0555: Death of Pope Vigilius
0604: Death of St. Augustine
1002: Henry II elected King of Germany
1099: First Crusade reaches the walls of Jerusalem
1159: Death of St. Robert of Newminister
1304: Pope Benedict XI excommunicates William de Nogaret for his part
in leading the attack on Pope Boniface
1329: Death of Robert I "the Bruce," King of Scotland, of
leprosy
1394: Death of Anne of Bohemia, Queen to Richard II of England
1494: Treaty of Tordesillas: the Pope divides the New World between
Spain and Portugal
1498: Columbus leaves on his third voyage
1508: Capitulation of Pisa to Florence
1520: "Field of the Cloth of Gold"
1537: Death of Madeline of France, wife of King James of Scotland
1545: Charles V allies with Pope Paul III
1546: Peace of Ardres
1557: England declares war on France
1566: Sir Thomas Gresham lays the foundation stone of the Royal
Exchange
1576: Frobisher sails in search of the Northwest Passage
1586: Francis Drake burns St. Augustine, Florida
1610: Jamestown Colony almost abandoned
1628: Charles I of England assents to Parliament's Petition of Rights
1631: Death of Mumtaz Mahal, wife of Shah Jahan of India. The Taj Mahal
is her tomb
1654: Louis the 14th was crowned King of France in Rheims.
1769: Recognized by Kentucky's Historical Society as the date that
frontiersman Daniel Boone first began to explore the present-day Bluegrass State.
1776: Richard Henry Lee of Virginia proposed to the Continental
Congress a resolution calling for a Declaration of Independence.
1864: Abraham Lincoln was nominated for another term as president at
his party's convention in Baltimore.
1929: The sovereign state of Vatican City came into existence as copies
of the Lateran Treaty were exchanged in Rome.
1934: Igor Stravinsky had his appendix removed.
1939: King George the Sixth and his wife, Queen Elizabeth, arrived at
Niagara Falls, New York from Canada on the first visit to the United States by a reigning
British monarch.
1945: The opera "Peter Grimes" premiered in London. Critics
hailed Benjamin Britten as the man who would single-handedly revivify British opera. This
happened one month after the end of World War Two, in which Britten had been a pacifist
and exiled himself for a time to America
1948: The Communists completed their takeover of Czechoslovakia with
the resignation of President Eduard Benes
1967: Author-critic Dorothy Parker, famed for her caustic wit, died in
New York.
1981: Israeli military planes destroyed a nuclear power plant in Iraq,
a facility the Israelis charged could have been used to make nuclear weapons.
1983: One day after Nicaragua expelled three U.S. diplomats, the Reagan
administration ordered six Nicaraguan consulates closed and expelled six Nicaraguan
diplomats.
1987: "Les Miserables" dominated Broadway's Tony Awards,
taking eight prizes, including best musical. "Fences," by August Wilson, was
named best play.
1988: Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis clinched the Democratic
presidential nomination by defeating the Reverend Jesse Jackson in the New Jersey,
California, Montana and New Mexico primaries.
1989: 169 people were killed when a Suriname Airways DC-8 crashed in a
tropical forest near the Paramaribo airport.
1990: South African President de Klerk lifted a four-year-old
nationwide state of emergency in all but the strife-torn Indian Ocean province of Natal.
1991: The government reported the nation's unemployment rate had worsened to a four-year high of six-point-nine percent in May, up three-tenths of a percentage point from April.
1991: A US District Court judge rejected a request by San Francisco TV station KQED for permission to televise the execution of convicted murderer Robert Alton Harris.
1992: President Bush, who met with British Prime Minister John Major at
Camp David, Maryland, voiced confidence he would win re-election, but embraced the role of
underdog, saying, "I do better when I'm coming from behind."
1993: The Supreme Court ruled that religious groups can sometimes meet
on school property after hours. The justices also let stand, without comment, a federal
appeals court ruling allowing student-led prayers at graduation ceremonies in Texas,
Louisiana and Mississippi.
1993: In New York, Woody Allen lost his bitter custody battle against
Mia Farrow.
1994: Twelve-year-old Vicki Van Meter of Meadville, Pennsylvania,
completed a trans-Atlantic flight, landing in Glasgow, Scotland.
1994: President Clinton addressed the French National Assembly,
challenging his generation of Allied leaders to strive for greater European unity or face
"the grim alternative" of violence like that rending Bosnia.
1995: President Clinton vetoed his first bill, a Republican plan to cut
$16.4 billion in spending. Two buses crossed into Serbia with 108 U.N. peacekeepers freed
by the Bosnian Serbs.
1996: The Clinton White House acknowledged it had obtained the FBI
files of House Speaker Newt Gingrich's press secretary, former Bush chief of staff James
A. Baker III and other appointees from Republican administrations, calling it "an
innocent bureaucratic mistake."
1997: An 18-member presidential commission approved a report saying
that cloning a human being was "morally unacceptable," but adding that research
using cells of humans and animals should be allowed.
1997: Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner "Silver Charm"
failed to win horse racing's Triple Crown, losing the Belmont Stakes to "Touch
Gold."
1998: In a crime that shocked the nation, James Byrd Junior, a
49-year-old black man, was chained to a pickup truck and dragged to his death in Jasper,
Texas. (Three white men were arrested; so far, one of them, John William King, has been
convicted of murder and sentenced to death.)
1998: At the Tony Awards, "The Lion King" won best musical
and "Art" was named best play.
1999: The FBI put alleged terrorist mastermind Osama Bin Laden and
anti-abortion activist and accused doctor killer James Charles Kopp on the bureau's Ten
Most Wanted list. Gunmen killed popular Mexican television host Francisco "Paco"
Stanley.
2000: US District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson ordered the breakup of Microsoft Corporation, declaring the software giant should be split into two because it had "proved untrustworthy in the past." Microsoft vowed to appeal.
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