30 BC – Battle of Alexandria: Mark Antony achieves a minor victory over Octavian’s forces, but most of his army subsequently deserts, leading to his suicide.
781 – The oldest recorded eruption of Mount Fuji (Traditional Japanese date: 6th day of the 7th month of the 1st year of the Ten’o (天応) era).
1009 – Pope Sergius IV becomes the 142nd pope, succeeding Pope John XVIII.
1201 – Attempted usurpation by John Komnenos the Fat for the throne of Alexios III Angelos.
1423 – Hundred Years’ War: Battle of Cravant: The French army is defeated by the English at Cravant on the banks of the river Yonne.
1451 – Jacques Cœur is arrested by order of Charles VII of France.
1492 – The Jews are expelled from Spain when the Alhambra Decree takes effect.
1498 – On his third voyage to the Western Hemisphere, Christopher Columbus becomes the first European to discover the island of Trinidad.
1588 – The Spanish Armada is spotted off the coast of England.
1618 – Maurice, Prince of Orange disbands the waardgelders militia in Utrecht, a pivotal event in the Remonstrant/Counter-Remonstrant tensions.
1655 – Russo-Polish War (1654–67): The Russian army enters the capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Vilnius, which it holds for six years.
1658 – Aurangzeb is proclaimed Mughal emperor of India.
1703 – Daniel Defoe is placed in a pillory for the crime of seditious libel after publishing a politically satirical pamphlet, but is pelted with flowers.
1712 – Action of 31 July 1712 (Great Northern War): Danish and Swedish ships clash in the Baltic Sea; the result is inconclusive.
1715 – Seven days after a Spanish treasure fleet of 12 ships left Havana, Cuba for Spain, 11 of them sink in a storm off the coast of Florida. A few centuries later, treasure is salvaged from these wrecks.
1741 – Charles Albert of Bavaria invades Upper Austria and Bohemia.
1763 – Odawa Chief Pontiac’s forces defeat British troops at the Battle of Bloody Run during Pontiac’s War.
1777 – The U.S. Second Continental Congress passes a resolution that the services of Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette “be accepted, and that, in consideration of his zeal, illustrious family and connexions, he have the rank and commission of major-general of the United States.”
1790 – The first U.S. patent is issued, to inventor Samuel Hopkins for a potash process.
1856 – Christchurch, New Zealand is chartered as a city.
1865 – The first narrow-gauge mainline railway in the world opens at Grandchester, Queensland, Australia.
1874 – Dr. Patrick Francis Healy became the first African-American inaugurated as president of a predominantly white university, Georgetown University.
1904 – Russo-Japanese War: Battle of Hsimucheng: Units of the Imperial Japanese Army defeat units of the Imperial Russian Army in a strategic confrontation.
1913 – The Balkan States sign an armistice in Bucharest.
1917 – World War I: The Battle of Passchendaele begins near Ypres in West Flanders, Belgium.
1919 – German national assembly adopts the Weimar Constitution, which comes into force on August 14.
1932 – The NSDAP (Nazi Party) wins more than 38% of the vote in German elections.
1938 – Bulgaria signs a non-aggression pact with Greece and other states of Balkan Antanti (Turkey, Romania, Yugoslavia).
1938 – Archaeologists discover engraved gold and silver plates from King Darius the Great in Persepolis.
1941 – The Holocaust: Under instructions from Adolf Hitler, Nazi official Hermann Göring, orders SS General Reinhard Heydrich to “submit to me as soon as possible a general plan of the administrative material and financial measures necessary for carrying out the desired Final Solution of the Jewish question.”
1941 – World War II: The Battle of Smolensk concludes with Germany capturing about 300,000 Soviet Red Army prisoners.
1945 – Pierre Laval, the fugitive former leader of Vichy France, surrenders to Allied soldiers in Austria.
1948 – At Idlewild Field in New York, New York International Airport (later renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport) is dedicated.
1948 – USS Nevada is sunk by an aerial torpedo after surviving hits from two atomic bombs (as part of post-war tests) and being used for target practice by three other ships.
1964 – Ranger program: Ranger 7 sends back the first close-up photographs of the moon, with images 1,000 times clearer than anything ever seen from earth-bound telescopes.
1970 – Black Tot Day: The last day of the officially sanctioned rum ration in the Royal Navy.
1971 – Apollo program: Apollo 15 astronauts become the first to ride in a lunar rover.
1972 – The Troubles: In Operation Motorman, the British Army re-takes the urban no-go areas of Northern Ireland. It is the biggest British military operation since the Suez Crisis of 1956, and the biggest in Ireland since the Irish War of Independence. Later that day, nine civilians are killed by car bombs in the village of Claudy.
1973 – A Delta Air Lines jetliner, flight DL 723 crashes while landing in fog at Logan International Airport, Boston, Massachusetts killing 89.
1975 – The Troubles: three members of a popular cabaret band and two gunmen are killed during a botched paramilitary attack in Northern Ireland.
1987 – A tornado occurs in Edmonton, Canada.
1988 – Thirty-two people are killed and 1,674 injured when a bridge at the Sultan Abdul Halim ferry terminal collapses in Butterworth, Penang, Malaysia.
1991 – The United States and Soviet Union both sign the START I Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, the first to reduce (with verification) both countries’ stockpiles.
1992 – The nation of Georgia joins the United Nations.
1992 – Thai Airways International Flight 311 crashes into a mountain north of Kathmandu, Nepal killing all 113 people on board.
1999 – Discovery Program: Lunar Prospector: NASA intentionally crashes the spacecraft into the Moon, thus ending its mission to detect frozen water on the Moon’s surface.
2006 – Fidel Castro hands over power to his brother, Raúl.
2007 – Operation Banner, the presence of the British Army in Northern Ireland, and the longest-running British Army operation ever, comes to an end.
2012 – Michael Phelps breaks the record set in 1964 by Larisa Latynina for the most medals won at the Olympics.
2014 – Gas explosions in the southern Taiwanese city of Kaohsiung kill at least 20 people and injure more than 270.
Births on July 31
1143 – Emperor Nijō of Japan (d. 1165)
1396 – Philip III, Duke of Burgundy (d. 1467)
1526 – Augustus, Elector of Saxony (d. 1586)
1527 – Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor (d. 1576)
1595 – Philipp Wolfgang, Count of Hanau-Lichtenberg (d. 1641)
1598 – Alessandro Algardi, Italian sculptor (d. 1654)
1686 – Charles of France, Duke of Berry (d. 1714)
1702 – Jean Denis Attiret, French missionary and painter (d. 1768)
1704 – Gabriel Cramer, Swiss mathematician and physicist (d. 1752)
1718 – John Canton, English physicist and academic (d. 1772)
1724 – Noël François de Wailly, French lexicographer and author (d. 1801)
1759 – Ignaz Anton von Indermauer, Austrian nobleman and government official (d. 1796)
1777 – Pedro Ignacio de Castro Barros, Argentinian priest and politician (d. 1849)
1796 – Jean-Gaspard Deburau, Czech-French actor and mime (d. 1846)
1800 – Friedrich Wöhler, German chemist and academic (d. 1882)
1803 – John Ericsson, Swedish-American engineer, co-designed the USS Princeton and the Novelty Locomotive (d. 1889)
1816 – George Henry Thomas, American general (d. 1870)
1826 – William S. Clark, American colonel and politician (d. 1886)
1835 – Henri Brisson, French lawyer and politician, 50th Prime Minister of France (d. 1912)
1835 – Paul Du Chaillu, French-American anthropologist and explorer (d. 1903)
1836 – Vasily Sleptsov, Russian author and activist (d. 1878)
1837 – William Quantrill, American captain (d. 1865)
1839 – Ignacio Andrade, Venezuelan general and politician, 25th President of Venezuela (d. 1925)
1843 – Peter Rosegger, Austrian poet and author (d. 1918)
1847 – Ignacio Cervantes, Cuban pianist and composer (d. 1905)
1854 – José Canalejas, Spanish academic and politician, Prime Minister of Spain (d. 1912)
1858 – Richard Dixon Oldham, English seismologist and geologist (d. 1936)
1858 – Marion Talbot, influential American educator (d. 1948)
1860 – Mary Vaux Walcott, American painter and illustrator (d. 1940)
1867 – S. S. Kresge, American businessman, founded Kmart (d. 1966)
1875 – Jacques Villon, French painter (d. 1963)
1877 – Louisa Bolus, South African botanist and taxonomist (d. 1970)
1880 – Premchand, Indian author and playwright (d. 1936)
1883 – Ramón Fonst, Cuban fencer (d. 1959)
1884 – Carl Friedrich Goerdeler, Polish-German economist and politician (d. 1945)
1886 – Salvatore Maranzano, Italian-American mob boss (d. 1931)
1886 – Fred Quimby, American animation producer (d. 1965)
1887 – Hans Freyer, German sociologist and philosopher (d. 1969)
1892 – Herbert W. Armstrong, American evangelist and publisher, founded Worldwide Church of God (d. 1986)
1892 – Joseph Charbonneau, Canadian archbishop (d. 1959)
1894 – Fred Keenor, Welsh footballer (d. 1972)
1901 – Jean Dubuffet, French painter and sculptor (d. 1985)
1902 – Gubby Allen, Australian-English cricketer and soldier (d. 1989)
1904 – Brett Halliday, American engineer, surveyor, and author (d. 1977)
1909 – Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, Austrian theorist and author (d. 1999)
1911 – George Liberace, American violinist (d. 1983)
1912 – Bill Brown, Australian cricketer (d. 2008)
1912 – Milton Friedman, American economist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2006)
1912 – Irv Kupcinet, American football player and journalist (d. 2003)
1913 – Bryan Hextall, Canadian ice hockey player (d. 1984)
1914 – Paul J. Christiansen, American conductor and composer (d. 1997)
1914 – Louis de Funès, French actor and screenwriter (d. 1983)
1916 – Sibte Hassan, Pakistani journalist, scholar, and activist (d. 1986)
1916 – Billy Hitchcock, American baseball player, coach, and manager (d. 2006)
1916 – Bill Todman, American screenwriter and producer (d. 1979)
1918 – Paul D. Boyer, American biochemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2018)
1918 – Hank Jones, American pianist, composer, and bandleader (d. 2010)
1918 – Frank Renouf, New Zealand businessman and financier (d. 1998)
1919 – Hemu Adhikari, Indian cricketer (d. 2003)
1919 – Curt Gowdy, American sportscaster and actor (d. 2006)
1919 – Primo Levi, Italian chemist and author (d. 1987)
1920 – James E. Faust, American religious leader, lawyer, and politician (d. 2007)
1921 – Peter Benenson, English lawyer and activist, founded Amnesty International (d. 2005)
1921 – Donald Malarkey, American sergeant and author (d. 2017)
1921 – Whitney Young, American activist (d. 1971)
1922 – Hank Bauer, American baseball player and manager (d. 2007)
1923 – Ahmet Ertegun, Turkish-American songwriter and producer, founded Atlantic Records (d. 2006)
1923 – Stephanie Kwolek, American chemist and engineer, invented Kevlar (d. 2014)
1924 – Jimmy Evert, American tennis player and coach (d. 2015)
1925 – Carmel Quinn, Irish singer, actress and writer
1925 – John Swainson, Canadian-American jurist and politician, 42nd Governor of Michigan (d. 1994)
1926 – Bernard Nathanson, American physician and activist (d. 2011)
1926 – Hilary Putnam, American mathematician, computer scientist, and philosopher (d. 2016)
1927 – Peter Nichols, English author and playwright (d. 2019)
1928 – Bill Frenzel, American lieutenant and politician (d. 2014)
1929 – Lynne Reid Banks, English author
1929 – Gilles Carle, Canadian director and screenwriter (d. 2009)
1929 – Don Murray, American actor
1929 – José Santamaría, Uruguayan footballer and manager
1931 – Nick Bollettieri, American tennis player and coach
1931 – Kenny Burrell, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
1932 – Ted Cassidy, American actor and screenwriter (d. 1979)
1932 – John Searle, American philosopher and academic
1933 – Cees Nooteboom, Dutch journalist, author, and poet
1935 – Yvon Deschamps, Canadian comedian, actor, and producer
1935 – Geoffrey Lewis, American actor and screenwriter (d. 2015)
1939 – Steuart Bedford, English pianist and conductor
1939 – Susan Flannery, American actress
1939 – France Nuyen, Vietnamese-French actress
1941 – Amarsinh Chaudhary, Indian politician, 8th Chief Minister of Gujarat (d. 2004)
