June 20

June 20 is the 171st day of the year (172nd in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 194 days remaining.

Events

• 451- The Battle of Chalons, Flavius Aetius' victory over Attila the Hun.
• 1214 – University of Oxford receives its charter.
• 1631 – The sack of Baltimore: the Irish village of Baltimore was attacked by Algerian pirates.
• 1685 – Monmouth Rebellion: The Duke of Monmouth declared himself King of England at Bridgwater.
• 1756 – English garrison imprisoned in the Black Hole of Calcutta.
• 1782 – The U.S. Congress adopts the Great Seal of the United States.
• 1789 – Deputies of the French Third Estate took the Tennis Court Oath
• 1791 – The Flight to Varennes began.
• 1819 – The US vessel Savannah arrives at Liverpool. She is the first steam-propelled vessel to cross the Atlantic, most of the journey was made under sail.
• 1837 – Queen Victoria succeeds to the British throne.
• 1862 – Barbu Catargiu is assassinated.
• 1863 – West Virginia is admitted as the 35th U.S. state.
• 1877 – Alexander Graham Bell installs world's first commercial telephone service in Hamilton Ontario.
• 1893 – Lizzie Borden is found innocent of murdering her stepmother and father.
• 1919 – 150 die at the Teatro Yaguez fire, Mayagüez, Puerto Rico.
• 1939 – Benny Goodman's Song School ends its radio series.
• 1948 – Toast of the Town, later The Ed Sullivan Show, debuts.
• 1956 – A Venezuelan Super-Constellation crashed in Atlantic Ocean off Ashbury Park, New Jersey killing 74 people
• 1960 – Independence of Mali and Senegal.
• 1963 – "Hotline" established between Soviet Union and United States.
• 1966 – Canada sells 336 million bushels of wheat to Soviet Union.
• 1969 – Jacques Chaban-Delmas becomes Prime Minister of France
• 1977 – Oil begins to flow through the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS).
• 1980 – Roberto Duran starts his classic boxing trilogy with Sugar Ray Leonard by defeating him in Canada by a decision in 15 rounds, to gain the WBC world Welterweight championship.
• 1981 – Iran is taken over by what is now known as the Islamic Republic of Iran after two and a half years of intimidation.
• 1983 – LZW patent filed in USA.
• 1990 – Asteroid Eureka discovered.
• 1991 – German parliament decides to move the capital from Bonn back to Berlin.
• 1998 – The Los Angeles radio station KROQ opens the sixth annual of the KROQ Weenie Roast with Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, Blink-182, Cherry Poppin' Daddies, Creed, The Crystal Method, Deftones, Everclear, Harvey Danger, Madness, Marcy Playground, Ozomatli, The Prodigy, Save Ferris and Third Eye Blind.
• 2001 – Pervez Musharraf becomes president of Pakistan
• 2001 – Andrea Yates drowns her children in a bathtub and admits to the crime. She would be sentenced to life in prison.
• 2003 – LZW patent expires in USA.
• 2003  – Bounce premieres at the Goodman Theatre.
• 2003  – Formation of Wikimedia Foundation announced.

Births

• 1561 – Sigismund, king of Sweden and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (d. 1632)
• 1634 – Charles Emmanuel II of Savoy (d. 1675)
• 1756 – Joseph Martin Kraus, composer
• 1763 – Wolfe Tone, Irish patriot
• 1771 – Thomas Douglas, 5th Earl of Selkirk, philanthropist, entrepreneur (d. 1820)
• 1797 – Sophie (Frémiet) Rude, French artist (d. 1867)
• 1808 – Samson Raphael Hirsch, rabbi (d. 1888)
• 1819 – Jacques Offenbach, composer (d. 1880)
• 1887 – Kurt Schwitters, painter (Dadaist), writer (d. 1948)
• 1899 – Jean Moulin, leader of the French Resistance in WW II.
• 1905 – Lillian Hellman, playwright (d. 1984)
• 1909 – Errol Flynn, actor (d. 1959)
• 1912 – Anthony Buckeridge, author (d. 2004)
• 1924 – Chet Atkins, country guitar player
• 1931 – Olympia Dukakis, actress
• 1931  – Martin Landau, actor
• 1936 – Danny Aiello, actor
• 1937 – Donald Sullivan, priest
• 1940 – Eugen Drewermann, theologian
• 1940  – John Mahoney, actor
• 1941 – Ulf Merbold, physicist and astronaut
• 1941  – Ilse Ritter, actress
• 1942 – Brian Wilson, bass player and singer for The Beach Boys
• 1944 – Cheryl Holdridge, actress and Mouseketeer
• 1945 – Shekhar Mehta, racer, winner of the Safari Rally
• 1945  – Anne Murray, singer
• 1946 – Bob Vila, handyman
• 1947 – Dolores "LaLa" Brooks, singer, member of the Crystals
• 1949 – Lionel Richie, musician
• 1951 – Tress MacNeille, voice actress (The Simpsons, Animaniacs, Rugrats)
• 1952 – John Goodman, actor
• 1953 – Cyndi Lauper, singer
• 1954 – Michael Anthony, musician, Van Halen
• 1960 – John Taylor, musician, Duran Duran
• 1967 – Nicole Kidman, actress
• 1970 – Prince Moulay Rachid, prince of Morocco
• 1971 – Jeordie White, bassist for Marilyn Manson from 1990 – 2002

Deaths

• 840 – Louis the Pious, King of the Franks, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire (b. 778)
• 1597 – Willem Barentsz, navigator
• 1787 – Karl Friedrich Abel, German composer
• 1820 – Manuel Belgrano, Argentine lawyer and politician
• 1837 – William IV of the United Kingdom
• 1866 – Bernhard Riemann, mathematician (b. 1826)
• 1901 – Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom
• 1945 – Bruno Frank, author
• 1947 – Bugsy Siegel, gangster
• 1958 – Kurt Alder, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1902)
• 1993 – Vince Foster, Deputy White House Counsel (suicide)
• 1995 – Emil Cioran, Romanian-born French philosopher and essayist
• 1998 – Conrad Schumann, East German borderguard, most famous escapee from East Germany.
• 1999 – Clifton Fadiman, author
• 2002 – Erwin Chargaff, biochemist
• 2002 – Tinus Osendarp, Dutch sprinter
• 2003 – Bob Stump, U.S. Congressman from Arizona

Holidays and observances

• Roman Empire – Festival in honor of Summanus
• Ancient Latvia – Zalu Diena
• UNHCR World Refugee Day
• Flag Day in Argentina (1938)

External links

• BBC: On This Day

June 19 – June 21 – May 20 – July 20 — listing of all days