June 151215 - King John of England put his seal on the Magna Carta. 1381 - The English peasant revolt was crushed in London. 1389 - Ottoman Turks crushed Serbia in the Battle of Kosovo. 1607 - Colonists in North America completed James Fort in Jamestown, VA. 1667 - Jean-Baptiste Denys administered the first fully-documented human blood transfusion. He successfully transfused the blood of a sheep to a 15-year old boy. 1752 - Benjamin Franklin experimented by flying a kite during a thunderstorm. The result was a little spark that showed the relationship between lightning and electricity. 1775 - George Washington was appointed head of the Continental Army by the Second Continental Congress. 1836 - Arkansas became the 25th U.S. state. 1844 - Charles Goodyear was granted a patent for the process that strengthens rubber. 1846 - The United States and Britain settled a boundary dispute concerning the boundary between the U.S. and Canada, by signing a treaty. 1864 - An order to establish a military burial ground was signed by Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton. The location later became known as Arlington National Cemetery. 1866 - Prussia attacked Austria. 1877 - Henry O. Flipper became the first African American to graduate from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. 1898 - The U.S. House of representatives approved the annexation of Hawaii. 1909 - Benjamin Shibe patented the cork center baseball. 1911 - The Computing-Tabulating-Recording Co. was incorporated in the state of New York. The company was later renamed International Business Machines (IBM) Corp. 1916 - U.S. President Woodrow Wilson signed a bill incorporating the Boy Scouts of America. 1917 - Great Britain pledged the release of all the Irish captured during the Easter Rebellion of 1916. 1919 - Captain John Alcock and Lt. Arthur W. Brown won $50,000 for successfully completing the first, non-stop trans-Atlantic plane flight. 1938 - Johnny Vandemeer (Cincinnati Reds) pitched his second straight no-hitter. 1940 - The French fortress of Verdun was captured by Germans. 1944 - American forces began their successful invasion of Saipan during World War II. 1947 - The All-Indian Congress accepted a British plan for the partition of India. 1948 - Soviet authorities announced that the Autobahn would be closed indefinitely "for repairs." 1958 - Greece severed military ties to Turkey because of the Cypress issue. 1964 - The last French troops left Algeria. 1978 - King Hussein of Jordan married 26-year-old American Lisa Halaby, who became Queen Noor. 1981 - The U.S. agreed to provide Pakistan with $3 billion in military and economic aid from October 1982 to October 1987. 1982 - In the capital city of Stanley, the Falklands war ended as Argentine troops surrendered to the British. 1983 - The U.S. Supreme Court reinforced its position on abortion by striking down state and local restriction on abortions. 1986 - Pravda, the Communist Party newspaper, reported that the chief engineer of the Chernobyl nuclear plant was dismissed for mishandling the incident at the plant. 1992 - It was ruled by the U.S. Supreme Court that the government could kidnap criminal suspects from foreign countries for prosecution. 1992 - U.S. Vice President Dan Quayle instructed a student to spell "potato" with an "e" on the end during a spelling bee. He had relied on a faulty flash card that had been written by the student's teacher. 1994 - Israel and the Vatican established full diplomatic relations. 1999 - South Korean naval forces sank a North Korean torpedo boat during an exchange in the disputed Yellow Sea. |