1943 – William Bennett, American journalist and politician, 3rd United States Secretary of Education
1943 – Lobo, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
1944 – Geraldine Chaplin, American actress and screenwriter
1944 – Jonathan Dimbleby, English journalist and author
1944 – Sherry Lansing, American film producer
1944 – Robert C. Merton, American economist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate
1944 – David Norris, Irish scholar and politician
1945 – William Weld, American lawyer and politician, 68th Governor of Massachusetts
1946 – Gary Lewis, American pop-rock musician
1947 – Karl Green, English bass player and songwriter (Herman’s Hermits)
1947 – Richard Griffiths, English actor (d. 2013)
1947 – Mumtaz, Indian actress
1947 – Hubert Védrine, French politician, French Minister of Foreign Affairs
1947 – Ian Beck, English children’s illustrator and author
1948 – Russell Morris, Australian singer-songwriter and guitarist
1949 – Mike Jackson, American basketball player
1949 – Alan Meale, English journalist and politician
1950 – Richard Berry, French actor, director, and screenwriter
1951 – Evonne Goolagong Cawley, Australian tennis player
1952 – Chris Ahrens, American ice hockey player
1952 – Alan Autry, American football player, actor, and politician, 23rd Mayor of Fresno, California
1952 – Helmuts Balderis, Latvian ice hockey player and coach
1952 – João Barreiros, Portuguese author and critic
1952 – Faye Kellerman, American author
1953 – Ted Baillieu, Australian architect and politician, 46th Premier of Victoria
1953 – Jimmy Cook, South African cricketer and coach
1953 – Hugh McDowell, English cellist
1954 – Derek Smith, Canadian ice hockey player
1956 – Michael Biehn, American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter
1956 – Bill Callahan, American football player and coach
1956 – Ron Kuby, American lawyer and radio host
1956 – Deval Patrick, American lawyer and politician, 71st Governor of Massachusetts
1956 – Lynne Rae Perkins, American author and illustrator
1957 – Daniel Ash, English singer-songwriter and guitarist
1957 – Mark Thompson, English business executive
1958 – Bill Berry, American drummer and songwriter
1958 – Mark Cuban, American businessman and television personality
1958 – Suzanne Giraud, French music editor and composer
1959 – Stanley Jordan, American guitarist, pianist, and songwriter
1959 – Andrew Marr, Scottish journalist and author
1959 – Kim Newman, English journalist and author
1960 – Dale Hunter, Canadian ice hockey player and coach
1960 – Malcolm Ross, Scottish guitarist and songwriter
1961 – Frank Gardner, English captain and journalist
1961 – Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, Nigerian banker, royal
1962 – John Chiang, American lawyer and politician, 31st California State Controller
1962 – Kevin Greene, American football player and coach
1962 – Wesley Snipes, American actor and producer
1963 – Norman Cook (Fatboy Slim), English DJ and musician
1963 – Fergus Henderson, English chef and author
1963 – Brian Skrudland, Canadian ice hockey player and coach
1964 – Jim Corr, Irish singer-songwriter and guitarist
1964 – Urmas Hepner, Estonian footballer and coach
1965 – Scott Brooks, American basketball player and coach
1965 – John Laurinaitis, American wrestler and producer
1965 – Ian Roberts, English-Australian rugby league player and actor
1965 – J. K. Rowling, English author and film producer
1966 – Dean Cain, American actor, producer, and screenwriter
1967 – Tony Massenburg, American basketball player
1967 – Tim Wright, Welsh composer
1968 – Saeed-Al-Saffar, Emirati cricketer
1968 – Julian Richards, Welsh director and producer
1969 – Antonio Conte, Italian footballer and manager
1969 – Loren Dean, American actor
1969 – Kenneth D. Schisler, American lawyer and politician
1970 – Ahmad Akbarpour, Iranian author and poet
1970 – Ben Chaplin, English actor
1970 – Andrzej Kobylański, Polish footballer and manager
1970 – Giorgos Sigalas, Greek basketball player, coach, and sportscaster
1971 – Gus Frerotte, American football player and coach
1973 – Nathan Brown, Australian rugby league player and coach
1974 – Emilia Fox, English actress
1974 – Leona Naess, American-English singer-songwriter and guitarist
1974 – Jonathan Ogden, American football player
1975 – Randy Flores, American baseball player and coach
1975 – Andrew Hall, South African cricketer
1975 – Gabe Kapler, American baseball player and manager
1976 – Joshua Cain, American guitarist and producer
1976 – Paulo Wanchope, Costa Rican footballer and manager
1978 – Zac Brown, American country singer-songwriter and guitarist
1978 – Nick Sorensen, American football player and sportscaster
1978 – Justin Wilson, English race car driver (d. 2015)
1979 – Jaco Erasmus, South African-Italian rugby player
1979 – J.J. Furmaniak, American baseball player
1979 – Per Krøldrup, Danish footballer
1979 – Carlos Marchena, Spanish footballer
1979 – B.J. Novak, American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter
1980 – Mikko Hirvonen, Finnish race car driver
1980 – Mils Muliaina, New Zealand rugby player
1981 – Titus Bramble, English footballer
1981 – Vernon Carey, American football player
1981 – Paul Whatuira, New Zealand rugby league player
1981 – M. Shadows, American musician, lead singer of Avenged Sevenfold
1982 – Anabel Medina Garrigues, Spanish tennis player
1982 – DeMarcus Ware, American football player
1985 – Daniel Ciofani, Italian footballer
1985 – Rémy Di Gregorio, French cyclist
1986 – Evgeni Malkin, Russian ice hockey player
1986 – Brian Orakpo, American football player
1987 – Michael Bradley, American soccer player
1988 – Alex Glenn, New Zealand rugby league player
1989 – Victoria Azarenka, Belorussian tennis player
1991 – Réka Luca Jani, Hungarian tennis player
1992 – José Fernández, Cuban baseball player (d. 2016)
1992 – Ryan Johansen, Canadian ice hockey player
1992 – Kyle Larson, American race car driver
1994 – Lil Uzi Vert, American hip hop artist
Deaths on July 31
54 BC – Aurelia Cotta, Roman mother of Gaius Julius Caesar (b. 120 BC)
450 – Peter Chrysologus, Italian bishop and saint (b. 380)
910 – Feng Xingxi, Chinese warlord
975 – Fu Yanqing, Chinese general (b. 898)
1098 – Hugh of Montgomery, 2nd Earl of Shrewsbury
1358 – Étienne Marcel, French rebel leader (b. 1302)
1396 – William Courtenay, English archbishop and politician, Lord Chancellor of the United Kingdom (b. 1342)
1508 – Na’od, Ethiopian emperor
1556 – Ignatius of Loyola, Spanish priest and theologian, founded the Society of Jesus (b. 1491)
1616 – Roger Wilbraham, Solicitor-General for Ireland (b. 1553)
1638 – Sibylla Schwarz, German poet (b. 1621)
1653 – Thomas Dudley, English soldier and politician, 3rd Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony (b. 1576)
1693 – Willem Kalf, Dutch still life painter (b. 1619)
1726 – Nicolaus II Bernoulli, Swiss mathematician and theorist (b. 1695)
1750 – John V, king of Portugal (b. 1689)
1762 – Luis Vicente de Velasco e Isla, Spanish sailor and commander (b. 1711)
1781 – John Bligh, 3rd Earl of Darnley, British parliamentarian (b. 1719)
1784 – Denis Diderot, French philosopher and critic (b. 1713)
1805 – Dheeran Chinnamalai, Indian soldier (b. 1756)
1864 – Louis Christophe François Hachette, French publisher (b. 1800)
1875 – Andrew Johnson, American general and politician, 17th President of the United States (b. 1808)
1884 – Kiến Phúc, Vietnamese emperor (b. 1869)
1886 – Franz Liszt, Hungarian pianist, composer, and conductor (b. 1811)
1891 – Jean-Baptiste Capronnier, Belgian stained glass painter (b. 1814)
1913 – John Milne, British geologist and mining engineer. (b. 1850)
1914 – Jean Jaurès, French journalist and politician (b. 1859)
1917 – Hedd Wyn, Welsh language poet (b. 1887)
1917 – Francis Ledwidge, Irish soldier and poet (b. 1881)
1920 – Ion Dragoumis, Greek philosopher and diplomat (b. 1878)
1940 – Udham Singh, Indian activist (b. 1899)
1943 – Hedley Verity, English cricketer and soldier (b. 1905)
1942 – Francis Younghusband, British Army Officer, explorer and spiritual writer (b.1863)
1944 – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, French pilot and poet (b. 1900)
1953 – Robert A. Taft, American soldier and politician (b. 1889)
1954 – Onofre Marimón, Argentinian race car driver (b. 1923)
1958 – Eino Kaila, Finnish philosopher and psychologist, attendant of the Vienna circle (b. 1890)
1964 – Jim Reeves, American singer-songwriter (b. 1923)
1966 – Bud Powell, American pianist (b. 1924)
1968 – Jack Pizzey, Australian politician, 29th Premier of Queensland (b. 1911)
1971 – Walter P. Carter, American soldier and activist (b. 1923)
1972 – Paul-Henri Spaak, Belgian lawyer and politician, 40th Prime Minister of Belgium (b. 1899)
1973 – Azumafuji Kin’ichi, Japanese sumo wrestler, the 40th Yokozuna (b. 1921)
1979 – Beatrix Lehmann, English actress and director (b. 1903)
1980 – Pascual Jordan, German physicist, author, and academic (b. 1902)
1980 – Mohammed Rafi, Indian playback singer (b. 1924)
1981 – Omar Torrijos, Panamanian general and politician, Military Leader of Panama (b. 1929)
1985 – Eugene Carson Blake, American religious leader (b. 1906)
1986 – Chiune Sugihara, Japanese diplomat (b. 1900)
1987 – Joseph E. Levine, American film producer (b, 1905)
1990 – Albert Leduc, Canadian ice hockey player (b. 1902)
1992 – Leonard Cheshire, English captain and pilot (b. 1917)
1992 – Md. Abdul Wajed Chowdhury, Bangladeshi politician.
1993 – Baudouin, King of Belgium (b. 1930)
2000 – William Keepers Maxwell Jr., American editor, novelist, short story writer, and essayist (b. 1908)
2001 – Francisco da Costa Gomes, Portuguese general and politician, 15th President of Portugal (b. 1914)
2001 – Friedrich Franz, Hereditary Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (b. 1910)
2003 – Guido Crepax, Italian author and illustrator (b. 1933)
2004 – Virginia Grey, American actress (b. 1917)
2005 – Wim Duisenberg, Dutch economist and politician, 1st President of the European Central Bank (b. 1935)
2009 – Bobby Robson, English footballer and manager (b. 1933)
2009 – Harry Alan Towers, English-Canadian screenwriter and producer (b. 1920)
2012 – Mollie Hunter, Scottish author and playwright (b. 1922)
2012 – Alfredo Ramos, Brazilian footballer and coach (b. 1924)
2012 – Gore Vidal, American novelist, screenwriter, and critic (b. 1925)
2012 – Tony Sly, American musician, singer-songwriter (b. 1970)
2013 – Michael Ansara, Syrian-American actor (b. 1922)
2013 – Michel Donnet, English-Belgian general and pilot (b. 1917)
2013 – John Graves, American captain and author (b. 1920)
2013 – Trevor Storer, English businessman, founded Pukka Pies (b. 1930)
2014 – Warren Bennis, American scholar, author, and academic (b. 1925)
2014 – Nabarun Bhattacharya, Indian journalist and author (b. 1948)
2014 – Jeff Bourne, English footballer (b. 1948)
2014 – Wilfred Feinberg, American lawyer and judge (b. 1920)
2015 – Alan Cheuse, American writer and critic (b. 1940)
2015 – Howard W. Jones, American surgeon and academic (b. 1910)
2015 – Billy Pierce, American baseball player and sportscaster (b. 1927)
2015 – Roddy Piper, Canadian wrestler and actor (b. 1954)
2015 – Richard Schweiker, American soldier and politician, 14th United States Secretary of Health and Human Services (b. 1926)
2016 – Chiyonofuji Mitsugu, Japanese sumo wrestler, the 58th Yokozuna (b. 1955)
2016 – Seymour Papert, South African mathematician (b. 1928)
2017 – Jeanne Moreau, French actress (b. 1928)
2018 – Tony Bullimore, British sailor & businessman (b. 1939)
2019 – Harold Prince, noted Broadway producer and director, who received more Tony awards than anyone else in history (b. 1928)
Holidays and observances on July 31
Christian feast day:
Abanoub
Germanus of Auxerre
Ignatius of Loyola
Neot
July 31 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
Earliest day on which the Feast of Kamál (Perfection) can fall, while August 1 is the latest; observed on the first day of the eighth month of the Bahá’í calendar. (Bahá’í Faith)
End of the Trinity term (sitting of the High Court of Justice of England)
Ka Hae Hawaiʻi Day (Hawaii, United States), and its related observance:
Sovereignty Restoration Day (Hawaiian sovereignty movement)
Martyrdom Day of Shahid Udham Singh (Haryana and Punjab, India)
1419 – First Defenestration of Prague: A crowd of radical Hussites kill seven members of the Prague city council.
