Title: June 20 Content: == Events == === Up to 1950 === *451- The Battle of Chalons, Flavius Aetius' victory over Attila the Hun. *1214 – University of Oxford receives its charter. *1605 - Tsar Feodor III of Russia is murdered. *1631 – The sack of Baltimore: the Irish village of Baltimore was attacked by Algerian pirates. *1667 - Pope Clement IX is elected. *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. *1840 - Samuel Morse receives a patent for the telegraph. *1862 – Barbu Catargiu is assassinated in Romania. *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. *1884 - The Pentre Ifan Neolithic site in Pembrokeshire, west Wales, gets the special status of a "Scheduled Monument". *1887 - Victoria Terminus, the busiest railway station in India, opens in Bombay. *1893 – Lizzie Borden is found innocent of murdering her stepmother and father. *1895 - The Kiel Canal, crossing the base of the Jutland peninsula in Northern Germany, is officially opened. *1900 – In China, the Boxer Rebellion begins. *1919 – 150 die at the Teatro Yaguez fire, Mayagüez, Puerto Rico. *1921 - Workers of the Buckingham and Carnatic Mills in Chennai, India, begin a four-month strike. *1939 – Benny Goodman's Song School ends its radio series. *1940 - World War II: Italy begins *1943 - The Detroit race riots break out. *1944 - World War II: The Battle of the Philippine Sea finishes, with a decisive US Naval victory. *1944 - Continuation War: The Soviet Union demands the unconditional surrender of Finland, which the Finnish government refuses. *1945 - The United States Secretary of State approves the transfer of Wernher von Braun and his team of Nazi rocket scientists to the US. *1948 – Toast of the Town, later The Ed Sullivan Show, debuts. === 1951 2000 === *1954 - 1954 FIFA World Cup: West Germany loses a group game 8-3 to the Hungary national football team, which they go on to beat 3-2 in the final. *1956 – A Venezuelan Super-Constellation crashed in Atlantic Ocean off Ashbury Park, New Jersey killing 74 people *1959 - A rare June hurricane strikes Canada's Gulf of Saint Lawrence, killing 35 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. *1973 - Ezeiza massacre in Buenos Aires - Snipers fire on left-wing Peronists, killing 13 people. *1976 - The Czechoslovakia national football team defeats the West Germany national football team to win UEFA Euro 1976. *1977 - Menachem Begin becomes Prime Minister of Israel. *1977 – Oil begins to flow through the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS). *1979 - ABC News correspondent Bill Stewart is shot dead by a Nicaraguan soldier under the regime of Anastasio Somoza Debayle. *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. *1982 - Jacky Ickx wins the 24-hour motor race at Le Mans, France. *1990 – Asteroid Eureka is discovered. *1991 – German parliament decides to move the capital city from Bonn back to Berlin. *1992 - Estonia takes the Kroon as its national currency. *1994 - In Mashad, Iran, a bomb attack on a mosque kills 26 people and injures 80. *1995 - In Kenya the Safina political party is founded by Richard Leakey and opposition activists. === From 2001 === *2001 – Pervez Musharraf becomes President of Pakistan *2001 – Andrea Yates drowns her children in a bathtub and admits the crime. She was later sentenced to life in prison. *2003 – Formation of Wikimedia Foundation is announced. *2009 – In Tehran, student Neda Agha-Soltan is shot dead. As it happened during post-election protests, she becomes a symbol of the Iranian opposition. *2010 - Juan Manuel