June 16 is the 167th day of the year (168th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 198 days remaining until the end of the year.
Holidays
- Bloomsday (Dublin, James Joyce fans)
- Christian feast day:
- Benno
- Lutgardis
- Quiricus and Julietta
- Richard of Chichester (Church of England)
- George Berkeley and Joseph Butler (commemoration, The Episcopal Church)
- June 16 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
- International Day of the African Child
- Martyrdom of Guru Arjan Dev (Sikhism)
- Sussex Day (Sussex)
- Youth Day (South Africa)
- Fresh Veggies Day
History
In 363, Emperor Julian marches back up the Tigris and burns his fleet of supply ships. During the withdrawal Roman forces suffering several attacks from the Persians.
In 632, Yazdegerd III ascends to the throne as king (shah) of the Persian Empire. He becomes the last ruler of the Sassanid Dynasty (modern Iran).
In 1373, the Anglo-Portuguese Treaty of Alliance is signed in London, the oldest treaty in history. It is the oldest active treaty in the world, the treaty was temporarily void during the Iberian Union.
In 1407, Ming–Hồ War: Retired King Hồ Quý Ly and his son King Hồ Hán Thương of Hồ dynasty are captured by the Ming armies.
In 1487, Battle at Stoke: Henry VII beats John de la Pole & Lord Lovell, the final engagement of the Wars of the Roses between the houses of York and Lancaster. Six thousand soldiers died in the Battle of Stoke, which secured the English throne for the Tudor monarchs.
In 1586, Mary, Queen of Scots, recognizes Philip II of Spain as her heir and successor.
In 1602, Bartholomew Gosnold gives up his colonization efforts in New England. He sailed into Provincetown Harbor, where he is credited with naming Cape Cod. Following the coastline for several days, he discovered Martha’s Vineyard and named it after his deceased daughter, Martha, and the wild grapes that covered much of the land. Gosnold established a small post on Cuttyhunk Island, one of the Elizabeth Islands, near Gosnold, now in Massachusetts. The post was abandoned when settlers decided to return on the ship to England since they feared they had insufficient provisions to carry them through the winter. They returned 5 years later to establish Jamestown.
In 1745, British troops take Cape Breton Island, which is now part of Nova Scotia, Canada. On the same day, War of the Austrian Succession: New England colonial troops under the command of William Pepperell capture the French Fortress of Louisbourg in Louisbourg, Nova Scotia (Old Style).
In 1746, War of Austrian Succession: Austria and Sardinia defeat a Franco-Spanish army at the Battle of Piacenza.
In 1755, French and Indian War: the French surrender Fort Beauséjour to the British, leading to the expulsion of the Acadians.
In 1774, To the good folks in Harrodsburg, Kentucky, on this day in 1774 the city of Harrodsburg, Kentucky was founded.
In 1775, The Liberty Bell is rung for the second Continental Congress.
In 1760, Not the Dark Ages, mind you, but less than 20 years before the American revolution…two old ladies in England were put into water to test whether they were witches.
In 1779, Spain declares war on Great Britain in favor of the U.S., and the Great Siege of Gibraltar begins.
In 1792, Benjamin Tupper, American general (b. 1738) dies. He was a soldier in the French and Indian War, and an officer of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, achieving the rank of brevet brigadier general. Subsequently, he served as a Massachusetts legislator, and he assisted Gen. William Shepard in stopping Shays’ Rebellion. Benjamin Tupper was a co-founder of the Ohio Company of Associates, and was a pioneer to the Ohio Country, involved in establishing Marietta, Ohio as the first permanent settlement in the Northwest Territory.
In 1795, First Battle of Groix otherwise known as “Cornwallis’ Retreat”.
In 1795, General “Mad Anthony” Wayne begins peace talks with Indian chiefs at Greenville, Ohio (treaty is later signed ending all wars between the Indians and the settlers in Ohio).
In 1815, Battle of Ligny and Battle of Quatre Bras, two days before the Battle of Waterloo.
In 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 has a nightmare which gives her the inspiration for Frankenstein (or the Modern Prometheus), John Polidori writing the short story The Vampyre, and Byron writing the poem Darkness.