1502 – Christopher Columbus lands at Guanaja in the Bay Islands off the coast of Honduras during his fourth voyage.
1609 – Beaver Wars: At Ticonderoga (now Crown Point, New York), Samuel de Champlain shoots and kills two Iroquois chiefs on behalf of his native allies.
1619 – In Jamestown, Virginia, the first Colonial European representative assembly in the Americas, the House of Burgesses, convenes for the first time.
1626 – An earthquake in Naples, Italy, kills about 10,000 people.
1635 – Eighty Years’ War: The Siege of Schenkenschans begins; Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange, begins the recapture of the strategically important fortress from the Spanish Army.
1656 – Swedish forces under the command of King Charles X Gustav defeat the forces of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth at the Battle of Warsaw.
1676 – Nathaniel Bacon issues the “Declaration of the People of Virginia”, beginning Bacon’s Rebellion against the rule of Governor William Berkeley.
1729 – Founding of Baltimore, Maryland.
1733 – The first Masonic Grand Lodge in the future United States is constituted in Massachusetts.
1756 – In Saint Petersburg, Bartolomeo Rastrelli presents the newly built Catherine Palace to Empress Elizabeth and her courtiers.
1811 – Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, leader of the Mexican insurgency, is executed by the Spanish in Chihuahua City, Mexico.
1825 – Malden Island is discovered by captain George Byron, 7th Baron Byron.
1859 – First ascent of Grand Combin, one of the highest summits in the Alps.
1863 – American Indian Wars: Representatives of the United States and tribal leaders including Chief Pocatello (of the Shoshone) sign the Treaty of Box Elder.
1864 – American Civil War: Battle of the Crater: Union forces attempt to break Confederate lines at Petersburg, Virginia by exploding a large bomb under their trenches.
1865 – The steamboat Brother Jonathan sinks off the coast of Crescent City, California, killing 225 passengers, the deadliest shipwreck on the Pacific Coast of the U.S. at the time.
1866 – Armed Confederate veterans in New Orleans riot against a meeting of Radical Republicans, killing 48 people and injuring another 100.
1871 – The Staten Island Ferry Westfield’s boiler explodes, killing over 85 people.
1912 – Japan’s Emperor Meiji dies and is succeeded by his son Yoshihito, who is now known as the Emperor Taishō.
1930 – In Montevideo, Uruguay wins the first FIFA World Cup.
1932 – Premiere of Walt Disney’s Flowers and Trees, the first cartoon short to use Technicolor and the first Academy Award winning cartoon short.
1945 – World War II: Japanese submarine I-58 sinks the USS Indianapolis, killing 883 seamen. Most die during the following four days, until an aircraft notices the survivors.
1956 – A joint resolution of the U.S. Congress is signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, authorizing In God We Trust as the U.S. national motto.
1962 – The Trans-Canada Highway, the longest national highway in the world, is officially opened.
1965 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Social Security Act of 1965 into law, establishing Medicare and Medicaid.
1966 – England defeats West Germany to win the 1966 FIFA World Cup at Wembley Stadium after extra time.
1969 – Vietnam War: US President Richard Nixon makes an unscheduled visit to South Vietnam and meets with President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu and U.S. military commanders.
1971 – Apollo program: Apollo 15 Mission: David Scott and James Irwin on the Apollo Lunar Module Falcon land on the Moon with the first Lunar Rover.
1971 – An All Nippon Airways Boeing 727 and a Japanese Air Force F-86 collide over Morioka, Iwate, Japan killing 162.
1974 – Watergate scandal: U.S. President Richard Nixon releases subpoenaed White House recordings after being ordered to do so by the Supreme Court of the United States.
1975 – Jimmy Hoffa disappears from the parking lot of the Machus Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit, at about 2:30 p.m. He is never seen or heard from again.
1978 – The 730 (transport), Okinawa Prefecture changes its traffic on the right-hand side of the road to the left-hand side.
1980 – Vanuatu gains independence.
1980 – Israel’s Knesset passes the Jerusalem Law.
1981 – As many as 50,000 demonstrators, mostly women and children, took to the streets in Łódź to protest food ration shortages in Communist Poland.
1990 – Ian Gow, Conservative Member of Parliament, is assassinated at his home by IRA terrorists in a car bombing after he assured the group that the British government would never surrender to them.
2003 – In Mexico, the last ‘old style’ Volkswagen Beetle rolls off the assembly line.
2006 – The world’s longest running music show Top of the Pops is broadcast for the last time on BBC Two. The show had aired for 42 years.
2011 – Marriage of Queen Elizabeth II’s eldest granddaughter Zara Phillips to former rugby union footballer Mike Tindall.
2012 – A train fire kills 32 passengers and injures 27 on the Tamil Nadu Express in Andhra Pradesh, India.
2012 – A power grid failure in Delhi leaves more than 300 million people without power in northern India.
2014 – One hundred and fifty people are trapped after a landslide in Maharashtra, India; 20 are killed.
Births on July 30
1470 – Hongzhi, emperor of the Ming dynasty (d. 1505)
1511 – Giorgio Vasari, Italian painter, historian, and architect (d. 1574)
1549 – Ferdinando I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany (d. 1609)
1641 – Regnier de Graaf, Dutch physician and anatomist (d. 1673)
1751 – Maria Anna Mozart, Austrian pianist (d. 1829)
1763 – Samuel Rogers, English poet and art collector (d. 1855)
1809 – Charles Chiniquy, Canadian-American priest and theologian (d. 1899)
1818 – Emily Brontë, English novelist and poet (d. 1848)
1818 – Jan Heemskerk, Dutch lawyer and politician, 16th and 19th Prime Minister of the Netherlands (d. 1897)
1825 – Chaim Aronson, Lithuanian engineer and author (d. 1893)
1832 – George Lemuel Woods, American lawyer, judge, and politician, 3rd Governor of Oregon (d. 1890)
1855 – Georg Wilhelm von Siemens, German-Swiss businessman (d. 1919)
1857 – Thorstein Veblen, American economist and sociologist (d. 1929)
1859 – Henry Simpson Lunn, English minister and humanitarian, founded Lunn Poly (d. 1939)
1862 – Nikolai Yudenich, Russian general (d. 1933)
1863 – Henry Ford, American engineer and businessman, founded the Ford Motor Company (d. 1947)
1872 – Princess Clémentine of Belgium (d. 1955)
1881 – Smedley Butler, American general, Medal of Honor recipient (d. 1940)
1890 – Casey Stengel, American baseball player and manager (d. 1975)
1893 – Fatima Jinnah, Pakistani dentist and politician (d. 1967)
1898 – Henry Moore, English sculptor and illustrator (d. 1986)
1899 – Gerald Moore, English pianist (d. 1987)
1901 – Alfred Lépine, Canadian ice hockey player and coach (d. 1955)
1904 – Salvador Novo, Mexican poet and playwright (d. 1974)
1909 – C. Northcote Parkinson, English historian and author (d. 1993)
1910 – Edgar de Evia, Mexican-American photographer (d. 2003)
1913 – Lou Darvas, American soldier and cartoonist (d. 1987)
1914 – Michael Morris, 3rd Baron Killanin, Irish journalist and author, 6th President of the International Olympic Committee (d. 1999)
1920 – Walter Schuck, German lieutenant and pilot (d. 2015)
1921 – Grant Johannesen, American pianist and educator (d. 2005)
1922 – Henry W. Bloch, American banker and businessman, co-founded H&R Block (d. 2019)
1925 – Stan Stennett, Welsh actor and trumpet player (d. 2013)
1925 – Alexander Trocchi, Scottish author and poet (d. 1984)
1926 – Betye Saar, African American artist
1927 – Richard Johnson, English actor, producer, and screenwriter (d. 2015)
1927 – Pete Schoening, American mountaineer (d. 2004)
1927 – Victor Wong, American actor (d. 2001)
1928 – Joe Nuxhall, American baseball player and sportscaster (d. 2007)
1929 – Sid Krofft, Canadian-American puppeteer and producer
1931 – Dominique Lapierre, French historian and author
1934 – Bud Selig, 9th Major League Baseball Commissioner
1936 – Buddy Guy, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
1936 – Infanta Pilar, Duchess of Badajoz (d. 2020)
1938 – Hervé de Charette, French politician, French Minister of Foreign Affairs
1938 – Terry O’Neill, English photographer (d. 2019)
1939 – Peter Bogdanovich, American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter
1939 – Eleanor Smeal, American activist, founded the Feminist Majority Foundation
1940 – Patricia Schroeder, American lawyer and politician
1940 – Clive Sinclair, English businessman, founded Sinclair Radionics and Sinclair Research
1941 – Paul Anka, Canadian singer-songwriter and actor
1942 – Pollyanna Pickering, English environmentalist and painter (d. 2018)
1943 – Henri-François Gautrin, Canadian physicist and politician
1944 – Gerry Birrell, Scottish race car driver (d. 1973)
1944 – Peter Bottomley, English politician
1944 – Frances de la Tour, English actress
1945 – Patrick Modiano, French novelist and screenwriter, Nobel Prize laureate
1945 – David Sanborn, American saxophonist and composer
1946 – Neil Bonnett, American race car driver and sportscaster (d. 1994)
1946 – Jeffrey Hammond, English bass player
1947 – William Atherton, American actor and producer
1947 – Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, French virologist and biologist, Nobel Prize laureate
1947 – Jonathan Mann, American physician and author (d. 1998)
1947 – Arnold Schwarzenegger, Austrian-American bodybuilder, actor, and politician, 38th Governor of California
1948 – Billy Paultz, American basketball player
1948 – Jean Reno, Moroccan-French actor
1948 – Otis Taylor, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
1948 – Julia Tsenova, Bulgarian pianist and composer (d. 2010)
1949 – Duck Baker, American guitarist
1949 – Sonia Proudman, English lawyer and judge
1950 – Harriet Harman, English lawyer and politician
1950 – Frank Stallone, American singer-songwriter and actor
1951 – Alan Kourie, South African cricketer
1951 – Gerry Judah, Indian-English painter and sculptor
1952 – Stephen Blackmore, English botanist and author
1954 – Ken Olin, American actor, director, and producer
1955 – Rat Scabies, English drummer and producer
1955 – Christopher Warren-Green, English violinist and conductor
1956 – Delta Burke, American actress
1956 – Réal Cloutier, Canadian ice hockey player
1956 – Anita Hill, American lawyer and academic
1956 – Soraida Martinez, American painter and educator
1957 – Antonio Adamo, Italian director and cinematographer
1957 – Bill Cartwright, American basketball player and coach
1957 – Clint Hurdle, American baseball player and manager
1957 – Nery Pumpido, Argentinian footballer, coach, and manager
1958 – Kate Bush, English singer-songwriter and producer
1958 – Liz Kershaw, English radio broadcaster
1958 – Daley Thompson, English decathlete and trainer
1960 – Jennifer Barnes, American-English musicologist and academic
1960 – Richard Linklater, American director and screenwriter
1960 – Brillante Mendoza, Filipino independent film director
1961 – Laurence Fishburne, American actor and producer
1962 – Alton Brown, American chef, author, and producer
1962 – Jay Feaster, American ice hockey player and manager
1962 – Yakub Memon, Indian accountant and terrorist (d. 2015)
1963 – Peter Bowler, English-Australian cricketer
1963 – Lisa Kudrow, American actress and producer
1963 – Antoni Martí, Andorran architect and politician
1963 – Chris Mullin, American basketball player, coach, and executive
1964 – Ron Block, American singer-songwriter and banjo player
1964 – Vivica A. Fox, American actress
1964 – Alek Keshishian, Lebanese-American director, producer, and screenwriter
1964 – Jürgen Klinsmann, German footballer and manager
1964 – Laine Randjärv, Estonian lawyer and politician, 6th Estonian Minister of Culture
1965 – Tim Munton, English cricketer
1966 – Kerry Fox, New Zealand actress and screenwriter
1966 – Craig Gannon, English guitarist and songwriter
