On June 12th...

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Independence Day (Philippines)

816 Pope Leo III died.

1442 King Alfonso V of Aragon occupied Naples.

1665 New Amsterdam formally became the English colony of New York.

1701 The Act of Settlement gave the English crown to Sophia, Princess of Hanover.

1776 The Virginia Constitutional Convention adopted a Declaration of Rights.

1787 The United States Congress passed a law stating that a Senator must be at least 30 years old.

1792 Captain George Vancouver discovered the site of what is now Vancouver, British Columbia.

1806 Bridge designer John A. Roebling was born.

1819 Dutch colonial troops were driven out of Palembang, Sumatra.
1819 Novelist Charles Kingsley was born.

1830 French soldiers landed at Sidi Ferruch, Algeria.

1838 The Territory of Iowa was organized.
1838 Hopkins Observatory was dedicated in Williamstown, Massachusetts.

1840 A meteorite hit Uden, Netherlands.

1849 Lewis Haslett patented the gas mask.

1851 Physicist Oliver Lodge was born.

1867 The Austro-Hungarian Empire was formed.

1875 Bobby Swim rode Calvin to victory in the Belmont Stakes.

1880 John Lee Richmond pitched the first ever perfect game.

1889 A train crash at Armagh, Ireland, killed 88 persons.

1894 J. H. Taylor won the British Golf Open.

1896 Nazi official Erich Koch was born.

1897 An earthquake killed about 1,500 people in Assam, India.
1897 Robert Anthony Eden, Prime Minister of Great Britain, was born.

1898 The Philippines proclaimed its independence from Spanish rule.

1899 A tornado killed 117 persons in New Richmond, Wisconsin.

1901 The Cuban Constitutional Convention adopted the Platt Amendment.

1903 The Sigma Alpha Iota International Music Fraternity was founded at the University of Michigan School of Music.

1917 King Constantine of Greece abdicated.
1917 The Secret Service extended its protection of the President of the United States to his family.

1920 The Farmer Labor Party was organized in Chicago, Illinois.
1920 Clarence Kummer rode Man O' War to victory in the Preakness Stakes.

1923 Harry Houdini freed himself from a straight jacket while suspended upside down 40 feet above the ground in New York City, New York.

1924 George H. W. Bush, 41st President of the United States, was born.

1925 William DeHart Hubbard set a long jump record of 25 feet 10¾ inches.

1926 Albert Johnson rode Crusader to victory in the Belmont Stakes.

1929 Anne Frank, of The Diary of Anne Frank "fame," was born.

1930 Bobby Jones won the U. S. Golf Open.
1930 Max Schmeling defeated Jack Sharkey on a foul in the 4th round for the heavyweight boxing title.

1931 Al Capone was indicted on 5,000 counts of prohibition and perjury.

1935 Senator Huey Long of Louisiana spoke continually for 15½ hours in the U. S. Senate's longest speech on record.
1935 Ella Fitzgerald recorded her first songs, "Love and Kisses" and "I'll Chase the Blues Away."

1937 Ralph Guldahl won the U. S. Golf Open.

1939 The Baseball Hall of Fame opened in Cooperstown, New York.
1939 Byron Nelson won the U. S. Golf Open.

1942 A tornado killed 35 persons in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

1944 The first V-1 flying bomb attack was carried out on London, England.

1945 The U. S. Marines 7th Regiment conquered the summit of Kunishi Ridge on Okinawa.

1947 Babe Didrikson became the first American to win the British Women's Amateur Golf Championship.

1948 Ben Hogan won the U. S. Golf Open.
1948 Eddie Arcaro rode Citation to victory in the Belmont Stakes, and the Triple Crown.

1950 Two Air France DC-4s collided near Bahrain, killing about 100 people.

1954 Eric Guerin rode High Gun to victory in the Belmonst Stakes.

1955 The last new episode of "Mr. Peepers" aired on NBC-TV.

1957 Mayflower II, a replica of the original Mayflower, arrived at Provincetown, Massachusetts, 53 days after leaving Plymouth, England.
1957 Bandleader Jimmy Dorsey died.