In 1819, A major earthquake strikes the Kutch district of western India, killing over 1,543 people and raising a 6 m high, 6 km wide, ridge, extending for at least 80 km, that was known as the Allah Bund (“Dam of God”).
In 1822, Denmark Vesey leads slave rebellion in South Carolina.
In 1836, The formation of the London Working Men’s Association gives rise to the Chartist Movement.
In 1845, Texas agreed to annexation by the United States.
In 1846, The Papal conclave of 1846 concludes. Pope Pius IX is elected Pope beginning the longest reign in the history of the papacy.
In 1858, in a speech in Springfield, Illinois, Senate candidate Abraham Lincoln said the slavery issue had to be resolved, declaring, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
In 1858, The Battle of Morar takes place during the Indian Mutiny.
In 1864, Union General U.S. Grant begins the siege of Petersburg, Virginia.
In 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).
In 1875, Rudolph Bourman, a Swiss, completed a walk across the United States. He arrived in San Francisco having left New Jersey on January 19th and completed the journey in 135 days.
In 1873, President Grant decrees Wallowa Valley for Nez-Perce Indians.
In 1882, 17″ hailstones weighing 1.75 lbs fall in Dubuque Iowa.
In 1883, The Victoria Hall theatre panic in Sunderland, England kills 183 children.
In 1884, The first purpose-built roller coaster, LaMarcus Adna Thompson’s “Switchback Railway“, opens in New York’s Coney Island amusement park.
In 1891, John Abbott becomes Canada’s third Prime Minister.
In 1893, Cracker Jack was produced as a popcorn confection and presented it to the public at the World’s Columbian Exposition (Chicago’s first world’s fair) in 1893 by R.W. Rueckheim.
In 1896, the Republican national convention opened in St. Louis.
In 1897, A treaty annexing the Republic of Hawaii to the United States is signed; the Republic would not be dissolved until a year later.
In 1903, The Ford Motor Company is incorporated.
In 1903, Roald Amundsen commences the first east-west navigation of the Northwest Passage, leaving Oslo, Norway.
In 1904, Eugen Schauman assassinates Nikolai Bobrikov, Governor-General of Finland.
In 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“.
In 1903, Pepsi-Cola Co. registers Pepsi-Cola with the U.S. Patent Office, a year after opening its doors.
In 1904, James Joyce met his future wife, Nora, for the second time and fell in love. He later chose the date as the single-day setting for his novel, “Ulysses.”
In 1909, Glenn Hammond Curtiss sold his first airplane this day. Curtiss delivered the “Gold Bug” to the New York Aeronautical Society. In doing so, he picked up a check for $5,000.
In 1911, IBM founded as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company in Endicott, New York.
In 1911, A 772 gram stony meteorite strikes the earth near Kilbourn, Wisconsin damaging a barn.
In 1915, Foundation of the British Women’s Institute.
In 1917, The first Congress of Soviets was convened in Russia. The Russian word “soviet” literally means “council”. One of the reasons Russian nationalist feeling never completely gave way to Soviet patriotism was that it was hard to get worked up for a country called the “council union”. Russia, by the way, means “Redland,” although it’s more complicated than that because in Russian the word “red” also means “beautiful”.
In 1919, Ohio ratifies the 19th Amendment, granting women the right to vote (the fifth state to do so).
In 1922, General election in the Irish Free State: the pro-Treaty Sinn Féin win a large majority.
In 1922, Henry A. Berliner demonstrated the first helicopter prototype for a gathering of representatives of the U.S. Bureau of Aeronautics in College Park, Maryland.
In 1924, The Whampoa Military Academy is founded.
In 1925, The most famous Young Pioneer camp of the Soviet Union, Artek, is established.
In 1930, Sovnarkom establishes decree time in the USSR.
In 1933, The National Industrial Recovery Act is passed.
In 1933, Congress passed the Banking Act of 1933, which established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (F.D.I.C.). and the Public Works Administration (PWA) – later struck down by The Supreme Court.
In 1940, World War II: Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain becomes Chief of State of Vichy France (Chef de l’État Français).
In 1940, A Communist government is installed in Lithuania.
In 1941, the first U.S. federally owned airport opened at Washington DC.
In 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the closure by July 10 of all German consulates in the United States.