1966 – Allan Langer, Australian rugby league player and coach
1966 – Louise Wener, English author and singer-songwriter
1968 – Terry Crews, American football player and actor
1968 – Robert Korzeniowski, Polish race walker and coach
1968 – Sean Moore, Welsh drummer and songwriter
1969 – Simon Baker, Australian actor, director, and producer
1969 – Errol Stewart, South African cricketer and lawyer
1970 – Alun Cairns, Welsh businessman and politician
1970 – Dean Edwards, American comedian, actor, and singer
1970 – Christopher Nolan, English-American director, producer, and screenwriter
1971 – Elvis Crespo, American-Puerto Rican singer
1971 – Tom Green, Canadian comedian and actor
1972 – Jim McIlvaine, American basketball player and sportscaster
1973 – Kenton Cool, English mountaineer
1973 – Ümit Davala, Turkish footballer and manager
1973 – Anastasios Katsabis, Greek footballer
1973 – Markus Näslund, Swedish ice hockey player and manager
1973 – Sonu Nigam, Indian playback singer and actor
1973 – Clementa C. Pinckney, American minister and politician (d. 2015)
1974 – Radostin Kishishev, Bulgarian footballer and manager
1974 – Jason Robinson, English rugby league footballer, and rugby union footballer and coach
1974 – Hilary Swank, American actress and producer
1975 – Graham Nicholls, English author and activist
1975 – Kate Starbird, American basketball player and computer scientist
1977 – Diana Bolocco, Chilean model and journalist;
1977 – Misty May-Treanor, American volleyball player and coach
1977 – Jaime Pressly, American actress
1977 – Bootsy Thornton, American basketball player
1977 – Ian Watkins, Welsh singer-songwriter and child abuse convict
1979 – Carlos Arroyo, Puerto Rican basketball player and singer
1979 – Chad Keegan, South African cricketer and coach
1979 – Graeme McDowell, Northern Irish golfer
1979 – Maya Nasser, Syrian journalist (d. 2012)
1980 – Seth Avett, American folk-rock singer-songwriter and musician
1980 – Justin Rose, South African-English golfer
1981 – Nicky Hayden, American motorcycle racer (d. 2017)
1981 – Juan Smith, South African rugby union footballer
1981 – Hope Solo, American soccer player
1981 – Indrek Turi, Estonian decathlete
1982 – Jehad Al-Hussain, Syrian footballer
1982 – James Anderson, English cricketer
1982 – Yvonne Strahovski, Australian actress
1983 – Seán Dillon, Irish footballer
1984 – Marko Asmer, Estonian race car driver
1984 – Gabrielle Christian, American actress and singer
1984 – Trudy McIntosh, Australian artistic gymnast
1984 – Kevin Pittsnogle, American basketball player
1985 – Chris Guccione, Australian tennis player
1985 – Daniel Fredheim Holm, Norwegian footballer
1985 – Luca Lanotte, Italian ice dancer
1985 – Matthew Scott, Australian rugby league player
1986 – Tiago Alencar, Brazilian footballer
1986 – William Zillman, Australian rugby league player
1987 – Anton Fink, German footballer
1987 – Sam Saunders, American golfer
1988 – Wen Chean Lim, Malaysian rhythmic gymnast
1989 – Aleix Espargaró, Spanish motorcycle racer
1989 – Wayne Parnell, South African cricketer
1990 – Chris Maxwell, Welsh footballer
1991 – Diana Vickers, English singer-songwriter
1992 – Hannah Cockroft, English wheelchair racer
1993 – Jacob Faria, American baseball player
1993 – André Gomes, Portuguese footballer
1993 – Margarida Moura, Portuguese tennis player
1994 – Nelydia Senrose, Malaysian actress
1996 – Nina Stojanović, Serbian tennis player
Deaths on July 30
578 – Jacob Baradaeus, Greek bishop
579 – Pope Benedict I
734 – Tatwine, English archbishop (b. 670)
829 – Shi Xiancheng, general of the Tang Dynasty
1286 – Bar Hebraeus, Syrian scholar and historian (b. 1226)
1393 – Alberto d’Este, Lord of Ferrara and Modena (b. 1347)
1516 – Johann V of Nassau-Vianden-Dietz (b. 1455)
1540 – Thomas Abel, English priest and martyr (b. 1497)
1540 – Robert Barnes, English martyr and reformer (b. 1495)
1550 – Thomas Wriothesley, 1st Earl of Southampton, English politician, Lord Chancellor of the United Kingdom (b. 1505)
1566 – Guillaume Rondelet, French doctor (b. 1507)
1608 – Rory O’Donnell, 1st Earl of Tyrconnell, last King of Tyrconnell (b. 1575)
1624 – Esmé Stewart, 3rd Duke of Lennox, British nobleman (b. 1579)
1652 – Charles Amadeus, Duke of Nemours (b. 1624)
1680 – Thomas Butler, 6th Earl of Ossory, Irish admiral and politician, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (b. 1634)
1683 – Maria Theresa of Spain (b. 1638)
1691 – Daniel Georg Morhof, German scholar and academic (b. 1639)
1700 – Prince William, Duke of Gloucester, English royal (b. 1689)
1718 – William Penn, English businessman and philosopher, founded the Province of Pennsylvania (b. 1644)
1771 – Thomas Gray, English poet (b. 1716)
1811 – Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, Mexican priest and soldier (b. 1753)
1832 – Lê Văn Duyệt, Vietnamese general, mandarin (b. 1763-4)
997 – Battle of Spercheios: Bulgarian forces of Tsar Samuel are defeated by a Byzantine army under general Nikephoros Ouranos at the Spercheios River in Greece.
1054 – Three Roman legates break relations between Western and Eastern Christian Churches through the act of placing an invalidly-issued Papal bull of Excommunication on the altar of Hagia Sophia during Saturday afternoon divine liturgy. Historians frequently describe the event as the start of the East–West Schism.
1212 – Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa: After Pope Innocent III calls European knights to a crusade, forces of Kings Alfonso VIII of Castile, Sancho VII of Navarre, Peter II of Aragon and Afonso II of Portugal defeat those of the Berber Muslim leader Almohad, thus marking a significant turning point in the Reconquista and in the medieval history of Spain.
1232 – The Spanish town of Arjona declares independence and names its native Muhammad ibn Yusuf as ruler. This marks Muhammad’s first rise to prominence; he would later establish the Nasrid Emirate of Granada, the last independent Muslim state in Spain.
1251 – Celebrated by the Carmelite Order – but doubted by modern historians – as the day when Saint Simon Stock had a vision of the Virgin Mary
1377 – King Richard II of England is crowned.
1661 – The first banknotes in Europe are issued by the Swedish bank Stockholms Banco.
1683 – Manchu Qing dynasty naval forces under traitorous commander Shi Lang defeat the Kingdom of Tungning in the Battle of Penghu near the Pescadores Islands.
1769 – Father Junípero Serra founds California’s first mission, Mission San Diego de Alcalá. Over the following decades, it evolves into the city of San Diego, California.
1779 – American Revolutionary War: Light infantry of the Continental Army seize a fortified British Army position in a midnight bayonet attack at the Battle of Stony Point.
1790 – The District of Columbia is established as the capital of the United States after signature of the Residence Act.
1809 – The city of La Paz, in what is today Bolivia, declares its independence from the Spanish Crown during the La Paz revolution and forms the Junta Tuitiva, the first independent government in Spanish America, led by Pedro Domingo Murillo.
1849 – Antonio María Claret y Clará founds the Congregation of the Missionary Sons of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, popularly known as the Claretians in Vic, in the province of Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain.
1861 – American Civil War: At the order of President Abraham Lincoln, Union troops begin a 25-mile march into Virginia for what will become the First Battle of Bull Run, the first major land battle of the war.
1862 – American Civil War: David Farragut is promoted to rear admiral, becoming the first officer in United States Navy to hold an admiral rank.
1909 – Persian Constitutional Revolution: Mohammad Ali Shah Qajar is forced out as Shah of Persia and is replaced by his son Ahmad Shah Qajar.
1910 – John Robertson Duigan makes the first flight of the Duigan pusher biplane, the first aircraft built in Australia.
1915 – Henry James becomes a British citizen to highlight his commitment to Britain during the first World War.
1915 – At Treasure Island on the Delaware River in the United States, the First Order of the Arrow ceremony takes place and the Order of the Arrow is founded to honor American Boy Scouts who best exemplify the Scout Oath and Law.
1927 – Augusto César Sandino leads a raid on U.S. Marines and Nicaraguan Guardia Nacional that had been sent to apprehend him in the village of Ocotal, but is repulsed by one of the first dive-bombing attacks in history.
1931 – Emperor Haile Selassie signs the first constitution of Ethiopia.
1935 – The world’s first parking meter is installed in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
1941 – Joe DiMaggio hits safely for the 56th consecutive game, a streak that still stands as an MLB record.
1942 – Holocaust: Vel’ d’Hiv Roundup (Rafle du Vel’ d’Hiv): The government of Vichy France orders the mass arrest of 13,152 Jews who are held at the Vélodrome d’Hiver in Paris before deportation to Auschwitz.
1945 – World War II: The heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis leaves San Francisco with parts for the atomic bomb “Little Boy” bound for Tinian Island.
1945 – Manhattan Project: The Atomic Age begins when the United States successfully detonates a plutonium-based test nuclear weapon near Alamogordo, New Mexico.
1948 – Following token resistance, the city of Nazareth, revered by Christians as the hometown of Jesus, capitulates to Israeli troops during Operation Dekel in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.
1948 – The storming of the cockpit of the Miss Macao passenger seaplane, operated by a subsidiary of the Cathay Pacific Airways, marks the first aircraft hijacking of a commercial plane.
1950 – Chaplain–Medic massacre: American POWs are massacred by North Korean Army.
1951 – King Leopold III of Belgium abdicates in favor of his son, Baudouin I of Belgium.
1956 – Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus closes its last “Big Tent” show in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; due to changing economics, all subsequent circus shows will be held in arenas.
1965 – The Mont Blanc Tunnel linking France and Italy opens.
1965 – South Vietnamese Colonel Phạm Ngọc Thảo, a formerly undetected communist spy and double agent, is hunted down and killed by unknown individuals after being sentenced to death in absentia for a February 1965 coup attempt against Nguyễn Khánh.
1969 – Apollo program: Apollo 11, the first mission to land astronauts on the Moon, is launched from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Kennedy, Florida.
1979 – Iraqi President Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr resigns and is replaced by Saddam Hussein.
1983 – Sikorsky S-61 disaster: A helicopter crashes off the Isles of Scilly, causing 20 fatalities.
1990 – The Luzon earthquake strikes the Philippines with an intensity of 7.7, affecting Benguet, Pangasinan, Nueva Ecija, La Union, Aurora, Bataan, Zambales and Tarlac.
1990 – The Parliament of the Ukrainian SSR declares state sovereignty over the territory of the Ukrainian SSR.
1999 – John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife, Carolyn, and her sister, Lauren Bessette, died when the Piper Saratoga PA-32R aircraft he was piloting crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard.
2004 – Millennium Park, considered Chicago’s first and most ambitious early 21st-century architectural project, is opened to the public by Mayor Richard M. Daley.
2007 – An earthquake of magnitude 6.8 and 6.6 aftershock occurs off the Niigata coast of Japan killing eight people, injuring at least 800 and damaging a nuclear power plant.
2013 – As many as 27 children die and 25 others are hospitalized after eating lunch served at their school in eastern India.
2015 – Four U.S. Marines and one gunman die in a shooting spree targeting military installations in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
2019 – 100 years old building in Mumbai, India, collapsed, killing at least 10 people and many remaining trapped.
