On June 14th...

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1381 King Richard II of England met with the leaders of the Peasants' Revolt.

1648 Margaret Jones became the first person to be hanged in Boston, Massachusetts, after being found guilty of practicing witchcraft.

1775 The Continental Army was established.

1777 The Continental Congress adopted the "Stars and Stripes" as the Flag of the United States.

1789 Captain William Bligh and his loyal crewmen reached Timor.

1800 Napoleon Bonaparte defeated the Austrians at the Battle of Marengo in Northern Italy and re-conquered Italy.

1805 Union Army Major Robert Anderson was born.

1807 Emperor Napoleon I's French Grande Armee defeated the Russian Army at the Battle of Friedland in Poland, ending the War of the Fourth Coalition.

1811 Author Harriet Beecher Stowe was born.

1821 Badi VII, king of Sennar, surrendered his throne and realm to Ismail Pasha, general of the Ottoman Empire, ending the existence of that Sudanese kingdom.

1825 Pierre Charles L'Enfant, principal architect of Washington, D.C., died.

1832 Inventor Nicolaus Otto was born.

1834 The hardhat diving suit was patented by Leonard Norcross.
1834 Isaac Fischer, Jr. patented sandpaper.

1839 The first Henley Regatta was held.

1841 The first Canadian Parliament opened in Kingston, Ontario.

1846 A group of American settlers in California raised the "Bear Flag" of the California Republic for the first time.

1847 Robert Bunsen invented a gas burner for laboratory use.

1872 Trade unions were legalized in Canada.

1880 L. Hughes rode Grenada to victory in the Belmont Stakes.

1881 The player piano was patented by John McTammany, Jr.

1884 Operatic tenor John Francis McCormack was born.

1900 Hawaii was organized as a territory of the United States.

1907 Norway granted middle class women the right to vote in parliamentary elections.

1913 The South American Parliament passed the Immigration Act, restricting the entry and free movement of Asians.
1913 Mary Browne defeated Dorothy Green 6-2, 7-5 for the U. S. Women;s National Championship.

1919 John Alcock and Arthur Whitten-Brown began the first non-stop transatlantic flight.

1922 Gene Sarazen won the PGA Championship.

1922Warren G. Harding became the first U. S. President to use radio, while dedicating the Francis Scott Key memorial in Baltimore, Maryland.

1928 Ché Guevara, Latin American revolutionary leader, was born.

1931 The French ship St. Philbert overturned off St. Nazaire, France, killing 450 persons.

1938 Action Comics released the very first Superman comic.
1938 Chlorophyll was patented by Benjamin Grushkin.

1940 German tanks rolled into Paris, France, and took control of the city.

1942 Anne Frank began her diary.
1942 The first bazooka rocket gun was produced in Bridgeport, Connecticut.
1942 Walt Disney released the movie Bambi.

1946 The Canadian Library Association was established.

1951 The first commercial computer, UNIVAC 1, entered service at the U. S. Census Bureau.

1952 Workers across Tunisia went on strike.
1952 Julius Boros won the U. S. Golf Open.

1953 General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla led a military coup in Colombia.

1954 President Dwight Eisenhower signed a bill to add the words "under God" to the United States Pledge of Allegiance.

1957 A military junta seized power in Haiti.

1958 Tommy Bolt won the U. S. Golf Open.

1962 Anna Slesers became the first victim of Albert DeSalvo, better known as the Boston Strangler.
1962 The European Space Research Organisation was established in Paris.
1962 Three prisoners escaped from the federal penitentiary at Alcatraz, California.

1963 Cosmonaut Valeri Bykovsky was launched into orbit aboard Vostok V.

1964 A truck ran off a mountain road into a lake near Rize, Turkey, killing 23 children.
1964 Formosa dedicated the Shihmen Dam.

1966 The Vatican announced the abolition of the index librorum prohibitum (index of prohibited books), which was originally instituted in 1557.
1966 Nine Pacific and Asian nations formed an Asian and Pacific Council.

1967 Mariner V was launched.

1973 Barrie Trinkle spelled "vouchsafe" to win the National Spelling Bee.

1974 The book All the President's Men was published.

1981 Donna Caponi Young won the LPGA Championship.

1982 The Falkland Islands War ended when Argentina surrendered to Great Britain.

1983 Fire at a Ramada Inn in Fort Worth, Texas, killed 5 persons.

1986 Marlin Perkins, host of "Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom," died.

1987 The Los Angeles Lakers defeated the Boston Celtics for the NBA Championship.

1988 The Beech Starship 1 became the first all-composite pressurized aircraft to be certified by the Federal Aviation Administration.

1989 Zsa Zsa Gabor was arrested for slapping a motorcycle policeman in Beverly Hills, California.

1990 The U. S. Supreme Court ruled police checks for drunk drivers constitutional.

1992 The Chicago Bulls defeated the Portland Trailblazers for the NBA Championship.

1993 Tansu Ciller was appointed the first female Premier of Turkey.

1994 The New York Rangers defeated the Vancouver Canucks for the Stanley Cup.

1995 The Houston Rockets defeated the Orlando Magic for the NBA Championship.

1998 The Chicago Bulls defeated the Utah Jazz for the NBA Championship.

2007 The San Antonio Spurs defeated the Cleveland Cavaliers for the NBA Championship.

2009 The Los Angeles Lakers defeated the Orlando Magic for the NBA Championship.
2009 Anne Nordqvist won the LPGA Championship.

2010 Singer Jimmy Dean died.

2012 An explosion at a steel plant in India killed 11 persons and injured 16 others.

2014 Forty-nine persons were killed when a Ukrainian airliner was shot down.

2016 Guitarist Henry McCullough died.

2017 A gunman wounded 4 persons outside Washington, D.C., while Republican politicians were practicing for a baseball game.
2017 Fire in the Grenfell Tower block of London, England, killed 79 persons and injured 37 others.

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This page was last updated on June 13, 2018.