In 1944, At age 14, George Junius Stinney, Jr. becomes the youngest person executed in the United States in the 20th century.
In 1948, Members of the Malayan Communist Party kill three British plantation managers in Sungai Siput; in response, British Malaya declares a state of emergency.
In 1949, the gas turbine-electric locomotive was first demonstrated in, Erie, Pa.
In 1955, In a futile effort to topple President Juan Perón, rogue aircraft pilots of the Argentine Navy drop several bombs upon an unarmed crowd demonstrating in favor of Perón in Buenos Aires, killing 364 and injuring at least 800. At the same time on the ground, some forces soldiers attempt to stage a coup but are suppressed by loyal forces.
In 1958, Imre Nagy, Pál Maléter and other leaders of the 1956 Hungarian Uprising are executed.
In 1961, Rudolf Nureyev defects from the Soviet Union.
In 1961, Discoverer 25 is launched to determine how space conditions affect various minerals.
In 1963, Soviet Space Program: Vostok 6 Mission – Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova becomes the first woman in space. Her three day mission coincided with the flight of Valery Bykovsky, who was aboard Vostok 5.
In 1963, Levi Eshkol replaces David Ben-Gurion as Israeli Prime Minister.
In 1964, in Nov. 1963, Tereshkova married fellow cosmonaut Andrian Nikolayev. Their daughter, born in 1964, was the first child born to space-traveling parents.
In 1967, The Monterey Pop Festival begins
In 1967, COVER OF “TIME” Israeli General MOSHE DAYAN
In 1970, Kenneth A. Gibson of Newark, New Jersey, became the first black to win a mayoral election in a major Northeast city.
In 1970, Brian Piccolo, American football player (b. 1943) died from embryonal cell carcinoma, an aggressive form of germ cell testicular cancer, first diagnosed after it had spread to his chest cavity. He was a professional football player, a running back for the Chicago Bears for four years. He was the subject of the 1971 TV movie Brian’s Song. Piccolo played college football at Wake Forest; his only other scholarship offer was from Wichita State. He led the nation in rushing and scoring during his senior season in 1964 and was named the ACC Player of the Year, yet went unselected in the 1965 NFL Draft. Piccolo married his high school sweetheart, Joy Murrath, on December 26, 1964. They had three daughters: Lori, Traci, and Kristi. The month before his death, while accepting the George S. Halas Award for Most Courageous Player, Sayers told the crowd that they had selected the wrong person for the award and said, “I love Brian Piccolo, and I’d like all of you to love him, too. Tonight, when you hit your knees to pray, please ask God to love him, too.” Sayers and Dick Butkus were among the six Bears teammates who served as pallbearers at Piccolo’s funeral in Chicago on June 19. He was buried at Saint Mary Catholic Cemetery in Evergreen Park, Illinois.
In 1972, The largest single-site hydroelectric power project in Canada is inaugurated at Churchill Falls Generating Station.
In 1972, Baader-Meinhof terrorist group co-founder Ulrike Meinhof was captured by West German police in Hanover.
In 1975, the Supreme Court rules uniform minimum legal fees to be in violation of antitrust laws.
In 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. They revolted against government plans to enforce Afrikaans as the language for instruction in black schools.
In 1977, Oracle Corporation is incorporated in Redwood Shores, California, as Software Development Laboratories (SDL) by Larry Ellison, Bob Miner and Ed Oates.
In 1977, Soviet Communist Party General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev was named president, becoming the first person to hold both posts simultaneously.
In 1978, President Carter and Panamanian leader Omar Torrijos (toh-REE’-ohs) exchanged the instruments of ratification for the Panama Canal treaties.
In 1980, the Supreme Court rules that new life forms created in laboratories can be patented.
In 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.
In 1983, Yuri Andropov was elected chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, a position equivalent to president.
In 1985, On day three of the hijacking of TWA Flight 847, the hijackers released a letter signed by 29 passengers, calling on President Reagan to refrain from launching a military rescue.
In 1987, a jury in New York acquitted Bernhard Goetz of attempted murder in the subway shooting of four young blacks he said were going to rob him; however, Goetz was convicted of illegal weapons possession. (In 1996, a civil jury ordered Goetz to pay $43 million to one of the persons he’d shot.)