Births on July 16
1194 – Clare of Assisi, an Italian nun and saint (d. 1253)
1486 – Andrea del Sarto, Italian painter (d. 1530)
1517 – Frances Grey, Duchess of Suffolk, English duchess (d. 1559)
1529 – Petrus Peckius the Elder, Dutch jurist, writer on international maritime law (d. 1589)
1611 – Cecilia Renata of Austria (d. 1644)
1661 – Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville, Canadian captain, explorer, and politician (d. 1706)
1714 – Marc René, marquis de Montalembert, French engineer and author (d. 1800)
1722 – Joseph Wilton, English sculptor and academic (d. 1803)
1723 – Joshua Reynolds, English painter and academic (d. 1792)
1731 – Samuel Huntington, American jurist and politician, 18th Governor of Connecticut (d. 1796)
1749 – Cyrus Griffin, American lawyer, judge, and politician, 16th President of the Continental Congress (d. 1810)
1796 – Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, French painter and etcher (d. 1875)
1821 – Mary Baker Eddy, American religious leader and author, founded Christian Science (d. 1910)
1841 – Nikolai von Glehn, Estonian-German architect and activist (d. 1923)
1858 – Eugène Ysaÿe, Belgian violinist, composer, and conductor (d. 1931)
1862 – Ida B. Wells, American journalist and activist (d. 1931)
1863 – Anderson Dawson, Australian politician, 14th Premier of Queensland (d. 1910)
1870 – Lambert McKenna, Irish priest, lexicographer, and scholar (d. 1956)
1871 – John Maxwell, American golfer (d. 1906)
1872 – Roald Amundsen, Norwegian pilot and explorer (d. 1928)
1872 – Frank Cooper, Australian politician, 25th Premier of Queensland (d. 1949)
1880 – Kathleen Norris, American journalist and author (d. 1966)
1882 – Violette Neatley Anderson, American judge (d. 1937)
1883 – Charles Sheeler, American photographer and painter (d. 1965)
1884 – Anna Vyrubova, Russian author (d. 1964)
1887 – Shoeless Joe Jackson, American baseball player and manager (d. 1951)
1888 – Percy Kilbride, American actor (d. 1964)
1888 – Frits Zernike, Dutch physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1966)
1889 – Arthur Bowie Chrisman, American author (d. 1953)
1895 – Wilfrid Hamel, Canadian businessman and politician, 35th Mayor of Quebec City (d. 1968)
1896 – Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer, German biologist and eugenicist (d. 1969)
1896 – Trygve Lie, Norwegian trade union leader and politician, 1st Secretary-General of the United Nations (d. 1968)
1902 – Alexander Luria, Russian psychologist and physician (d. 1977)
1902 – Mary Philbin, American actress (d. 1993)
1903 – Fritz Bauer, German lawyer and judge (d. 1968)
1903 – Carmen Lombardo, Canadian singer-songwriter (d. 1971)
1903 – Irmgard Flügge-Lotz, German mathematician and engineer (d. 1974)
1904 – Goffredo Petrassi, Italian composer and conductor (d. 2003)
1906 – Vincent Sherman, American actor, director, and screenwriter (d. 2006)
1907 – Frances Horwich, American educator and television host (d. 2001)
1907 – Orville Redenbacher, American farmer and businessman, founded Orville Redenbacher’s (d. 1995)
1907 – Barbara Stanwyck, American actress (d. 1990)
1910 – Stan McCabe, Australian cricketer (d. 1968)
1910 – Gordon Prange, American historian, author, and academic (d. 1980)
1911 – Ginger Rogers, American actress, singer, and dancer (d. 1995)
1911 – Sonny Tufts, American actor (d. 1970)
1912 – Milt Bocek, American baseball player (d. 2007)
1912 – Amy Patterson, Argentine composer, singer, poet, and teacher (d. 2019)
1915 – Barnard Hughes, American actor (d. 2006)
1915 – Elaine Barrie, American actress (d. 2003)
1918 – Denis Edward Arnold, English soldier (d. 2015)
1918 – Paul Farnes, famed World War II Royal Air Force (RAF) fighter pilot and one of “The Few” surviving pilots of the Battle of Britain (d. 2020)
1918 – Samuel Victor Perry, English biochemist and rugby player (d. 2009)
1919 – Hermine Braunsteiner, Austrian SS officer (d. 1999)
1919 – Choi Kyu-hah, South Korean politician, 4th President of South Korea (d. 2006)
1920 – Anatole Broyard, American critic and editor (d. 1990)
1923 – Chris Argyris, American psychologist, theorist, and academic (d. 2013)
1923 – Bola Sete, Brazilian guitarist (d. 1987)
1924 – James L. Greenfield, American journalist and politician
1924 – Bess Myerson, American model, actress, game show panelist, and politician, Miss America 1945 (d. 2014)
1924 – Rupert Deese, Northern Mariana Islander ceramic artist (d. 2010)
1925 – Frank Jobe, American sergeant and surgeon (d. 2014)
1925 – Rosita Quintana, Argentine actress
1925 – Cal Tjader, American jazz musician (d. 1982)
1926 – Ivica Horvat, Croatian footballer and manager (d. 2012)
1926 – Irwin Rose, American biologist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2015)
1927 – Pierre F. Côté, Canadian lawyer and civil servant (d. 2013)
1927 – Shirley Hughes, English author and illustrator
1927 – Derek Hawksworth, English footballer
1928 – Anita Brookner, English novelist and art historian (d. 2016)
1928 – Bella Davidovich, Soviet-American pianist
1928 – Robert Sheckley, American author and screenwriter (d. 2005)
1928 – Jim Rathmann, American race car driver (d. 2011)
1928 – Dave Treen, American lawyer and politician, 51st Governor of Louisiana (d. 2009)
1928 – Andrzej Zawada, Polish mountaineer and author (d. 2000)
1929 – Charles Ray Hatcher, American serial killer (d. 1984)
1929 – Sheri S. Tepper, American author and poet (d. 2016)
1929 – Gaby Tanguy, French swimmer
1930 – Guy Béart, Egyptian-French singer-songwriter (d. 2015)
1930 – Michael Bilirakis, American lawyer and politician
1930 – Bert Rechichar, American football defensive back and kicker (d. 2019)
1931 – Fergus Gordon Kerr, Scottish Roman Catholic priest of the English Dominican Province
1931 – Norm Sherry, American former catcher, manager, and coach in Major League Baseball
1932 – John Chilton, English trumpet player and composer (d. 2016)
1932 – Max McGee, American football player and sportscaster (d. 2007)
1932 – Dick Thornburgh, American lawyer and politician, 76th United States Attorney General
1933 – Julian A. Brodsky, American businessman
1934 – Tomás Eloy Martínez, Argentine journalist (d. 2010)
1934 – Katherine D. Ortega, 38th Treasurer of the United States
1934 – Donald M. Payne, American educator and politician (d. 2012)
1935 – Carl Epting Mundy Jr., American general (d. 2014)
1935 – Lynn Wyatt, American socialite and philanthropist
1936 – Yasuo Fukuda, Japanese politician, 91st Prime Minister of Japan
1936 – Buddy Merrill, American guitarist
1936 – Jerry Norman, American sinologist and linguist (d. 2012)
328 – The official opening of Constantine’s Bridge built over the Danube between Sucidava (Corabia, Romania) and Oescus (Gigen, Bulgaria) by the Roman architect Theophilus Patricius.
1316 – The Burgundian and Majorcan claimants of the Principality of Achaea meet in the Battle of Manolada.
1594 – Portuguese forces under the command of Pedro Lopes de Sousa begin an unsuccessful invasion of the Kingdom of Kandy during the Campaign of Danture in Sri Lanka.
1610 – John Guy sets sail from Bristol with 39 other colonists for Newfoundland.
1687 – Isaac Newton publishes Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica.
1770 – The Battle of Chesma between the Russian Empire and the Ottoman Empire begins.
1775 – The Second Continental Congress adopts the Olive Branch Petition.
1803 – The Convention of Artlenburg is signed, leading to the French occupation of the Electorate of Hanover (which had been ruled by the British king).
1807 – In Buenos Aires the local militias repel the British soldiers within the Second English Invasion.
1809 – The largest battle of the Napoleonic Wars, the Battle of Wagram is fought between the French and Austrian Empires.
1811 – The Venezuelan Declaration of Independence is adopted by a congress of the provinces.
1813 – War of 1812: Three weeks of British raids on Fort Schlosser, Black Rock and Plattsburgh, New York commence.
1814 – War of 1812: Battle of Chippawa: American Major General Jacob Brown defeats British General Phineas Riall at Chippawa, Ontario.
1833 – Lê Văn Khôi along with 27 soldiers stage a mutiny taking over the Phiên An citadel, developing into the Lê Văn Khôi revolt against Emperor Minh Mạng.
1833 – Admiral Charles Napier vanquishes the navy of the Portuguese usurper Dom Miguel at the third Battle of Cape St. Vincent.
1841 – Thomas Cook organises the first package excursion, from Leicester to Loughborough.
1884 – Germany takes possession of Cameroon.
1915 – The Liberty Bell leaves Philadelphia by special train on its way to the Panama–Pacific International Exposition. This is the last trip outside Philadelphia that the custodians of the bell intend to permit.
1934 – “Bloody Thursday”: Police open fire on striking longshoremen in San Francisco.
1935 – The National Labor Relations Act, which governs labor relations in the United States, is signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
1937 – Spam, the luncheon meat, is introduced into the market by the Hormel Foods Corporation.
1940 – World War II: Foreign relations of Vichy France are severed with the United Kingdom.
1941 – World War II: Operation Barbarossa: German troops reach the Dnieper river.
1943 – World War II: An Allied invasion fleet sails for Sicily (Operation Husky, July 10, 1943).
1943 – World War II: German forces begin a massive offensive against the Soviet Union at the Battle of Kursk, also known as Operation Citadel.
1946 – Micheline Bernardini models the first modern bikini at a swimming pool in Paris.
1948 – National Health Service Acts create the national public health system in the United Kingdom.
1950 – Korean War: Task Force Smith: American and North Korean forces first clash, in the Battle of Osan.
1950 – Zionism: The Knesset passes the Law of Return which grants all Jews the right to immigrate to Israel.
1954 – The BBC broadcasts its first television news bulletin.
1954 – Elvis Presley records his first single, “That’s All Right”, at Sun Records in Memphis, Tennessee.
1962 – The official independence of Algeria is proclaimed after an 8-year-long war with France.
1971 – The Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution, lowering the voting age from 21 to 18 years, is formally certified by President Richard Nixon.
1973 – A boiling liquid expanding vapor explosion (BLEVE) in Kingman, Arizona, following a fire that broke out as propane was being transferred from a railroad car to a storage tank, kills eleven firefighters.
1975 – Arthur Ashe becomes the first black man to win the Wimbledon singles title.
1975 – Cape Verde gains its independence from Portugal.
1977 – Military coup in Pakistan: Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the first elected Prime Minister of Pakistan, is overthrown.
1980 – Swedish tennis player Björn Borg wins his fifth Wimbledon final and becomes the first male tennis player to win the championships five times in a row (1976–1980).
1987 – Sri Lankan Civil War: The LTTE uses suicide attacks on the Sri Lankan Army for the first time. The Black Tigers are born and, in the following years, will continue to kill with the tactic.
1989 – Iran–Contra affair: Oliver North is sentenced by U.S. District Judge Gerhard A. Gesell to a three-year suspended prison term, two years probation, $150,000 in fines and 1,200 hours community service. His convictions are later overturned.
1995 – Armenia adopts its constitution, four years after its independence from the Soviet Union.
1996 – Dolly the sheep becomes the first mammal cloned from an adult cell.
1997 – Sri Lankan Civil War: Sri Lankan Tamil MP A. Thangathurai is shot dead at Sri Shanmuga Hindu Ladies College in Trincomalee.
1999 – U.S. President Bill Clinton imposes trade and economic sanctions against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
2004 – The first direct Indonesian presidential election is held.
2006 – North Korea tests four short-range missiles, one medium-range missile and a long-range Taepodong-2. The long-range Taepodong-2 reportedly fails in mid-air over the Sea of Japan.
2009 – A series of violent riots break out in Ürümqi, the capital city of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China.
2009 – The largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold ever discovered in England, consisting of more than 1,500 items, is found near the village of Hammerwich, near Lichfield, Staffordshire.
2012 – The Shard in London is inaugurated as the tallest building in Europe, with a height of 310 metres (1,020 ft).
2016 – The Juno space probe arrives at Jupiter and begins a 20-month survey of the planet.