Santos is elected President of Colombia. *2012 - Antonis Samaras becomes Prime Minister of Greece, after a second election in the space of six weeks, during the country's economic crisis. *2013 - At 1 p.m., the 3-hour PSI reading in Singapore reached record levels once again with a reading of 371 in the Hazardous range, as Singapore experienced its worst haze to date. *2014 - 2014 FIFA World Cup: Costa Rica secures a place in the second round after beating Italy 1-0, from a group also containing England and Uruguay. It is one of the surprises of the tournament. *2019 - Iran shoots down a US surveillance drone over the Strait of Hormuz; US President Donald Trump later admits to having ordered a strike on Iran which he later cancelled. *2019 - Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt become the final two candidates for the leadership of the British Conservative Party and the post of Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. == Births == === Up to 1900 === * 1005 - Ali az-Zahir, Egyptian caliph (d. 1036) * 1389 - John of Lancaster, 1st Duke of Bedford (d. 1435) * 1469 - Gian Galeazzo Sforza, consort of Isabella of Naples (d. 1496) * 1566 – Sigismund III Vasa, King of Poland and Sweden (d. 1632) * 1583 - Jacob De la Gardie, Swedish soldier and statesman (d. 1652) * 1634 - Charles Emmanuel II of Savoy (d. 1675) * 1642 - George Hickes, English theologian and writer (d. 1715) * 1647 - John George III, Elector of Saxony (d. 1691) * 1717 - Jacques Saly, French sculptor (d. 1776) * 1723 – Adam Ferguson, Scottish philosopher and historian (d. 1816) * 1737 - Tokugawa Ieharu, Japanese shogun (d. 1786) * 1753 - Antoine de Rivarol, French writer (d. 1801) * 1754 - Landgravine Amalie of Hesse-Darmstadt (d. 1832) * 1756 - Joseph Martin Kraus, German composer (d. 1792) * 1760 - Richard Wellesley, 1st Marquess Wellesley, British statesman (d. 1842) * 1763 - Wolfe Tone, Irish lawyer and independence campaigner (d. 1798) * 1771 - Thomas Douglas, 5th Earl of Selkirk, Scottish philanthropist (d. 1820) * 1778 - Jean Baptiste Gay, vicomte de Martignac, French statesman (d. 1832) * 1786 - Marceline Desbordes- Valmore, French writer (d. 1859) * 1819 – Jacques Offenbach, German-French composer (d. 1880) * 1832 - Benjamin Bristow, American politician (d. 1896) * 1833 - Leon Bonnat, French painter (d. 1922) * 1858 – Charles W. Chesnutt, American writer (d. 1932) * 1860 - Alexander Winton, Scottish automobile designer and racer (d. 1932) * 1860 - Jack Worrall, Australian cricketer and footballer (d. 1932) * 1861 – Frederick Gowland Hopkins, English chemist, won the 1929 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1947) * 1862 - Marco Praga, Italian playwright (d. 1929) * 1869 - Lucy Kemp-Welch, English painter (d. 1958) * 1872 - George Carpenter, 5th General of the Salvation Army (d. 1948) * 1875 - Reginald Punnett, British geneticist (d. 1967) * 1884 - Johannes Heinrich Schultz, German psychiatrist (d. 1970) * 1887 - Kurt Schwitters, German painter and writer (d. 1948) * 1889 - John S. Paraskevopoulos, Greek- South African astronomer (d. 1951) * 1891 – John A. Costello, Irish Taoiseach (d. 1976) * 1891 - Giannina Arangi-Lombardi, Italian soprano (d. 1951) * 1896 - Wilfrid Pelletier, Canadian conductor, pianist, composer and arts administrator (d. 1982) * 1897 – Elisabeth Hauptmann, German writer (d. 1973) * 1897 - Jimmy Driftwood, American folk musician and songwriter (d. 1998) * 1899 - Jean Moulin, French resistance leader (d. 1943) === 1901 1950 === * 1902 - Juan Evaristo, Argentine footballer (d. 1978) * 1905 – Lillian Hellman, American playwright (d. 1984) * 1906 - Bob King, American high jumper (d. 1965) * 1907 - Jimmy Driftwood, American singer-songwriter and banjo player (d. 1998) * 1909 – Errol Flynn, Australian-American actor (d. 1959) * 1913 – Lilian Jackson Braun, American writer (d. 2011) * 1913 - Infante Juan, Count of Barcelona, Spanish royal, father of King Juan Carlos I of Spain (d. 1993) * 1915 - Terence Young, British screenwriter and director (d. 1994) * 1916 - Jean-Jacques Bertrand, 21st Premier of Quebec (d. 1973) * 1917 - Helena Rasiowa, Polish mathematician (d. 1994) * 1920 - Man Mohan Adhikari, Nepalese politician (d. 1999) * 1920 - Eduardo Mondlane, Mozambican political activist (d. 1969) * 1923 - Jerzy Nowak, Polish actor (d. 2013) * 1923 - Peter Gay, German-American historian, educator and author (d. 2015) * 1924 – Chet Atkins, American guitarist and producer (d. 2001) * 1924 – Fritz Koenig, German sculptor (d. 2017) * 1924 - Rainer Barzel, German politician (d. 2006) * 1925 - Audie Murphy, American soldier, actor and songwriter (d. 1971) * 1925 - Doris Hart, American tennis player (d. 2015) * 1926 - Giovanni Viola, Italian footballer (d. 2008) * 1927 - Simin Behbahani, Iranian poet (d. 2014) * 1927 – Josef Posipal, German footballer and manager (d. 1997) * 1928 – Jean-Marie Le Pen, French far-right politician * 1928 – Martin Landau, American actor (d. 2017) * 1928 - Eric Dolphy, American jazz musician (d. 1964) * 1929 - Edgar Bronfman, Sr., Canadian-American businessman (d. 2013) * 1929 - Edith Windsor, American LGBT rights activist ad technological manager at IBM (d. 2017) * 1930 - Magdalena Abakanowicz, Polish sculptor and artist (d. 2017) * 1931 – Olympia Dukakis, American actress (d. 2021) * 1932 - Robert Rozhdestvensky, Russian poet (d. 1994) * 1933 - Danny Aiello, American actor * 1933 - Dai Dower, Welsh boxer (d. 2016) * 1933 - Brett Halsey, American actor * 1934 - Sergio Balanzino, Italian diplomat, former Secretary-General of NATO. * 1934 - Graham Leggat, Scottish footballer * 1934 - Wendy Craig, English actress * 1935 - Armando Picchi, Italian footballer (d. 1971) * 1936 - Billy Guy, American singer (d. 2002) * 1937 - Phil Skoglund, New Zealand lawn bowls player (d. 2015) * 1938 - Joan Kirner, Australian politician, 42nd Premier of Victoria (d. 2015) * 1939 - Konrad Spindler, German prehistorian (d. 2005) * 1940 - John Mahoney, English-American actor (d. 2018) * 1941 - Stephen Frears, British actor, director, producer * 1941 - Ulf Merbold, German physicist and astronaut * 1942 – Brian Wilson, American musician (The Beach Boys) * 1945 – Anne Murray, Canadian singer * 1945 - Jean-Claude Izzo, French writer (d. 2000) * 1945 - Shekhar Mehta, Kenyan rally driver (d. 2006) * 1946 - Lars Vilks, Swedish sculptor, artist and activist * 1946 – Xanana Gusmao, former President of East Timor * 1948 – Ludwig Scotty, former President of Nauru * 1948 - Cirilo Flores, American bishop (d. 2014) * 1948 - Alan Longmuir, Scottish musician and actor (Bay City Rollers) (d. 2018) * 1949 - Lionel Richie, American singer and musician * 1950 – Nouri al-Maliki, Prime Minister of Iraq === 1951 1975 === * 1951 – Tress MacNeille, American voice actress * 1952 – John Goodman, American actor * 1952 – Vikram Seth, Indian poet * 1952 - Larry Riley, American actor * 1952 - Mabel Rivera, Spanish actress * 1953 - Ulrich Mühe, German actor (d. 2007) * 1954 – Michael Anthony, American musician (Van Halen) * 1954 - Allan Lamb, South African-English cricketer * 1954 - Ilan Ramon, Israeli astronaut (d. 