Today Importance - 20th June

Today Importance - 20th June

1155 Pope Adrian IV crowns Frederick I Barbarossa Holy Roman Emperor at St Peter's Basilica, Rome

1178 Five monks at Canterbury report something exploding on the moon shortly after sunset (only known observation)

1264 The Parliament of Ireland meets at Castle Dermot in County Kildare, the first definitively known meeting of this Irish legislature

1316 Peace of Fexhe signed by Prince-Bishop Adolph II of Mark, limiting his powers

1538 Truce of Nice signed between Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and French King Francis I ending the Italian War of 1536-38

1542 Crown of Ireland Act 1542 passed by the Parliament of Ireland, gives English King Henry VIII the title "King of Ireland"

1574 Polish King Hendrik of Anjou secretly leaves Poland

1580 States of Utrecht forbid Catholic worship

1629 Sea battle at Dungeness: Piet Heyn beats the Dunkirkers, commerce raiders in the service of the Spanish Monarchy

1639 Treaty of Berwick: Ends the First Bishops' War between England and Scotland

1643 Skirmish at Chalgrove Field: Prince Rupert defeats Parliamentarian armies

1682 English Quaker William Penn founds Philadelphia, in the Pennsylvania Colony

am Penn

1757 Battle at Kolin Bohemia: Austrian army beats Prussia

1767 Samuel Wallis, an English sea captain, sights Tahiti; considered the first European to reach the island

1778 British Redcoats evacuate Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and head for New York

1779 French fleet occupies St Vincent, West Indies

1812 War of 1812 begins as US declares war against Britain

1815 Battle of Waterloo; Napoleon Bonaparte and France defeated by British forces under Duke of Wellington and Prussian troops under Field Marshall von Blücher

1821 Carl Maria von Weber's opera "Der Freischutz" ("The Marksman") premieres at Schauspielhaus, Berlin, Germany

1822 Part of US-Canadian boundary determined

1837 Spain gets new Constitution

1847 American photographer Thomas Martin Easterly takes the earliest known photograph of lightning using the daguerreotype process in St. Louis, Missouri [1]

1863 After long neglect, Confederates hurriedly fortify Vicksburg

1864 Siege of Petersburg: Ulysses S. Grant ends four days of assaults and begins a nine month siege

1864 The January Uprising, an insurrection in Russia's Kingdom of Poland aimed at restoration of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth is quashed after 1-1/2 years

1872 Woman's Suffrage Convention held at Merchantile Liberty Hall, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

1873 Susan B. Anthony fined $100 ($2,200 in 2020 value) for voting for US President in Rochester, New York; she refused to pay and no further action against her was taken

1879 W. H. Richardson, an African-American inventor, patents the children's carriage (Patent no. 405599)

1887 The Reinsurance Treaty between Germany and Russia is signed

1892 Brothers Edward and Robert Jordan plant 1st Macadamia nuts in Oahu, Hawaii

1894 Premier Roseberry declares Uganda a British protectorate

1898 Steel Pier, 1st amusement pier opens in Atlantic City, New Jersey [1]

1900 Empress Dowager Cixi orders I-Ho-Chuan (Boxers) to kill all foreigners

1900 General Luigi Pelloux resigns as premier of Italy

1905 Russian police open fire on a workers' rights demonstration in Łódź, Congress Poland, killing 10, and leading to an armed insurrection against the occupying forces

1908 Japanese immigration to Brazil begins when 781 people arrive in Santos aboard the Kasato-Maru ship

1909 American educator Nannie Helen Burroughs forms National Training School for Women and Girls in Washington D.C

1911 Detroit Tigers trail Chicago White Sox, 13-1 at Bennett Park, Detroit; recover to win, 16-15 for the biggest comeback in Major League Baseball history

1912 The Chicago national Republican Convention splits between President Taft and Theodore Roosevelt; after Taft is nominated, Roosevelt and progressive elements of the Party form the Progressive Party (also known as the 'Bull Moose Party')

1926 Theodor Lessing laid-off "because he is a Jew" in Hanover

1928 American aviator Amelia Earhart becomes the 1st woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean, landing at Burry Port, Wales

1930 Groundbreaking ceremonies for the Franklin Institute science museum held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

1934 US Highway planning surveys nationwide authorized

1936 First bicycle traffic court in America established in Racine, Wisconsin

1938 Baseball slugger Babe Ruth is signed as a Brooklyn Dodgers coach for the remainder of the season

1940 General Charles de Gaulle makes his first speech on the BBC to the French people, since arriving in London, an appeal to defy Nazi occupiers - regarded as the beginning of French Resistance during WWII

