0451: Atilla the Hun defeated by Aetius
0840: Death of Louis I "the Pious," Holy Roman Emperor
0981: Death of St. Adalbert of Magdeburg
1192: Richard I captures a large Moslem caravan (3rd Crusade)
1294: Edward III, King of England, sends his ambassadors to France,
with a declaration of war
1367: Geoffrey Chaucer granted a royal pension for service
1475: Edward IV, King of England, and his army, land in France
1499: Isabella, Queen of Spain, condemns enslavement of Indians
1529: Peace of Barcelona
1596: English sack Cadiz, Spain...again
1597: Death of William Barents, explorer
1605: Theodore II, Tsar of Russia, assassinated by boyars in a palace
coup
1612: A certain Lord Sanquir, of Scotland, executed for assassinating a
man to whom he had lost in a duel
1632: Britain grants second Lord Baltimore rights to Chesapeake Bay
area.
1649: Death of Richard Brandon, executioner of Charles I of England
1756: In India, a group of British soldiers was imprisoned in a
suffocating cell that gained notoriety as the "Black Hole of Calcutta." Most
died..
1782: The U.S. Congress approves the Great Seal of the United States
and the Eagle as it's symbol. William Barton designed the seal that is still used today.
It consists of an eagle, an olive branch and 13 arrows -- one for each of the original 13
colonies.
1791: King Louis XVI caught trying to escape the French Revolution.
1837: Queen Victoria at age 18 ascends British throne following death
of uncle King William IV. Ruled for 63 years (ending in 1901).
1863: West Virginia is admitted to the Union as the 35th state.
1867: President Andrew Johnson announces the purchase of Alaska.
1893: Lizzie Borden found "Not guilty" of murdering her
parents in New Bedford, Mass.
1898: The U.S. Navy seized Guam, the largest of the Mariana Islands in
the Pacific, during the Spanish-American war. The people of Guam were granted U.S.
citizenship in 1950.
1901: Edward Elgar's "Cockaigne" Overture was premiered in
London.
1921: Alice M. Robertson of Oklahoma presided over the U.S. House of
Representatives on this day. She was the first woman to accept the task, even though it
was only for a few minutes.
1940: The French composer Jehan Alain, whose organ works are still
played, died while on patrol in the Alsace province near the German border. Alain was only
29.
1943: Race-related rioting erupted in Detroit; federal troops were sent
in two days later to quell the violence that resulted in more than 30 deaths.
1947: Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel was shot dead at the Beverly
Hills, California, mansion of his girlfriend, Virginia Hill, apparently at the order of
mob associates.
1947: President Truman vetoed Taft-Hartley Act.
1948: Ed Sullivan has his first really big 'shoe' on Sunday night TV.
`Toast of the Town' premiered on CBS-TV. It started his TV career that would span 23 years
on a weekly basis. The first show of "Toast of the Town" cost $1375 to produce
including just $375 for the talent.
1960: Floyd Patterson took back the world heavyweight title this day by
knocking out Ingemar Johanson of Sweden in round five of a title bout at the Polo Grounds
in New York City. He lost the title only six days later.
1963: US and USSR agree to set up the "Hot Line".
1967: Boxer Muhammad Ali convicted of violating Selective Service laws
by refusing to be drafted. His conviction is later struck down by the Supreme Court.
1977: Oil began to flow through the $7.7 billion, 789-mile Alaska
pipeline.
1979: ABC News correspondent Bill Stewart was shot to death in Managua,
Nicaragua, by a member of President Anastasio Somoza's national guard.
1982: Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin arrives in Washington.
1986: Doctors at Bethesda Naval remove 2 small benign polyps from
Reagan.
1987: Johnny Carson marries 4th wife at Alexis, Mass.
1989: Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev greeted the speaker of
Iran's parliament, Hashemi Rafsanjani, who was visiting Moscow.
1990: President Bush broke off U.S. diplomatic contact with the
Palestine Liberation Organization because the PLO refused to act against a factional
leader who plotted to attack Israel.
1990: South African black nationalist Nelson Mandela and his wife,
Winnie, arrived in New York City for a ticker-tape parade in their honor as they began an
eight-city U.S. tour.
1991: Boris Yeltsin, the newly elected president of the Russian republic, was welcomed to the White House by President Bush. German lawmakers voted to move the seat of the national government back to Berlin.
1994: O.J. Simpson pleaded innocent in Los Angeles to the killings of
his ex-wife Nicole and her friend Ronald Goldman.
1994: Former airman Dean Allen Mellberg went on a shooting rampage at
Fairchild Air Force Base near Spokane, Washington, killing four people and wounding 22
others before being shot and killed by a military police sharpshooter.
1995: U.S. Air Force Captain Jim Wang, a radar officer, was cleared of
wrongdoing in a friendly fire attack on two U.S. helicopters over northern Iraq in 1994
that resulted in 26 deaths.
1995: Royal Dutch Shell abandoned its controversial plan to sink an
aging oil platform in the North Atlantic.
1996: The Clinton administration announced it would veto the
re-election of U.N. Secretary-General Bhoutros Bhoutros-Ghali.
1996: Westinghouse Electric agreed to buy Infinity Broadcasting for
$3.9 billion.
1998: On the eve of Father's Day, President Clinton used his weekly
radio address to announce the release of the first wave of almost $60 million in prostate
cancer research grants.
1999: As the last of 40,000 Yugoslav troops left Kosovo, NATO declared
a formal end to its bombing campaign against Yugoslavia.
1999: Golfer Payne Stewart won his second U.S. Open title, by one
stroke over Phil Mickelson.
2000: After a furious last-minute lobbying blitz by the
mislead Clinton administration, the Senate voted 57-to-42 to approve legislation making it easier for federal prosecutors to try hate crimes, attaching the measure to a defense authorization bill. (However, the House
wisely stripped the hate crimes provision from the defense bill the following October.)
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