1963 Civil rights leader Medgar W. Evers was killed by a sniper's bullet outside his Jackson, Mississippi, home.

1964 Nelson Mandela, the leader of the African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa, Nelson Mandela, was jailed for life for sabotage.
1964 An explosion in a mine in northern Afghanistan killed 74 men.
1964 East Germany and the Soviet Union signed a friendship treaty recognizing West Berlin as an "independent political entity."

1965 Morio Shigematsu ran a marathon in the record time of 2 hours 12 minutes.

1967 The U. S. Supreme Court unanimously ended laws against interracial marriages. U. S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Tom C. Clark retired.
1967 The Soviet Union launched Venera IV.
1967 You Only Live Twice, the fifth "James Bond" film, was released.

1968 The movie Rosemary's Baby was released.

1973 A car bomb planted by the Provisional Irish Republican Army killed 6 Protestant civilians and wounded 33 others in Coleraine, County Londonderry, Ireland.

1977 Chako Higuchi won the LPGA Championship.

1978 David Berkowitz, aka "Son of Sam," was sentenced to 547 years in prison after having pleaded guilty to six murders and seven attempted murders.
1978 An earthquake measuring 7.5 on the Richter scale killed 21 persons and injured another 350 on Honshu Island, Japan.

1979 The Gossamer Albatross became the first human-powered aircraft to cross the English Channel.
1979 Kevin St. Onge threw a playing card a record 185 feet.

1980 Masayoshi Ohira, Prime Minister of Japan, died.
1980 Milburn Stone, actor best known for playing "Doc" on the long-running television show Gunsmoke, died.

1981 The movie Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark was released.
1981 Major League Baseball players went on strike.
1981 Larry Holmes TKO'd Leon Spinks in the 3rd round for the WBC Heavyweight title.

1983 Patty Sheehan won the LPGA Championship.

1987 U.S. President Ronald Reagan gave a speech in Berlin in which he delivered the line "Mr. Gorbachevv, tear down this wall!"
1987 Former Central African Empire Emperor Jean-Bédell Bokassa was sentenced to death.

1991 Boris Yeltsin became the first popularly elected President of Russia.
1991 The Chicago Bulls defeated the Los Angeles Lakers for the NBA Championship.

1994 Moshood Abiola declared himself the lawful President of Nigeria.

1997 The US Treasury Department unveiled a new $50 bill with a security thread which glows yellow under ultraviolet light making the bill more counterfeit-resistant.

1999 A NATO-led United Nations peacekeeping force entered Kosovo.

2000 Sandro Rosa do Nascimento took hostages while robbing a bus in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

2002 The Los Angeles Lakers defeated the New Jersey Nets for the NBA Championship.
2002 Fashion designer Bill Blass died.

2003 Actor Gregory Peck died.

2004 A chondrite-type meteorite struck a house in Ellerslie, New Zealand.

2005 Annika Sörenstam won the LPGA Championship.

2007 Don Herbert, television host known as "Mr. Wizard," died.

2008 Two armed robbers stole two Picasso engravings and two other pieces of artwork from a museum in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

2009 All television broadcasts in the United States officially switched from analog to digital transmission.
2009 The Pittsburgh Penguins defeated the Detroit Red Wings for the Stanley Cup.

2011 The Dallas Mavericks defeated the Miami Heat for the NBA Championship.

2012 Cuban heavyweight boxing champion Teofilo Stevenson died.

2015 Nasser al-Wuhayshi, Al-Qaeda's second-in-command, was killed in a U. S. air strike in Yemen.

2016 Omar Mateen opened fire inside the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, killing 49 persons and wounding 53 others.
2016 The Pittsburgh Penguins defeated the San Jose Sharks for the Stanley Cup.

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This page was last updated on September 02, 2018.