1940 German occupiers slaughter cattle, pigs and chickens

1940 Winston Churchill gives his "this was their finest hour" speech to the House of Commons urging perseverance in the war after the Dunkirk evacuation and the fall of France

1941 In his 18th world heavyweight title defence Joe Louis KOs Billy Conn in 13th round in front of a crowd of 54,487 at the Polo Grounds, NYC

1941 Turkey signs peace treaty with Nazi Germany

1942 Bernard W. Robinson, becomes 1st African American ensign in US Navy

1942 Eric Nessler of France stays aloft in a glider for 38h21m

1943 SS Police in Amsterdam sentence 12 resistance fighters to death for the fire-bombing at the census records bureau in March

1944 Farewell concert of conductor Willem Mengelberg in Paris, France

1944 German submarine U-767 sunk by English Navy destroyers in the English Channel

1945 William Joyce (Lord Haw-Haw), fascist politician and Nazi propaganda broadcaster, charged with treason in England

1946 Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia, a Socialist calls for a Direct Action Day against the Portuguese in Goa. A road is named after this date in Panjim

1947 Cincinnati Reds pitcher Ewell Blackwell no-hits Boston Braves, 6-0 at Crosley Field, Cincinnati

1947 Gene Roddenberry survives plane crash in the Syrian Desert while working for Pan American World Airways

1948 American Library Association adopts Library Bill of Rights

1948 Future Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher Robin Roberts debuts for the Philadelphia Phillies, taking a 2-0 loss against the Pittsburgh Pirates at Shibe Park, Philadelphia

1948 National Security Council authorizes covert operations for 1st time

1950 Cleveland Indians score an American League record 14 runs in 1st inning; beat Philadelphia A's, 21-2 at Cleveland Stadium

1951 Charles De Gaulle wins French parliamentary election

1951 In South Africa, the Suppression of Communism Act commences

1953 Monarchy of Egypt formally abolished after the 1952 revolution and proclaimed the Republic of Eqypt; Army General Muhammad Naguib becomes 1st president

1953 Red Sox rookie Eugene Stephens is 1st player in AL history to register 3 hits in an inning as Boston scores 17 runs in the 7th during 23-3 rout of visiting Detroit Tigers at Fenway Park, Boston

1953 USAF C-124 Globemaster crashes shortly after takeoff from Tachikawa Air Base, Japan, killing 129 servicemen; at the time, it was the deadliest incident in aviation history

1954 Pierre Mendès forms French government

1959 1st telecast transmitted from England to US

1959 Governor of Louisiana Earl K. Long is committed to a state mental hospital; he responds by having the hospital's director fired and replaced with a crony who proceeds to proclaim him perfectly sane

1959 New York City premiere of the film version of Kathryn Hulme's "The Nun's Story"

1960 San Francisco Giants hire Tom Sheehan to replace Bill Rigney; baseball's oldest debuting manager (66) goes 46-50-2 for remainder of season

1961 CBS radio cancels Gunsmoke

1961 KBMT TV channel 12 in Beaumont, Texas (ABC) begins broadcasting

1963 3,000 blacks boycott Boston public school to protest de facto segregation

1964 African Groundnut Council forms in Dakar

1967 Closing day of the Monterey International Pop Festival, Southern California, featuring first major US appearances of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, The Who, and Otis Redding

1967 Houston Astros pitcher Don Wilson no-hits Atlanta Braves, 2-0 at the Astrodome, Houston

1967 Jimi Hendrix and Pete Townsend wage a battle of guitars at the Monetery Pop Festival

1968 Supreme Court bans racial discrimination in sale and rental of housing

1969 "The Wild Bunch", directed by Sam Peckinpah and starring William Holden and Ernest Borgnine, is released

1969 A report published by the International Commission of Jurists on the British government's policy in Northern Ireland is critical of both the British government and the Northern Ireland government

1970 Edward Heath's Conservative Party win the General Election in UK, replacing the Labour Party

1971 Social Democratic and Labour Party and Nationalist Members of Parliament refuse to attend the state opening of Stormont (North Ireland Parliament)

1972 3 members of the British Army are killed by an Irish Republican Army (IRA) bomb in a derelict house near Lurgan, County Down