In 1988, Impeached and ousted Arizona Governor Evan Mecham (MEE’-kum) and his brother, Willard, were found innocent by a Phoenix jury of concealing a $350,000 campaign loan.
In 1989, Revolutions of 1989: Imre Nagy, the former Hungarian Prime Minister, is reburied in Budapest following the collapse of Communism in Hungary.
In 1992, Caspar Weinberber (Sec of Def 1981-87) became the highest-ranking official of the Reagan administration to be indicted on felony charges in the Iran-Contra affair (he was later pardoned by President Bush).
In 1992, President Bush and Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin capped the first day of their Washington summit by announcing their countries had agreed to slash their long-range nuclear arsenals by two-thirds.
In 1995, on Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial average closed above 4,500 for the first time, ending the day at 4,510.79.
In 1995, Bosnian government forces aided by Bosnian Croats unleashed a major offensive in hopes of breaking the Serb stranglehold on Sarajevo.
In 1996, Russian voters went to the polls in their first independent presidential election; the result was a runoff between President Boris Yeltsin (the eventual winner) and Communist challenger Gennady Zyuganov.
In 1998, A 40-year-old Florida woman gave birth to a boy in the first-ever live birth on the Internet before an estimated audience of 2 million people, a cable health network said. “The baby was just born. Everything’s fine. Everyone’s in good shape,” America’s Health Network spokeswoman Barbara Rodriquez said. The mother, identified only as Elizabeth, had labor induced at 6 a.m. ET and gave birth at 10:40 a.m. ET, Rodriquez said. The network had billed the birth at Arnold Palmer Hospital for Women and Children as an educational event.
In 1999, Vice President Al Gore announced his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination.
In 1999, Kathleen Ann Soliah, a fugitive member of the Symbionese Liberation Army, was captured in St. Paul, Minnesota, where she had made a new life under the name Sara Jane Olson.
In 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.
In 2000, Raynard Johnson, 17, was found hanging from a tree in Marion County, Mississippi; investigators later ruled it a suicide, not a lynching.
In 2000, Federal regulators approved the merger of Bell Atlantic and GTE Corporation, creating the nation’s largest local phone company.
In 2000, Empress dowager Nagako, widow of Japan’s Emperor Hirohito, died in Tokyo at age 97.
In 2010, Bhutan becomes the first country to institute a total ban on tobacco.
In 2012, The United States Air Force‘s robotic Boeing X-37B spaceplane returns to Earth after a classified 469-day orbital mission.
In 2012, China successfully launches its Shenzhou 9 spacecraft, carrying three astronauts – including the first female Chinese astronaut, Liu Yang – to the Tiangong-1 orbital module.
In 2012, The United States Air Force‘s robotic Boeing X-37B spaceplane returns to Earth after a classified 469-day orbital mission.
In 2013, A multi-day cloudburst centered on the North Indian state of Uttarakhand caused devastating floods and landslides becoming the country’s worst natural disaster since the 2004 tsunami.
In 2014, Mississippi has finally got a top ranking among the states. Problem is, it’s an achievement the state can do without. A study by researchers Cheol Liu from the City University of Hong Kong and Indiana University’s John L. Mikesell found corruption in Mississippi was tops among the states from 1976 through 2008. The study sized up the effect of public corruption — measured by convictions — on state spending. Data after 2008 for all of the areas of their research was incomplete. Don’t get too smug Tennessee; Tennessee ranked 3rd among the rest of the nation.
In 2014, Obama plans executive order protecting gay federal contractors.President Obama plans to sign an executive order prohibiting federal contractors from discriminating against employees because they are gay, a White House official said Monday. The move would mark a major victory for gay rights activists. Obama has called on Congress to pass a ban on discrimination by all employers against LGBT employees, but the Republican-controlled House has blocked it. [NBC News]
In 2015, FDA Officially Bans Trans Fat; Gives Food Industry Three Years To Remove It.
In 2016, Shanghai Disneyland Park, the first Disney Park in Mainland China opens to the public.
In 2019, Upwards of 2,000,000 people participate in the 2019 Hong Kong anti-extradition bill protests, the largest in Hong Kong’s history.