1567 – Mary, Queen of Scots, imprisoned in Lochleven Castle prison Scotland
1586 – Mary, Queen of Scots, recognizes Philip II of Spain as her heir and successor.
1755 – French and Indian War: the French surrender Fort Beauséjour to the British, leading to the expulsion of the Acadians.
1779 – Spain declares war on Great Britain in support of the US, and the siege of Gibraltar begins.
1816 – Lord Byron reads Fantasmagoriana to his four house guests at the Villa Diodati, Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, Claire Clairmont, and John Polidori, and inspires his challenge that each guest write a ghost story, which culminated in Mary Shelley writing the novel Frankenstein, John Polidori writing the short story The Vampyre, and Byron writing the poem Darkness.
1829 – Geronimo, American tribal leader (d. 1909) was born.
1846 – The Papal conclave of 1846 concludes. Pope Pius IX is elected Pope beginning the longest reign in the history of the papacy.
1858 – Abraham Lincoln says “A house divided against itself cannot stand”accepting Illinois Republican Party’s nomination for the Senate
1858 – The Battle of Morar takes place during the Indian Mutiny.
1871 – The University Tests Act allows students to enter the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Durham without religious tests (except for those intending to study theology).
1890 – Stan Laurel, [Arthur S Jefferson], England, comedian (Laurel & Hardy) Born
1897 – A treaty annexing the Republic of Hawaii to the United States is signed; the Republic would not be dissolved until a year later.
1903 – Ford Motors under Henry Ford incorporates
1903 – Pepsi Cola company forms
1904 – Irish author James Joyce begins a relationship with Nora Barnacle and subsequently uses the date to set the actions for his novel Ulysses; this date is now traditionally called “Bloomsday”.
1909 – 1st US airplane sold commercially, by Glenn Curtiss for $5,000
1909 – Jim Thorpe makes his pro baseball pitching debut for Rocky Mount (ECL) with 4-2 win, this will cause him to forfeit his Olympic medals
1911 – IBM founded as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company in Endicott, New York.
1922 – General election in the Irish Free State: the pro-Treaty Sinn Féin win a large majority.
1932 – Germany forbids SA/SS-gang fights
1935 – US Congress accepts FDR’s “New Deal”
1944 – At age 14, George Junius Stinney, Jr. becomes the youngest person executed in the United States in the 20th century. He , was convicted of the first-degree murder of two pre-teen white girls: 11-year-old Betty June Binnicker, and 8-year-old Mary Emma Thames; however, no physical evidence existed in the case, and the sole evidence against Stinney was the circumstantial fact the girls had spoken with Stinney and his sister shortly before their murder, and the testimony of three white police officers, who testified at a trial which lasted barely two hours, that Stinney had confessed to the murders. He was executed by electric chair.
1955 – Pope Pius XII ex-communicates Argentine Pres Juan Peron
1959 – The Ultimate Warrior, American wrestler (d. 2014) was born.
1959 – George Reeves, actor (Superman, Gone with the Wind), (Allegedly) commits suicide by shooting himself in the head at 45
1961 – Soviet ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev defects to West in Paris
1963 – Soviet Space Program: Vostok 6 Mission – Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova becomes the first woman in space.
1966 – “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-in”" debuts on NBC-TV
1967 – The Monterey International Pop Music Festival opens in Monterey, California, which will run for three days starts on June 16th and end on June 18th . Over 200,000 people attended, and it is often regarded as the precursor to Woodstock.
1970 – Brian Piccolo, American football player (b. 1943)Dies of cancer (Depicted in the Film “Brian’s Song”)
1971 – Tupac Shakur, American rapper, producer, and actor (Digital Underground, Outlawz, and Thug Life) (d. 1996) was born.
1976 – Soweto uprising: a non-violent march by 15,000 students in Soweto, South Africa turns into days of rioting when police open fire on the crowd.
1977 – Wernher von Braun, rocket scientist (V1/V2), dies at 65 of smoking (Allegedly)
1979 – “Logical Song” by Supertramp peaks at #6
1981 – U.S. President Ronald Reagan awards the Congressional Gold Medal to Ken Taylor, Canada’s former ambassador to Iran, for helping six Americans escape from Iran during the hostage crisis of 1979-81; he is the first foreign citizen bestowed the honor.
1982 – John Honeyman-Scott, guitarist (Pretenders), overdoses on drugs
1987 – Subway gunman Bernhard Goetz acquitted on all but gun possession charges after shooting 4 black youths who tried to rob him
1992 – Caspar Weinberger (Sec of Def 1981-87), indicted on Iran-contra charge
2000 – Israel complies with United Nations Security Council Resolution 425 22 years after its issuance, which calls on Israel to completely withdraw from Lebanon. Israel does so, except the disputed Shebaa farms.
2010 – Bhutan becomes the first country to institute a total ban on tobacco.
2012 – A collapse of a stage at a Toronto Radiohead concert kills one person