Events
1462
– Vlad III the Impaler attempts to assassinate
Mehmed II (The Night Attack) 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 shogun, Ashikaga Yoshiteru.
1579 – Sir Francis Drake claims a land
he calls Nova Albion (modern California)
for England.
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.
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.
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.
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.
1861 – Battle of Vienna, Virginia in the
American Civil War.
1863 – Battle of Aldie in the Gettysburg
Campaign of the American Civil War.
1876 – Indian Wars: Battle of the Rosebud
– 1,500 Sioux and Cheyenne led by Crazy
Horse beat back General George Crook's
forces at Rosebud Creek in Montana Territory.
1877 – 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.
1901 – The College Board introduces its
first standardized test, the forerunner
to the SAT.
1910 – Aurel Vlaicu pilots a A. Vlaicu
nr. 1 on its first flight.
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: sinking of the RMS
Lancastria by the Luftwaffe near Saint-Nazaire,
France.
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 – 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.
1958 – The wooden roller coaster at Playland,
which is in the Pacific National Exhibition,
Vancouver, British Colombia, Canada opens.
It is still open today.
1960 – The Nez Perce tribe is awarded
$4 million for 7 million acres (28,000
km²) of land undervalued at 4 cents/acre
in the 1863 treaty.
1961 – The New Democratic Party of Canada
is founded by the merger of the Cooperative
Commonwealth Federation and the Canadian
Labour Congress.
1963 – The United States Supreme Court
rules 8 to 1 in Abington School District
v. Schempp against allowing the reciting
of Bible verses and the Lord's Prayer
in public schools.
1963 – A day after South Vietnamese President
Ngo Dinh Diem announced the Joint Communique
to end the Buddhist crisis, a riot involving
around 2,000 people breaks out. One person
is killed.
1971 – President Richard Nixon declares
the U.S. War on Drugs.
1972 – Watergate scandal: five White House
operatives are arrested for burglarizing
the offices of the Democratic National
Committee, in an attempt by some members
of the Republican party to illegally wiretap
the opposition.
1981 – Hyatt Regency walkway collapse:
In the Hyatt Regency Hotel the 2nd and
4th floor walkways collapse crushing 144
people to death, this was the worst structural
failure in the United States.
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 wife, Nicole Brown
Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman.
Holidays
and observances
Bunker
Hill Day (Suffolk County, Massachusetts)
Christian Feast Day:
Albert Chmielowski
Botolph (England)
Gondulphus of Berry
Hervé
Hypatius of Bithynia (Eastern Orthodox
and Byzantine Catholic Churches)
Rainerius
June 17 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
Day of German Unity, celebrated before
October 1990. (West Germany)
Father's Day (El Salvador and Guatemala)
National Day, celebrates the independence
of Iceland from Kingdom of Denmark in
1944.
Soviet Occupation Day (Latvia)
World Day to Combat Desertification and
Drought (International)
Zemla Intifada Day (Sahrawi Arab Democratic
Republic)
For details, contact Datacentre
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