Births on July 5
465 – Ahkal Mo’ Naab’ I, Mayan ruler (d. 524)
980 – Mokjong of Goryeo, Korean king (d. 1009)
1029 – Al-Mustansir Billah, Fatimid caliph (d. 1094)
1057 – Al-Ghazali, Iranian jurist, philosopher, and mystic (d. 1111)
1321 – Joan of the Tower, English consort of David II of Scotland (d. 1362)
1466 – Giovanni Sforza, Italian nobleman (d. 1510)
1547 – Garzia de’ Medici, Tuscan son of Cosimo I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany (d. 1562)
1549 – Francesco Maria del Monte, Italian cardinal and art collector (d. 1627)
1554 – Elisabeth of Austria, French queen (d. 1592)
1580 – Carlo Contarini, doge of Venice (d. 1656)
1586 – Thomas Hooker, English-born founder of the Colony of Connecticut (d. 1647)
1593 – Achille d’Étampes de Valençay, French military leader (d. 1646)
1653 – Thomas Pitt, English businessman and politician (d. 1726)
1670 – Dorothea Sophie of Neuburg, countess palatine (d. 1748)
1675 – Mary Walcott, American accuser and witness at the Salem witch trials (d. 1719)
1709 – Étienne de Silhouette, French translator and politician, Controller-General of Finances (d. 1767)
1717 – Peter III, Portuguese king (d. 1786)
1718 – Francis Seymour-Conway, 1st Marquess of Hertford, English politician, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (d. 1794)
1745 – Carl Arnold Kortum, German physician and poet (d. 1824)
1755 – Sarah Siddons, English actress (d. 1831)
1780 – François Carlo Antommarchi, French physician (d. 1838)
1793 – Pavel Pestel, Russian officer (d. 1826)
1794 – Sylvester Graham, American minister and activist (d. 1851)
1801 – David Farragut, American admiral (d. 1870)
1802 – Pavel Nakhimov, Russian admiral (d. 1855)
1803 – George Borrow, British writer (d. 1881)
1805 – Robert FitzRoy, English captain, meteorologist, and politician, 2nd Governor of New Zealand (d. 1865)
1810 – P. T. Barnum, American businessman, co-founded Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus (d. 1891)
1820 – William John Macquorn Rankine, Scottish physicist, mathematician, and engineer (d. 1872)
1829 – Ignacio Mariscal, Mexican politician and diplomat, Secretary of Foreign Affairs for Mexico (d. 1910)
1832 – Pavel Chistyakov, Russian painter and educator (d. 1919)
1841 – William Collins Whitney, American financier and politician, 31st United States Secretary of the Navy (d. 1904)
1849 – William Thomas Stead, English journalist (d. 1912)
1853 – Cecil Rhodes, English-South African businessman and politician, 6th Prime Minister of the Cape Colony (d. 1902)
1857 – Clara Zetkin, German theorist and activist (d. 1933)
1857 – Julien Tiersot, French musicologist and composer (d. 1936)
1860 – Robert Bacon, American colonel and politician, 39th United States Secretary of State (d. 1919)
1860 – Mathieu Jaboulay, French surgeon (d. 1913)
1862 – George Nuttall, American-British bacteriologist (d. 1937)
1862 – Horatio Caro, English chess master (d. 1920)
1864 – Stephan Krehl, German composer (d. 1924)
1867 – A. E. Douglass, American astronomer (d. 1962)
1872 – Édouard Herriot, French lawyer and politician, Prime Minister of France (d. 1957)
1874 – Eugen Fischer, German physician and academic (d. 1967)
1879 – Dwight F. Davis, American tennis player and politician, 49th United States Secretary of War (d. 1945)
1879 – Wanda Landowska, Polish-French harpsichord player and educator (d. 1959)
1880 – Jan Kubelík, Czech violinist and composer (d. 1940)
1880 – Constantin Tănase, Romanian actor and playwright (d. 1945)
1882 – Inayat Khan, Indian mystic and educator (d. 1927)
1883 – Gustave Lanctot, Canadian historian, author, and academic (d. 1975)
1884 – Enrico Dante, Italian cardinal (d. 1967)
1885 – Blas Infante, Spanish historian and politician (d. 1936)
1885 – André Lhote, French sculptor and painter (d. 1962)
1886 – Willem Drees, Dutch politician and historian, Prime Minister of the Netherlands (1948–1958) (d. 1988)
1886 – Prince John Konstantinovich of Russia (d. 1918)
1888 – Herbert Spencer Gasser, American physiologist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1963)
1888 – Louise Freeland Jenkins, American astronomer and academic (d. 1970)
1889 – Jean Cocteau, French novelist, poet, and playwright (d. 1963)
1890 – Frederick Lewis Allen, American historian and journalist (d. 1954)
1891 – John Howard Northrop, American chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1987)
1891 – Tin Ujević, Croatian poet and translator (d. 1955)
1893 – Anthony Berkeley Cox, English writer (d. 1971)
1893 – Giuseppe Caselli, Italian painter (d. 1976)
1894 – Ants Lauter, Estonian actor and director (d. 1973)
1896 – Thomas Playford IV, Australian politician, 33rd Premier of South Australia (d. 1981)
1898 – Georgios Grivas, Greek general (d. 1974)
1899 – Marcel Achard, French playwright, screenwriter, and author (d. 1974)
1900 – Yoshimaro Yamashina, Japanese ornithologist, founded the Yamashina Institute for Ornithology (d. 1989)
1900 – Bernardus Johannes Alfrink, Dutch cardinal (d. 1987)
1901 – Julio Libonatti, Italian-Argentinian footballer (d. 1981)
1902 – Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., American colonel and politician, 3rd United States Ambassador to the United Nations (d. 1985)
1904 – Harold Acton, English scholar and author (d. 1994)
1904 – Ernst Mayr, German-American biologist and ornithologist (d. 2005)
1904 – Milburn Stone, American actor (d. 1980)
1905 – Madeleine Sylvain-Bouchereau, Haitian sociologist and educator (d. 1970)
1908 – Henri of Orléans, (d. 1999)
1908 – Lyman S. Ayres II, American businessman (d. 1996)
1910 – Georges Vedel, French lawyer and academic (d. 2002)
1911 – Endel Aruja, Estonian-Canadian physicist and academic (d. 2008)
1911 – Haydn Bunton, Sr., Australian footballer and coach (d. 1955)
1911 – Giorgio Borġ Olivier, Maltese lawyer and politician, 7th Prime Minister of Malta (d. 1980)
1911 – Georges Pompidou, French banker and politician, 19th President of France (d. 1974)
1913 – George Costakis, Russian art collector (d. 1990)
1913 – Smiley Lewis, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 1966)
1914 – John Thomas Dunlop, American administrator and labor scholar (d. 2003)
1914 – Annie Fischer, Hungarian pianist and composer (d. 1995)
1915 – Babe Paley, American socialite (d. 1978)
1915 – John Woodruff, American runner and commander (d. 2007)
1915 – Al Timothy, Trinidadian musician and songwriter (d. 2000)
1916 – Lívia Rév, Hungarian classical pianist (d. 2018)
1916 – Ivor Powell, Welsh footballer (d. 2012)
1918 – K. Karunakaran, Indian lawyer and politician, 7th Chief Minister of Kerala (d. 2010)
1918 – Brian James, Australian actor (d. 2009)
1918 – Zakaria Mohieddin, Egyptian general and politician, 33rd Prime Minister of Egypt (d. 2012)
1918 – George Rochberg, American composer and educator (d. 2005)
1921 – Viktor Kulikov, Russian marshal (d. 2013)
1921 – Nanos Valaoritis, Greek author, poet, and playwright (d. 2019)
1923 – George Moore, Australian jockey (d. 2008)
1923 – Mitsuye Yamada, Japanese American activist
1924 – János Starker, Hungarian-American cellist and educator (d. 2013)
1924 – Edward Cassidy, Australian Roman Catholic cardinal priest
1925 – Fernando de Szyszlo, Peruvian painter and sculptor (d. 2017)
1925 – Jean Raspail, French author and explorer (d. 2020)
1926 – Diana Lynn, American actress (d. 1971)
1928 – Pierre Mauroy, French educator and politician, Prime Minister of France (d. 2013)
1928 – Warren Oates, American actor (d. 1982)
1929 – Jimmy Carruthers, Australian boxer (d. 1990)
1929 – Katherine Helmond, American actress and director (d. 2019)
1929 – Tony Lock, English cricketer (d. 1995)
1929 – Jovan Rašković, Serbian psychiatrist, academic, and politician (d. 1992)
1929 – Jiří Reynek, Czech poet and graphic artist (d. 2014)
1929 – Chikao Ohtsuka, Japanese voice actor (d. 2015)
1931 – Ismail Mahomed, South African lawyer and politician, 17th Chief Justice of South Africa (d. 2000)
1932 – Gyula Horn, Hungarian politician, 37th Prime Minister of Hungary (d. 2013)
1933 – Paul-Gilbert Langevin, French musicologist, critic and physicist (d. 1986)
1936 – Shirley Knight, American actress (d. 2020)
1936 – James Mirrlees, Scottish economist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2018)
1938 – Ronnie Self, American singer-songwriter (d. 1981)
1940 – Chuck Close, American painter and photographer
1941 – Terry Cashman, American singer-songwriter and record producer
1941 – Epeli Nailatikau, Fijian chief, President of Fiji
1942 – Matthias Bamert, Swiss composer and conductor
1942 – Hannes Löhr, German footballer, coach, and manager (d. 2016)
1943 – Curt Blefary, American baseball player and coach (d. 2001)
1943 – Mark Cox, English tennis player, coach and sportscaster
1943 – Robbie Robertson, Canadian singer-songwriter, guitarist, producer, and actor
1943 – Pierre Villepreux, French rugby player and coach
1944 – Leni Björklund, Swedish politician, 28th Swedish Minister of Defence for Sweden
1945 – Michael Blake, American author and screenwriter (d. 2015)
1945 – Humberto Benítez Treviño, Mexican lawyer and politician, Attorney General of Mexico
1946 – Pierre-Marc Johnson, Canadian lawyer, physician, and politician, 24th Premier of Quebec
1946 – Paul Smith, English fashion designer
1946 – Gerard ‘t Hooft, Dutch physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate
1946 – Vladimir Mikhailovich Zakharov, Russian dancer and choreographer (d. 2013)
1947 – Todd Akin, American politician
1949 – Ludwig G. Strauss, German physician and academic (d. 2013)
1950 – Carlos Caszely, Chilean footballer
1950 – Huey Lewis, American singer-songwriter and actor
1950 – Michael Monarch, American guitarist, songwriter, and producer
1951 – Goose Gossage, American baseball player
1951 – Roger Wicker, American colonel, lawyer, and politician
1953 – Caryn Navy, American mathematician and computer scientist
1954 – Jimmy Crespo, American guitarist and songwriter
1954 – John Wright, New Zealand cricketer and coach
1955 – Tony Hadley, English footballer
1955 – Peter McNamara, Australian tennis player and coach (d. 2019)
1956 – Horacio Cartes, Paraguayan businessman and politician, President of Paraguay
1956 – James Lofton, American football player and coach
1957 – Carlo Thränhardt, German high jumper
1957 – Doug Wilson, Canadian-American ice hockey player and manager
1958 – Veronica Guerin, Irish journalist (d. 1996)
1958 – Bill Watterson, American author and illustrator
1959 – Marc Cohn, American singer-songwriter and keyboard player
1960 – Pruitt Taylor Vince, American actor and director
1962 – Sarina Hülsenbeck, German swimmer
1963 – Edie Falco, American actress
1964 – Ronald D. Moore, American screenwriter and producer
1965 – Kathryn Erbe, American actress
1965 – Eyran Katsenelenbogen, Israeli-American pianist and educator
1966 – Susannah Doyle, English actress, director, and playwright
1966 – Gianfranco Zola, Italian footballer and coach
1968 – Ken Akamatsu, Japanese illustrator
1968 – Kenji Ito, Japanese pianist and composer
1968 – Nardwuar the Human Serviette, Canadian singer-songwriter and keyboard player
1968 – Hedi Slimane, French fashion designer and photographer
1968 – Alex Zülle, Swiss cyclist
1968 – Susan Wojcicki, Polish-American technology executive, CEO of YouTube
1969 – Jenji Kohan, American screenwriter and producer
1969 – Armin Kõomägi, Estonian author and screenwriter
1969 – John LeClair, American ice hockey player
1969 – RZA, American rapper, producer, actor, and director
1970 – Mac Dre, American rapper and producer, founded Thizz Entertainment (d. 2004)
1970 – Valentí Massana, Spanish race walker
1971 – Derek McInnes, Scottish footballer and manager
1972 – Matthew Birir, Kenyan runner
1972 – Robert Esmie, Canadian sprinter
1972 – Gary Shteyngart, American writer
1973 – Marcus Allbäck, Swedish footballer and coach
1973 – Bengt Lagerberg, Swedish drummer
1973 – Róisín Murphy, Irish singer-songwriter and producer
1974 – Márcio Amoroso, Brazilian footballer
1975 – Hernán Crespo, Argentinian footballer and coach
1975 – Ai Sugiyama, Japanese tennis player
1976 – Bizarre, American rapper
1976 – Nuno Gomes, Portuguese footballer
1977 – Nicolas Kiefer, German tennis player
1977 – Steven Sharp Nelson, American cellist
1978 – Britta Oppelt, German rower
1978 – Allan Simonsen, Danish race car driver (d. 2013)
1978 – İsmail YK, German-Turkish singer-songwriter
1979 – Shane Filan, Irish singer-songwriter
1979 – Amélie Mauresmo, French-Swiss tennis player
1979 – Stiliyan Petrov, Bulgarian footballer and manager
1980 – David Rozehnal, Czech footballer
1980 – Mads Tolling, Danish-American violinist and composer
1980 – Jason Wade, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
1982 – Fabrício de Souza, Brazilian footballer
1982 – Alexander Dimitrenko, Ukrainian-German boxer
1982 – Alberto Gilardino, Italian footballer
1982 – Philippe Gilbert, Belgian cyclist
1982 – Kate Gynther, Australian water polo player
1982 – Dave Haywood, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
763 – The Byzantine army of emperor Constantine V defeats the Bulgarian forces in the Battle of Anchialus.
1422 – Battle of Arbedo between the duke of Milan and the Swiss cantons.
1521 – Spanish forces defeat a combined French and Navarrese army at the Battle of Noáin during the Spanish conquest of Iberian Navarre.
