival Diego de Almagro's son.
  • 1918 – World War I: The 26-day Battle of Belleau Wood near the Marne River in France ended with American forces finally clearing that forest of German troops.
  • 1945 – At a conference in San Francisco, delegates from 50 nations signed a charter establishing the United Nations.
  • 1963 – U.S. President John F. Kennedy gave his "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech, underlining the support of the United States for democratic West Germany shortly after Soviet-supported East Germany erected the Berlin Wall.
  • 1976 – The CN Tower, the tallest freestanding structure on land, was opened to the public in Toronto.
  • 1996 – Irish crime reporter Veronica Guerin was murdered by drug dealers while she was stopped at traffic lights on the Naas Dual Carriageway near Newlands Cross, an event , which alongside the murder of Detective Garda Jerry McCabe three weeks earlier, helped establish Ireland's Criminal Assets Bureau.
  • 1997 – The U.S. Supreme Court delivered its decision in Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, its first ruling regarding the regulation of materials distributed via the Internet, striking down anti-obscenity provisions of the Communications Decency Act of 1996.
  • 2003 – The U.S. Supreme Court delivered its decision in Lawrence v. Texas, striking down sodomy laws in the United States.
  • 2008 – The U.S. Supreme Court delivered its decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, ruling that the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects an individual's right to keep and bear arms for private use in Washington, D.C., and other federal enclaves.

June 27

  • 678 – Saint Agatho began his reign as Pope.
  • 1358 – Republic of Ragusa founded.
  • 1571 – Elizabeth I of England issued a royal charter establishing Jesus College, the first Protestant college at the University of Oxford.
  • 1743 – War of the Austrian Succession: In the last time that a British monarch personally led his troops into battle, George II and his forces defeated the French in Dettingen, Bavaria.
  • 1844 – Latter Day Saint movement founder Joseph Smith, Jr. and his brother Hyrum were killed by an armed mob who stormed the prison where they were incarcerated in Carthage, Illinois.
  • 1898 – Canadian-American seaman and adventurer Joshua Slocum completed the first solo circumnavigation of the globe sailing on his refitted sloop-rigged fishing boat Spray, a distance of more than 46,000 miles (74,000 km).
  • 1899 – A. E. J. Collins scored 628 runs not out, the highest-ever recorded score in cricket.
  • 1905 – The crew of the Russian battleship Potemkin began a mutiny against their oppressive officers.
  • 1954 – The world's first large-scale nuclear power plant opened in Obninsk, in the Soviet Union.
  • 1967 – The world's first electronic automated teller machine was installed in Enfield Town, London by Barclays Bank.
  • 1976 – Air France Flight 139 (Tel Aviv-Athens-Paris) was hijacked en route to Paris by the PLO and redirected to Entebbe, Uganda.
  • 1977 – The former French Territory of the Afars and the Issas was granted independence from France and became Djibouti.
  • 1980 – Aerolinee Itavia Flight 870 suffered an in-flight explosion due to unknown causes while en route from Bologna to Palermo, Italy, killing all 81 people on board.
  • 1986 – The International Court of Justice ruled against the United States in Nicaragua v. United States.
  • 1989 – The International Labour Organisation Convention 169, a major binding international convention concerning indigenous peoples, and a forerunner of the 2007 Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, was adopted.
  • 1991 – Yugoslavia invaded Slovenia, two days after the latter's declaration of independence from the former, starting the Ten-Day War.
  • 2007 – An operation by the Rio de Janeiro Military Police against drug dealers in the Complexo do Alemão in Rio de Janeiro killed at least nineteen people, many of whom had no relations with drug trafficking.

June 28

  • 1651 – Khmelnytsky Uprising: The Zaporozhian Cossacks began clashing with forces of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth at the Battle of Berestechko in the Volhynia Region of present-day Ukraine.
  • 1841 – Giselle, a ballet by French composer Adolphe Adam, was first performed at the Théâtre de l'Académie Royale de Musique in Paris.
  • 1880 – Police captured Australian bank robber and bushranger Ned Kelly after a gun battle in Glenrowan, Victoria.
  • 1914 – Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, were assassinated by Yugoslav nationalist Gavrilo Princip during a motorcade in Sarajevo, sparking the outbreak of World War I.
  • 1919 – The Treaty of Versailles was signed, ending World War I.
  • 1922 – The week-long Battle of Dublin began with an assault by the Irish Free State's National Army on the Four Courts building, which had been occupied by the Anti-Treaty Irish Republican Army, marking the start of the Irish Civil War.
  • 1956 – Workers demanding better conditions held massive protests in Poznan, Poland, but were violently repressed the following day by 400 tanks and 10,000 soldiers of Ludowe Wojsko Polskie and Korpus Bezpieczenstwa Wewnetrznego.
  • 1969 – In response to a police raid at the Stonewall Inn in New York City, groups of gay and transgender people began to riot against New York City Police officers, a watershed event for the worldwide gay rights movement.
  • 1978 – The U.S. Supreme Court delivered its decision in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, barring quota systems in college admissions but affirming the constitutionality of affirmative action programmes giving advantage to minorities.
  • 1990 – Paperback Software, a company founded by Adam Osborne, was found guilty by a U.S. court of copyright violation for copying the appearance and menu system of Lotus 1-2-3 in its competing spreadsheet programme.
  • 1997 – Mike Tyson bit off a portion of Evander Holyfield's ear during a boxing match at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas.
  • 2005 – War in Afghanistan: Three U.S. Navy SEALs and 16 American Special Operations Forces soldiers were killed during a failed counter-insurgent mission in Kunar province, Afghanistan.