2003) * 1958 - Barbara Rosenkranz, Austrian politician * 1958 - Chuck Wagner, American actor * 1959 – Chris Williams, African-American actor * 1960 – John Taylor, British musician ("Duran Duran") * 1963 - José Basualdo, Argentine footballer * 1964 - Pierfrancesco Chili, Italian motorcycle racer * 1964 - Silke Möller, German athlete * 1966 - Boaz Yakin, American screenwriter and director * 1967 – Nicole Kidman, Australian actress * 1967 - Angela Melillo, Italian actress, model, singer and television personality * 1968 - Mateusz Morawiecki, Polish politician, Prime minister of Poland * 1969 - Paulo Bento, Portuguese footballer and manager * 1970 – Prince Moulay Rachid of Morocco * 1970 - Andrea Nahles, German politician * 1971 - Josh Lucas, American actor * 1971 - Jeordie White, American musician * 1972 - Craig Thomson, Scottish football referee * 1973 - Chino Moreno, American singer-songwriter and musician === From 1976 === * 1976 – Juliano Belletti, Brazilian footballer * 1978 – Frank Lampard, English footballer * 1978 - Quinton Jackson, American mixed martial artist and actor * 1979 - Masashi Motoyama, Japanese footballer * 1980 – Carlo Festuccia, Italian rugby player * 1980 - Vignir Svavarsson, Icelandic handball player * 1981 - Brede Hangeland, Norwegian footballer * 1982 – Aleksei Berezutski, Russian footballer * 1982 – Vasili Berezutski, Russian footballer * 1982 – Example, English rapper * 1982 - George Forsyth, Peruvian footballer * 1983 - Josh Childress, American basketball player * 1984 - Hassan Adams, American basketball player * 1985 - Souleymane Mamam, Togolese footballer * 1986 - Luca Cigarini, Italian footballer * 1987 – Itumeleng Khune, South African footballer * 1987 - Alexey Korolev, Kazakhstani ski jumper * 1987 – Paweł Rogaliński, Polish journalist * 1987 - Asmir Begovic, Bosnia and Herzegovina footballer * 1988 - Shefali Chowdhury, British actress * 1989 – Javier Pastore, Argentine footballer * 1989 - Christopher Mintz-Plasse, American actor * 1990 - Ding Ning, Chinese table tennis player * 1990 - Iselin Solheim, Norwegian singer * 1991 - Rick ten Voorde, Dutch footballer * 1993 - Sead Kolasinac, Bosnia and Herzegovina footballer * 1996 - Majid Hosseini, Iranian footballer * 1997 - Maria Lark, Russian-American actress * 1997 - Jordan Larsson, Swedish footballer * 1998 - Jadin Gould, American actress * 1999 - Yui Mizuno, Japanese singer and model == Deaths == === Up to 1900 === *451 – Theodorid, King of the Visigoths *537 - Pope Silverius *840 – Louis the Pious, King of the Franks, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire (b. 778) *1176 - Mikhail of Vladimir *1597 – Willem Barentsz, navigator (b. 1550) *1605 – Tsar Feodor II of Russia (b. 1589) *1668 - Heinrich Roth, German scholar (b. 1620) *1776 - Benjamin Huntsman, English inventor and manufacturer (b. 1704) *1787 – Karl Friedrich Abel, German composer *1810 - Axel von Fersen the Younger, Swedish statesman (b. 1755) *1820 – Manuel Belgrano, Argentine lawyer and politician (b. 1770) *1837 – King William IV of the United Kingdom (b. 1765) *1840 - Pierre Claude Francois Daunou, French statesman (b. 1761) *1847 - Juan Larrea, Argentine politician and businessman (b. 1782) *1862 - Barbu Catargiu, Romanian politician (b. 1807) *1869 - Hijikata Toshizo, Japanese military leader (b. 1835) *1870 - Jules de Goncourt, French writer (b. 1830) *1888 – Johannes Zukertort, German chess player (b. 1847) *1891 - Mihail Kogalniceanu, Romanian historian, writer and journalist (b. 1817) === 1901 2000 === *1909 - Friedrich