1559 – King Henry II of France is mortally wounded in a jousting match against Gabriel, comte de Montgomery.
1651 – The Deluge: Khmelnytsky Uprising: The Battle of Berestechko ends with a Polish victory.
1688 – The Immortal Seven issue the Invitation to William, which would culminate in the Glorious Revolution.
1758 – Seven Years’ War: Habsburg Austrian forces destroy a Prussian reinforcement and supply convoy in the Battle of Domstadtl, helping to expel Prussian King Frederick the Great from Moravia.
1794 – Northwest Indian War: Native American forces under Blue Jacket attack Fort Recovery.
1805 – Under An act to divide the Indiana Territory into two separate governments, adopted by the U.S. Congress on January 11, 1805, the Michigan Territory is organized.
1859 – French acrobat Charles Blondin crosses Niagara Falls on a tightrope.
1860 – The 1860 Oxford evolution debate at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History takes place.
1864 – U.S. President Abraham Lincoln grants Yosemite Valley to California for “public use, resort and recreation”.
1882 – Charles J. Guiteau is hanged in Washington, D.C. for the assassination of U.S. President James Garfield.
1886 – The first transcontinental train trip across Canada departs from Montreal, Quebec. It arrives in Port Moody, British Columbia on July 4.
1892 – The Homestead Strike begins near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
1905 – Albert Einstein sends the article On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies, in which he introduces special relativity, for publication in Annalen der Physik.
1906 – The United States Congress passes the Meat Inspection Act and Pure Food and Drug Act.
1908 – The Tunguska Event, the largest impact event on Earth in human recorded history, resulting in a massive explosion over Eastern Siberia.
1912 – The Regina Cyclone, Canada’s deadliest tornado event, kills 28 people in Regina, Saskatchewan.
1916 – World War I: In “the day Sussex died”, elements of the Royal Sussex Regiment take heavy casualties in the Battle of the Boar’s Head at Richebourg-l’Avoué in France.
1921 – U.S. President Warren G. Harding appoints former President William Howard Taft as Chief Justice of the United States.
1922 – In Washington D.C., U.S. Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes and Dominican Ambassador Francisco J. Peynado sign the Hughes–Peynado agreement, which ends the United States occupation of the Dominican Republic.
1934 – The Night of the Long Knives, Adolf Hitler’s violent purge of his political rivals in Germany, takes place.
1936 – Emperor Haile Selassie of Abyssinia appeals for aid to the League of Nations against Italy’s invasion of his country.
1937 – The world’s first emergency telephone number, 999, is introduced in London.
1944 – World War II: The Battle of Cherbourg ends with the fall of the strategically valuable port to American forces.
1953 – The first Chevrolet Corvette rolls off the assembly line in Flint, Michigan.
1956 – A TWA Super Constellation and a United Airlines DC-7 collide above the Grand Canyon in Arizona and crash, killing all 128 on board both airliners.
1959 – A United States Air Force F-100 Super Sabre from Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, crashes into a nearby elementary school, killing 11 students plus six residents from the local neighborhood.
1960 – Belgian Congo gains independence as Republic of the Congo (Léopoldville).
1963 – Ciaculli bombing: a car bomb, intended for Mafia boss Salvatore Greco, kills seven police officers and military personnel near Palermo.
1966 – The National Organization for Women, the United States’ largest feminist organization, is founded.
1968 – Pope Paul VI issues the Credo of the People of God.
1971 – The crew of the Soviet Soyuz 11 spacecraft are killed when their air supply escapes through a faulty valve.
1972 – The first leap second is added to the UTC time system.
1974 – The Baltimore municipal strike of 1974 begins.
1977 – The Southeast Asia Treaty Organization disbands.
1985 – Thirty-nine American hostages from the hijacked TWA Flight 847 are freed in Beirut after being held for 17 days.
1986 – The U.S. Supreme Court rules in Bowers v. Hardwick that states can outlaw homosexual acts between consenting adults.
1990 – East Germany and West Germany merge their economies.
1994 – During a test flight of an Airbus A330-300 at Toulouse–Blagnac Airport, the aircraft crashes killing all seven people on board.
1997 – The United Kingdom transfers sovereignty over Hong Kong to China.
2005 – MTV Canada is rebranded as Razer
2007 – A Jeep Cherokee filled with propane canisters drives into the entrance of Glasgow Airport, Scotland in a failed terrorist attack. This was linked to the 2007 London car bombs that had taken place the day before.
2009 – Yemenia Flight 626, an Airbus A310-300, crashes into the Indian Ocean near Comoros, killing 152 of the 153 people on board. A 14-year-old girl named Bahia Bakari survives the crash.
2013 – Nineteen firefighters die controlling a wildfire in Yarnell, Arizona.
2013 – Protests begin around Egypt against President Mohamed Morsi and the ruling Freedom and Justice Party, leading to their overthrow during the 2013 Egyptian coup d’état.
2015 – A Hercules C-130 military aircraft with 113 people on board crashes in a residential area in Medan, Indonesia, resulting in at least 116 deaths.
2019 – Donald Trump becomes the first sitting US President to visit the Democratic Republic of Korea.
Births on June 30
1286 – John de Warenne, 7th Earl of Surrey, English magnate (d. 1347)
1468 – John, Elector of Saxony (d. 1532)
1470 – Charles VIII of France (d. 1498)
1478 – John, Prince of Asturias, Son of Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile (d. 1497)
1503 – John Frederick I, Elector of Saxony (d. 1554)
1533 – Martín de Rada, Spanish missionary (d. 1578)
1588 – Giovanni Maria Sabino, Italian organist, composer, and educator (d. 1649)
1641 – Meinhardt Schomberg, 3rd Duke of Schomberg, German-English general (d. 1719)
1685 – John Gay, English poet and playwright (d. 1732)
1688 – Abu l-Hasan Ali I, ruler of Tunisia (d. 1756)
1722 – Jiří Antonín Benda, Czech composer, violinist and Kapellmeister (d. 1795)
1755 – Paul Barras, French soldier and politician (d. 1829)
1789 – Horace Vernet, French painter and academic (d. 1863)
1791 – Félix Savart, French physicist and psychologist (d. 1841)
1803 – Thomas Lovell Beddoes, English poet, playwright, and physician (d. 1849)
1807 – Friedrich Theodor Vischer, German author, poet, and playwright (d.1887)
1817 – Joseph Dalton Hooker, English botanist and explorer (d. 1911)
1843 – Ernest Mason Satow, English orientalist and diplomat (d. 1929)
1864 – Frederick Bligh Bond, English architect and archaeologist (d. 1945)
1884 – Georges Duhamel, French author and critic (d. 1966)
1889 – Archibald Frazer-Nash, English motor car designer, engineer and founder of Frazer Nash (d. 1965)
1890 – Paul Boffa, Maltese physician and politician, 5th Prime Minister of Malta (d. 1962)
1891 – Man Mountain Dean, American wrestler and sergeant (d. 1953)
1891 – Ed Lewis, American wrestler and manager (d. 1966)
1891 – Stanley Spencer, English painter (d. 1959)
1892 – Pierre Blanchar, Algerian-French actor and director (d. 1963)
1893 – Walter Ulbricht, German soldier and politician (d. 1973)
1895 – Heinz Warneke, German-American sculptor and educator (d. 1983)
1899 – Madge Bellamy, American actress (d. 1990)
1905 – John Van Ryn, American tennis player (d. 1999)
1906 – Anthony Mann, American actor and director (d. 1967)
1907 – Roman Shukhevych, Ukrainian general and politician (d. 1950)
1908 – Winston Graham, English author (d. 2003)
1908 – Luigi Rovere, Italian film producer (d. 1996)
1908 – Rob Nieuwenhuys, Dutch writer (d. 1999)
1909 – Juan Bosch, 43rd President of the Dominican Republic (d. 2001)
1911 – Czesław Miłosz, Polish novelist, essayist, and poet, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2004)
1911 – Nagarjun, Indian poet (d. 1998)
1912 – Ludwig Bölkow, German engineer (d. 2003)
1912 – Dan Reeves, American businessman and philanthropist (d. 1971)
1912 – María Luisa Dehesa Gómez Farías, Mexican architect (d. 2009)
1913 – Alfonso López Michelsen, Colombian lawyer and politician, 24th President of Colombia (d. 2007)
1913 – Harry Wismer, American sportscaster (d. 1967)
1914 – Francisco da Costa Gomes, Portuguese general and politician, 15th President of Portugal (d. 2001)
1914 – Allan Houser, American sculptor and painter (d. 1994)
1917 – Susan Hayward, American actress (d. 1975)
1917 – Lena Horne, American actress, singer, and activist (d. 2010)
1917 – Willa Kim, American costume designer (d. 2016)
1919 – Ed Yost, American inventor of the modern hot air balloon (d. 2007)
1920 – Eleanor Ross Taylor, American poet and educator (d. 2011)
1921 – Washington SyCip, American-Filipino accountant (d. 2017)
1922 – Al Besselink, American professional golfer
1923 – Andy Jack, English footballer
1924 – Max Trepp, Swiss sprinter
1925 – Fred Schaus, American basketball player and coach (d. 2010)
1925 – Ebrahim Amini, Iranian politician (d. 2020)
1926 – Paul Berg, American biochemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate
1926 – David Berglas, American magician and mentalist
1927 – Shirley Fry Irvin, American tennis player
1927 – James Goldman, American screenwriter and playwright (d. 1998)
1927 – Mario Lanfranchi, Italian director, screenwriter, producer, collector and actor
1098 – Fighters of the First Crusade defeat Kerbogha of Mosul.
1360 – Muhammed VI becomes the tenth Nasrid king of Granada after killing his brother-in-law Ismail II.
1461 – Edward, Earl of March, is crowned King Edward IV of England.
1519 – Charles V is elected Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.
1575 – Sengoku period of Japan: The combined forces of Oda Nobunaga and Tokugawa Ieyasu are victorious in the Battle of Nagashino.
1635 – Guadeloupe becomes a French colony.
1651 – The Battle of Berestechko between Poland and Ukraine starts.
1709 – Peter the Great defeats Charles XII of Sweden at the Battle of Poltava.
1745 – A New England colonial army captures the French fortifications at Louisbourg (New Style).
1776 – American Revolutionary War: The Battle of Sullivan’s Island ends with the American victory, leading to the commemoration of Carolina Day.
1776 – American Revolutionary War: Thomas Hickey, Continental Army private and bodyguard to General George Washington, is hanged for mutiny and sedition.
1778 – American Revolutionary War: The American Continentals engage the British in the Battle of Monmouth Courthouse resulting in standstill and British withdrawal under cover of darkness.
1797 – French troops disembark in Corfu, beginning the French rule in the Ionian Islands.
1807 – Second British invasion of the Río de la Plata; John Whitelocke lands at Ensenada on an attempt to recapture Buenos Aires and is defeated by the locals.
1838 – Coronation of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom.
1841 – The Paris Opera Ballet premieres Giselle in the Salle Le Peletier.
1846 – Adolphe Sax patents the saxophone.
1855 – Sigma Chi fraternity is founded in North America.
1859 – The first conformation dog show is held in Newcastle upon Tyne, England.
1865 – The Army of the Potomac is disbanded.
1880 – Australian bushranger Ned Kelly is captured at Glenrowan.
1881 – The Austro–Serbian Alliance of 1881 is secretly signed.
1882 – The Anglo-French Convention of 1882 marks the territorial boundaries between Guinea and Sierra Leone.
1894 – Labor Day becomes an official US holiday.
1895 – The United States Court of Private Land Claims rules James Reavis’s claim to Barony of Arizona is “wholly fictitious and fraudulent.”
1896 – An explosion in the Newton Coal Company’s Twin Shaft Mine in Pittston, Pennsylvania results in a massive cave-in that kills 58 miners.
1902 – The U.S. Congress passes the Spooner Act, authorizing President Theodore Roosevelt to acquire rights from Colombia for the Panama Canal.
1904 – The SS Norge runs aground on Hasselwood Rock in the North Atlantic 430 kilometres (270 mi) northwest of Ireland. More than 635 people die during the sinking.
1911 – The Nakhla meteorite, the first one to suggest signs of aqueous processes on Mars, falls to Earth, landing in Egypt.
1914 – Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie are assassinated in Sarajevo; this is the casus belli of World War I.
1917 – World War I: Greece joins the Allied powers.
1919 – The Treaty of Versailles is signed, ending the state of war between Germany and the Allies of World War I.
1921 – Serbian King Alexander I proclaims the new constitution of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, known thereafter as the Vidovdan Constitution.
1922 – The Irish Civil War begins with the shelling of the Four Courts in Dublin by Free State forces.
1926 – Mercedes-Benz is formed by Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz merging their two companies.