June 29

  • 1194 – Sverre was crowned King of Norway.
  • 1613 – The original Globe Theatre in London burned to the ground after a cannon employed for special effects misfired during a performance of William Shakespeare's Henry VIII and ignited the theatre's roof.
  • 1659 – Russo-Polish War: The hetman of Ukraine Ivan Vyhovsky and his allies defeated the armies of Russian Tsardom led by Aleksey Trubetskoy at the Battle of Konotop in the present-day Sumy Oblast of Ukraine.
  • 1874 – Greek politician Charilaos Trikoupis published a manifesto in the Athens daily Kairoi entitled "Who's to blame?", laying out his complaints against King George.
  • 1880 – Pomare V, King of Tahiti, was forced to cede the sovereignty of Tahiti and its dependencies to France.
  • 1889 – Hyde Park and several other Illinois townships voted to be annexed by Chicago, forming the largest United States city in area and second largest in population.
  • 1956 – U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, officially creating the U.S. Interstate Highway System, one of the largest public works projects in history.
  • 1967 – Actress Jayne Mansfield, her boyfriend Sam Brody, and their driver were killed in a car accident outside of New Orleans, while her children Miklós, Zoltán, and Mariska Hargitay escaped with only minor injuries.
  • 1976 – The Seychelles became independent from the United Kingdom.
  • 1995 – The Sampoong Department Store collapsed in the Seocho-gu district of Seoul, South Korea, killing 501 and injuring 937.
  • 1995 – Shuttle–Mir Programme: During the STS-71 mission, Space Shuttle Atlantis became the first space shuttle to dock with the Russian space station Mir.
  • 2006 – The U.S. Supreme Court delivered its decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, ruling that military commissions set up by the Bush administration to try detainees at Guantanamo Bay violated both U.S. and international law.

June 30

  • 1758 – Seven Years' War: Austria defeated Prussia at the Battle of Domstadtl, forcing Frederick the Great to leave Moravia.
  • 1860 – Seven months after the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, several prominent British scientists and philosophers participated in an evolution debate at the Oxford University Museum in Oxford, England.
  • 1864 – U.S. National Parks: U.S. President Abraham Lincoln granted Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias to California for "public use, resort, and recreation".
  • 1894 – London's Tower Bridge, a combined bascule and suspension bridge over the River Thames, opened.
  • 1905 – The scientific journal Annalen der Physik published Albert Einstein's article "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies", the third of his Annus Mirabilis papers, introducing the theory of special relativity.
  • 1908 – A massive explosion occurred near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in what is now Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia, knocking over 80 million trees over 2,150 square kilometres (830 sq mi).
  • 1934 – Adolf Hitler violently purged members of the Sturmabteilung, its leader Ernst Röhm, and other political rivals on the Night of the Long Knives, executing at least 85 people.
  • 1963 – A car bomb intended for Mafia boss Salvatore Greco killed seven police and military officers near Palermo.
  • 1971 – The Soviet Soyuz 11 spacecraft depressurised during reentry, killing cosmonauts Vladislav Volkov, Georgiy Dobrovolskiy and Viktor Patsayev.
  • 1997 – During an internationally televised ceremony at 16:00 UTC (00:00, July 1 HKT), the United Kingdom officially transferred sovereignty of Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China.
  • 2000 – Nine people were crushed underfoot and suffocated to death while watching the American band Pearl Jam play at the Roskilde Festival, Denmark.
  • 2007 – In an attempted terrorist attack, a car loaded with propane canisters was driven into the terminal of Scotland's Glasgow International Airport and set ablaze.
  • 2009 – Schoolgirl Bahia Bakari was the sole survivor when Yemenia Flight 626 crashed into the Indian Ocean killing 152 people.
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