Martens, Estonian-Russian diplomat, lawyer and historian (b. 1845) *1925 - Josef Breuer, Austrian psychologist (b. 1842) *1929 - Emmanuel Benakis, Greek merchant and politician (b. 1843) *1933 – Clara Zetkin, German politician and feminist (b. 1857) *1940 - Jehan Alain, French organist and composer (b. 1911) *1945 – Bruno Frank, German writer (b. 1878) *1945 - Luis Fernando de Orleans y Borbon, Spanish prince (b. 1888) *1946 - Wan Rong, last Empress of China (b. 1906) *1947 – Bugsy Siegel, American gangster (b. 1906) *1947 - Howard Mason Gore, 17th Governor of West Virginia (b. 1877) *1952 - Luigi Fagioli, Italian racing driver (b. 1898) *1958 – Kurt Alder, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1902) *1965 - Bernard Baruch, American financier and politician (b. 1870) *1966 – Georges Lemaitre, Belgian theologian and astrophysicist (b. 1894) *1976 - Lou Klein, American baseball player (b. 1918) *1979 - Bill Stewart, American journalist (b. 1941) *1995 – Emil Cioran, Romanian-born French philosopher and essayist (b. 1911) *1997 - Lawrence Payton, American singer-songwriter and producer (b. 1938) *1998 – Conrad Schumann, East German borderguard, most famous escapee from East Germany (b. 1942) *1999 – Clifton Fadiman, writer (b. 1902) === From 2001 === *2001 - Gina Cigna, Italian-French opera singer and dramatic soprano (b. 1900) *2002 – Erwin Chargaff, Austrian biochemist (b. 1905) *2002 – Tinus Osendarp, Dutch sprinter (b. 1916) *2003 – Bob Stump, U.S. Congressman from Arizona (b. 1927) *2005 – Jack Kilby, American electrical engineer (b. 1923) *2009 – Neda Agha-Soltan, Iranian student (shot), symbol of the resistance to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (b. 1982) *2010 – Roberto Rosato, Italian footballer (b. 1943) *2011 – Ryan Dunn, American television star and stuntman (b. 1977) *2012 - Judy Agnew, wife of Spiro Agnew (b. 1920) *2013 - Ingvar Rydell, Swedish footballer (b. 1922) *2014 - Oberdan Cattani, Brazilian footballer (b. 1919) *2014 - Jaroslav Walter, Czech ice hockey player (b. 1939) *2015 - Elson Floyd, American educator (b. 1956) *2015 - Angelo Niculescu, Romanian football manager (b. 1921) *2015 - Takanonami Sadahiro, Japanese sumo wrestler (b. 1971) *2015 - François Delapierre, French politician (b. 1970) *2015 - Esther Brand, South African athlete (b. 1922) *2015 - William Brantley Aycock, American educator (b. 1915) *2016 - Frank Chapot, American equestrian (b. 1932) *2016 - Rich Olive, American politician (b. 1949) *2016 - Ernesto Maceda, Filipino politician (b. 1935) *2016 - Edgard Pisani, French politician (b. 1918) *2016 - Chayito Valdez, Mexican-American folk singer and actress (b. 1945) *2017 - Sergei Mylnikov, Russian ice hockey player (b. 1958) *2017 - Prodigy, American rapper (b. 1974) *2017 - Fredrik Skagen, Norwegian writer (b. 1936) *2018 - Ken Albiston, Australian rules football player (b. 1926) *2018 - Dante Caputo, Argentine politician (b. 1943) *2018 - Peter Thomson, Australian golfer (b. 1929) *2018 - Bill Hendon, American activist, writer and politician (b. 1944) *2018 - Ernie Hunt, English footballer (b. 1943) *2018 - Sándor Kányádi, Hungarian poet and translator (b. 1929) *2018 - Bill Speakman, British soldier (b. 1927) *2019 - Eddie Garcia, Filipino actor, director and television personality (b. 1929) *2019 - Rubén Suñé, Argentine footballer (b. 1947) *2019 - Mark Warawa, Canadian politician (b. 1950) == Observances == * World Refugee Day * Flag Day (Argentina) * West Virginia Day * In Leap years: Northern Summer solstice and Southern Winter solstice