On June 21st...

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1305 King Wenceslaus II of Bohemia and Poland died.

1377 King Edward III of England died.

1527 Florentine statesman Niccolo Machiavelli died.

1547 Fire killed 2,000-3,000 people in Moscow, Russia.

1607 The first Protestant Episcopal parish in America was established in Jamestown.

1631 John Smith, leader of the Virginia Colony, died.

1639 Puritan leader Increase Mather was born.

1652 Architect Inigo Jones died.

1684 King Charles II revoked the Massachusetts Bay Colony charter.

1738 English statesman Charles Townshend died.

1749 Halifax, Nova Scotia, was founded.

1768 The first medical diploma in America was granted to John Archer by the College of Philadelphia.

1774 American politician Daniel D. Tompkins was born.

1788 New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify the Constitution.

1791 King Louis XVI of France was captured while trying to escape to Austria with his family.

1821 The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church was organized.

1834 Cyrus Hall McCormick received a patent for his mechanical reaper.

1850 Daniel Carter Beard, founder of the Boy Scouts of America, was born.

1860 The U. S. Army adopted the semaphore system developed by Major Albert James Myer.

1874 Physicist Anders Jonas Ângström died.

1879 Frank W. Woolworth opened his first successful "five-cent store."

1882 Artist Rockwell Kent was born.

1893 The Ferris Wheel premiered at the World's Columbian Exposition.
1893 Businessman Leland Stanford died.

1898 Guam became a territory of the United States.

1903 Caricaturist Al Hirschfeld was born.

1905 Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre was born.

1907 E. W. Scripps founded United Press.
1907 Alec Ross won the U. S. Golf Open.
1907 Arnaud Massy won the British Golf Open.

1908 Composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov died.

1913 Tiny Broadwick became the first woman to parachute from an airplane.

1921 Actress Jane Russell was born.

1925 Actress Maureen Stapleton was born.

1933 Actor Bernie Kopell was born.

1938 Actor Ron Ely was born.

1939 The New York Yankees announced Lou Gehring's retirement.

1940 Actress Mariette Hartley was born.

1945 U. S. forces captured Okinawa.

1946 Fire at the Baker Hotel in Dallas, Texas, killed 10 persons.

1947 Actress Meredith Baxter was born.
1947 Actor Michael Gross was born.

1949 Georgia Neese Clark was sworn in as the first woman Treasurer of the United States.

1953 Benazir Bhutto, Prime Minister of Pakistan, was born.

1954 Gideon Sundback, inventor whoperfected the zipper, died.

1963 Giovanni Battista Montini, Archbishop of Milan, was elected pope and became Paul VI.

1964 Three civil rights workers disappeared in the Philadelphia, Mississippi, area.

1965 Gary Player won the U. S. Golf Open.
1965 Bernard M. Baruch, U. S. presidential adviser who coined the term "Cold War," died.

1968 Earl Warren resigned as Chief Justice of the United States.

1970 Brazil defeated Italy to win the FIFA World Cup.
1970 Tony Jacklin won the U. S. Golf Open.
1970 Piers Courage was killed in a crash during the Dutch Grand Prix.
1970 Former Indonesian President Sukarno died.

1971 The International Court of Justice asked South Africa to pull out of Namibia.
1971 Lee Trevino won the U. S. Golf Open.

1980 Orchestra leader Bert Kaempfert died.

1981 Riots in Casablanca, Morocco, killed at least 66 people.
1981 David Graham won the U. S. Golf Open.

1982 John Hinckley was found not guilty of the 1981 attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan by reason of insanity.
1982 Prince William of Great Britain was born.

1985 Hector Boiardi, aka Chef Boyardee, died.
1985 TageErlander, former Prime Minister of Sweden, died.

1987 Scott Simpson won the U. S. Golf Open.

1988 The Los Angeles Lakers defeated the Detroit Pistons for the NBA Championship.

1989 The U. S. Supreme Court ruled that burning a U. S. flag was an acceptable means of political expression.

1990 A magnitude 7.7 earthquake killed about 50,000 people in Iran.

1992 Tom Kite won the U. S. Golf Open.
1992 Li Xiannian, former President of the People's Republic of China, died.

1997 The New York Liberty defeated the Los Angeles Sparks in the first Women'sNational Basketball Association game.

1998 Lee Janzen won the U. S. Golf Open.

2001 A federal grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, indicted 13 Saudis and a Lebanese for a 1996 bombing in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 American servicemen.
2001 Blues musician John Lee Hooker died.
2001 Actor Carroll O'Connor died.

2003 Novelist Leon Uris died.

2004 Space Ship One became the first privately funded spaceplane to achieve space flight.

2008 NHRA Funny Car driver Scott Kalitta was killed in a qualifying round crash at Old Bridge Township Raceway Park.

2012 The Miami Heat defeated the Oklahoma City Thunder for the NBA Championship.

2013 A suicide bomber killed 15 persons and injured 20 others at a mosque in Peshawar, Pakistan.

2015 Hackers attacked the IT system at Warsaw Chopin Airport in Poland, grounding 1,400 passengers.
2015 Ninety-four persons died and 45 were hospitalized after drinking "moonshine" in Mumbai, India.
2015 Jordan Spieth won the U. S. Golf Open.

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This page was last updated on June 21, 2018.