1972 BEA Trident crashes after takeoff from Heathrow killing 118

1972 US Supreme Court, 5-3, confirms lower court rulings in Curt Flood case, upholding baseball's exemption from antitrust laws [1]

1973 NCAA makes urine testing mandatory for participants

1973 Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev visits the US and President Nixon

1974 Gaston Thorn forms Luxembourg government

1975 Fred Lynn gets 10 RBIs in a single Red Sox game in a 15-1 victory over the Detroit Tigers

1975 NBC News & Information Service (24 hr news) premieres on radio

1976 A Joseph William Turner watercolor auctioned for £340,000

1976 Bowie Kuhn voids Oakland A's sales of players, totaling $35 million - Joe Rudi & Rollie Fingers to Boston Red Sox, and Vida Blue to NY Yankees

1976 MLB St Louis Cardinals Lou Brock & Hector Cruz hit inside-the-park HRs

1977 Billy Martin & Reggie Jackson get into a dugout altercation

1977 Sex Pistols Johnny Rotten & Paul Cook, beaten by a group of rabble-rousers outside of a London pub

1977 Space Shuttle test model "Enterprise" carries a crew aloft for 1st time, it was fixed to a modified Boeing 747

1978 Victor de la Torre wins Peru election

1979 Billy Martin becomes Yankee manager (2nd time), replacing Bob Lemon

1979 US President Carter and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev sign SALT II treaty limiting nuclear weapons

1980 Dutch 2nd Chamber joins oil boycott of South Africa

1980 Indian "human computer" Shakuntala Devi sets a world record by mentally multiplying two random 13-digit numbers in 28 seconds; She correctly answered that 7,686,369,774,870 × 2,465,099,745,779 = 18,947,668,177,995,426,462,773,730 !

1981 Kimberley Ann Smith, of NC, 17, crowned America's Junior Miss

1981 Test cricket debut of Terry Alderman, v England at Trent Bridge

1981 The AIDS epidemic is formally recognized by medical professionals in San Francisco, California

1981 US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart retires

1981 Vaccine to prevent hoof & mouth disease announced

1982 ABC's All Talk radio network expands to 22 stations

1982 Voting Rights Act of 1965 extended by Senate by 85-8 vote

1983 IRA's Joseph Doherty arrested in NYC

1983 Space shuttle Challenger 2 launches the first American woman into space, astronaut Sally Ride

1986 California Angels'Don Sutton becomes 19th MLB pitcher to win 300 games

1986 De Havilland Twin Otter & Bell 206 helicopter collide, kills 25

1986 Heike Friedrich swims female world record 200m freestyle (1:57.55)

1986 Papua New Guinea score 9-455 in 60 overs v Gibraltar, ICC Trophy

1986 US House of Representatives approves Bill to impose stricter sanctions on Apartheid South Africa

1987 Charles Glass, ABC journalist, kidnapped in Lebanon

1988 Jeff Hamilton, hits 8,000th Dodger home run

1989 Comet Churyunov-Gerasimenko at perihelion

1990 1st sudden death US Open Golf Championship is won by Hale Irwin

1991 "(Everything I Do) I Do It for You" single released by Bryan Adams (Billboard Song of the Year, 1991)

1991 Boris Yeltsin, President of Russia, arrives in US

1991 Mud storm in Antofagasta Chile, kills 80

1991 SF Giant pitcher Dave Dravecky's cancerous left arm is amputated

1991 Yankee pitchers pick-off 3 Toronto Blue Jays

1992 Ottawa Senators make goalie Peter Sidorkiewicz their 1st draft pick

1993 Expo's Dennis Martínez is 92nd MLB pitcher to win 200 games

1993 Tōru Takemitsu's "Archipelago S" premieres in Aldeburgh England

1994 Aleksander Popov swims world record 100m free style (48.21 sec)

1994 Gay Games open in NYC

1995 All Black Jonah Lomu scores the try of the Rugby World Cup, running over Mike Catt in New Zealand's 45-29 defeat of England

1995 FIFA Women's World Cup Final, Råsunda Stadium, Stockholm, Sweden: Hege Riise & Marianne Pettersen score within 3 minutes of each other to give Norway a 2-0 win over Germany

1995 Memorial service for Elizabeth Montgomery is held at the Canon Theatre in Beverly Hills

1996 Ted Kaczynski, suspected of being the Unabomber, is indicted on ten criminal counts

1999 Hindi film "Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam" premieres directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali, starring Salman Khan, Ajay Devgn and Aishwarya Rai