1936 – The Japanese puppet state of Mengjiang is formed in northern China.
1940 – Romania cedes Bessarabia (current-day Moldova) to the Soviet Union after facing an ultimatum.
1942 – World War II: Nazi Germany starts its strategic summer offensive against the Soviet Union, codenamed Case Blue.
1945 – Poland’s Soviet-allied Provisional Government of National Unity is formed over a month after V-E Day.
1948 – Cold War: The Tito–Stalin Split results in the expulsion of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia from the Cominform.
1948 – Boxer Dick Turpin beats Vince Hawkins at Villa Park in Birmingham to become the first black British boxing champion in the modern era.
1950 – Korean War: Suspected communist sympathizers (between 60,000 to 200,000) are executed in the Bodo League massacre.
1950 – Korean War: Packed with its own refugees fleeing Seoul and leaving their 5th Division stranded, South Korean forces blow up the Hangang Bridge in an attempt to slow North Korea’s offensive. The city falls later that day.
1950 – Korean War: North Korean Army conducts the Seoul National University Hospital massacre.
1956 – in Poznań, workers from HCP factory go to the streets, sparking one of the first major protests against communist government both in Poland and Europe.
1964 – Malcolm X forms the Organization of Afro-American Unity.
1969 – Stonewall riots begin in New York City, marking the start of the Gay Rights Movement.
1973 – Elections are held for the Northern Ireland Assembly, which will lead to power-sharing between unionists and nationalists in Northern Ireland for the first time.
1976 – The Angolan court sentences US and UK mercenaries to death sentences and prison terms in the Luanda Trial.
1978 – The United States Supreme Court, in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke bars quota systems in college admissions.
1981 – A powerful bomb explodes in Tehran, killing 73 officials of the Islamic Republican Party.
1987 – For the first time in military history, a civilian population is targeted for chemical attack when Iraqi warplanes bombed the Iranian town of Sardasht.
1989 – On the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo, Slobodan Milošević delivers the Gazimestan speech at the site of the historic battle.
1997 – Holyfield–Tyson II: Mike Tyson is disqualified in the third round for biting a piece off Evander Holyfield’s ear.
2001 – Slobodan Milošević is extradited to the ICTY in The Hague to stand trial.
2004 – Iraq War: Sovereign power is handed to the interim government of Iraq by the Coalition Provisional Authority, ending the U.S.-led rule of that nation.
2009 – Honduran president Manuel Zelaya is ousted by a local military coup following a failed request to hold a referendum to rewrite the Honduran Constitution. This was the start of the 2009 Honduran constitutional crisis.
2016 – A terrorist attack in Turkey’s Istanbul Atatürk Airport kills 42 people and injures more than 230 others.
Births on June 28
751 – Carloman I, king of the Franks (d. 771)
1243 – Emperor Go-Fukakusa of Japan (d. 1304)
1444 – Charlotte, Queen of Cyprus (d. 1487)
1476 – Pope Paul IV (d. 1559)
1490 – Albert of Brandenburg, German archbishop (d. 1545)
1491 – Henry VIII of England (d. 1547)
1503 – Giovanni della Casa, Italian author and poet (d. 1556)
1547 – Cristofano Malvezzi, Italian organist and composer (d. 1599)
1557 – Philip Howard, 20th Earl of Arundel, English nobleman (d. 1595)
1560 – Giovanni Paolo Lascaris, Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller (d. 1657)
1573 – Henry Danvers, 1st Earl of Danby, English noble (d. 1644)
1577 – Peter Paul Rubens, Flemish painter and diplomat (d. 1640)
1582 – William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele, English politician (d. 1662)
1604 – Heinrich Albert, German composer and poet (d. 1651)
1641 – Marie Casimire Louise de La Grange d’Arquien, consort to King John III Sobieski (d. 1716)
1653 – Muhammad Azam Shah, Mughal emperor (d. 1707)
1703 – John Wesley, English cleric and theologian (d. 1791)
1712 – Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Swiss philosopher and polymath (d. 1778)
1719 – Étienne François, duc de Choiseul, French general and politician, Prime Minister of France (d. 1785)
1734 – Jean-Jacques Beauvarlet-Charpentier, French organist and composer (d. 1794)
1742 – William Hooper, American physician, lawyer, and politician (d. 1790)
1824 – Paul Broca, French physician, anatomist, and anthropologist (d. 1880)
1825 – Emil Erlenmeyer, German chemist (d. 1909)
1831 – Joseph Joachim, Austrian violinist, composer, and conductor (d. 1907)
1836 – Emmanuel Rhoides, Greek journalist and author (d. 1904)
1844 – John Boyle O’Reilly, Irish-born poet, journalist and fiction writer (d. 1890)
1852 – Charles Cruft, English showman, founded Crufts Dog Show (d. 1938)
1867 – Luigi Pirandello, Italian dramatist, novelist, and poet, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1936)
1873 – Alexis Carrel, French surgeon and biologist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1944)
1875 – Henri Lebesgue, French mathematician and academic (d. 1941)
1879 – Wilhelm Steinkopf, German chemist (d. 1949)
1880 – John Meyers, American swimmer and water polo player (d. 1971)
1883 – Pierre Laval, French soldier and politician, 101st Prime Minister of France (d. 1945)
1884 – Lamina Sankoh, Sierra Leonean banker and politician (d. 1964)
1888 – George Challenor, Barbadian cricketer (d. 1947)
1888 – Stefi Geyer, Hungarian violinist and educator (d. 1956)
1891 – Esther Forbes, American historian and author (d. 1968)
1891 – Carl Spaatz, American general (d. 1974)
1892 – Carl Panzram, American serial killer (d. 1930)
1893 – August Zamoyski, Polish-French sculptor (d. 1970)
1894 – Francis Hunter, American tennis player (d. 1981)
1902 – Richard Rodgers, American playwright and composer (d. 1979)
1906 – Maria Goeppert Mayer, Polish-American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1972)
1907 – Jimmy Mundy, American saxophonist and composer (d. 1983)
1907 – Yvonne Sylvain, First female Haitian physician (d. 1989)
1909 – Eric Ambler, English author and screenwriter (d. 1998)
1912 – Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, German physicist and philosopher (d. 2007)
1913 – Franz Antel, Austrian director and producer (d. 2007)
1913 – George Lloyd, English soldier and composer (d. 1998)
1913 – Walter Oesau, German colonel and pilot (d. 1944)
1914 – Aribert Heim, Austrian SS physician and Nazi war criminal (d. 1992)
1917 – A. E. Hotchner, American author and playwright (d. 2020)
1918 – William Whitelaw, 1st Viscount Whitelaw, Scottish-English politician, Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (d. 1999)
1919 – Joseph P. Lordi, American government official (d. 1983)
1920 – Clarissa Eden, Spouse of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
1921 – P. V. Narasimha Rao, Indian lawyer and politician, 9th Prime Minister of India (d. 2004)
1922 – Hans Frauenfelder, American physicist and biophysicist
1923 – Pete Candoli, American trumpet player (d. 2008)
1923 – Adolfo Schwelm Cruz, Argentinian racing driver (d. 2012)
1923 – Gaye Stewart, Canadian ice hockey player (d. 2010)
1926 – George Booth, American cartoonist
1926 – Mel Brooks, American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter
1926 – Robert Ledley, American academic and inventor (d. 2012)
1927 – Correlli Barnett, English historian and author
1927 – Frank Sherwood Rowland, American chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2012)
1928 – Hans Blix, Swedish politician and diplomat, 33rd Swedish Minister of Foreign Affairs
1928 – Patrick Hemingway, American writer
1928 – Harold Evans, English-American historian and journalist
1928 – Peter Heine, South African cricketer (d. 2005)
1928 – Cyril Smith, English politician (d. 2010)
1929 – Alfred Miodowicz, Polish politician
1930 – William C. Campbell, Irish-American biologist and parasitologist, Nobel Prize laureate
1930 – Itamar Franco, Brazilian engineer and politician, 33rd President of Brazil (d. 2011)
1930 – Jack Gold, English director and producer (d. 2015)
1931 – Hans Alfredson, Swedish actor, director, and screenwriter
1931 – Junior Johnson, American race car driver (d. 2019)
1931 – Lucien Victor, Belgian cyclist (d. 1995)
1932 – Pat Morita, American actor (d. 2005)
1933 – Gusty Spence, Northern Irish loyalist and politician (d. 2011)
1934 – Robert Carswell, Baron Carswell, Northern Irish lawyer and judge, Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland
1934 – Roy Gilchrist, Jamaican cricketer (d. 2001)
1934 – Bette Greene, American journalist and author
1934 – Carl Levin, American lawyer and politician
1934 – Georges Wolinski, Tunisian-French journalist and cartoonist (d. 2015)
1935 – John Inman, English actor (d. 2007)
1936 – Chuck Howley, American football player
1937 – George Knudson, Canadian golfer (d. 1989)
1937 – Fernand Labrie, Canadian endocrinologist and academic
1937 – Ron Luciano, American baseball player and umpire (d. 1995)
1938 – John Byner, American actor and comedian
1938 – Leon Panetta, American lawyer and politician, 23rd United States Secretary of Defense
1938 – S. Sivamaharajah, Sri Lankan Tamil newspaper publisher and politician (d. 2006)
1938 – Simon Douglas-Pennant, 7th Baron Penrhyn, British baron
1939 – Klaus Schmiegel, German chemist
1940 – Karpal Singh, Malaysian lawyer and politician (d. 2014)
1940 – Muhammad Yunus, Bangladeshi economist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate
1941 – Al Downing, American baseball player and sportscaster
1941 – Joseph Goguen, American computer scientist and academic, developed the OBJ language (d. 2006)
1941 – David Johnston, Canadian academic, lawyer, and politician, 28th Governor General of Canada
1942 – Chris Hani, South African politician (d. 1993)
1942 – Hans-Joachim Walde, German decathlete (d. 2013)
1942 – Frank Zane, American professional bodybuilder and author
1943 – Jens Birkemose, Danish painter
1943 – Donald Johanson, American paleontologist and academic
1943 – Klaus von Klitzing, German physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate
1945 – Ken Buchanan, Scottish boxer
1945 – David Knights, English bass player and producer
1945 – Raul Seixas, Brazilian singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer (d. 1989)
1945 – Türkan Şoray, Turkish actress, director, and screenwriter
1946 – Robert Asprin, American soldier and author (d. 2008)
1946 – Bruce Davison, American actor and director
1946 – David Duckham, English rugby player
1946 – Robert Xavier Rodríguez, American classical composer
1946 – Jaime Guzmán, Chilean lawyer and politician (d. 1991)
1946 – Gilda Radner, American actress and comedian (d. 1989)
1947 – Mark Helprin, American novelist and journalist
1947 – Laura Tyson, American economist and academic
1948 – Kathy Bates, American actress
1948 – Sergei Bodrov, Russian-American director, producer, and screenwriter
1948 – Deborah Moggach, English author and screenwriter
1948 – Daniel Wegner, Canadian-American psychologist and academic (d. 2013)
1949 – Don Baylor, American baseball player and coach (d. 2017)
1950 – Philip Fowke, English pianist and educator
1950 – Mauricio Rojas, Chilean-Swedish economist and politician
1950 – Chris Speier, American baseball player and coach
1951 – Mick Cronin, Australian rugby league player and coach
1951 – Mark Shand, English conservationist and author (d. 2014)
1951 – Lalla Ward, English actress and author
1952 – Enis Batur, Turkish poet and author
1952 – Pietro Mennea, Italian sprinter and politician (d. 2013)
1952 – Jean-Christophe Rufin, French physician and author
1954 – A. A. Gill, Scottish author and critic (d. 2016)
1954 – Alice Krige, South African actress
1955 – Shirley Cheriton, British actress
1956 – Amira Hass, Israeli journalist and author
1956 – Noel Mugavin, Australian footballer and coach
1957 – Lance Nethery, Canadian ice hockey player and coach
1957 – Georgi Parvanov, Bulgarian historian and politician, 4th President of Bulgaria
1957 – Mike Skinner, American race car driver
1957 – Jim Spanarkel, American basketball player and sportscaster
1958 – Donna Edwards, American lawyer and politician
229 – Sun Quan proclaims himself emperor of Eastern Wu.
1266 – War of Saint Sabas: In the Battle of Trapani, the Venetians defeat a larger Genoese fleet, capturing all its ships.
1280 – The Spanish Reconquista: In the Battle of Moclín the Emirate of Granada ambush a superior pursuing force, killing most of them in a military disaster for the Kingdom of Castile.
1305 – A peace treaty between the Flemish and the French is signed at Athis-sur-Orge.
1314 – First War of Scottish Independence: The Battle of Bannockburn (south of Stirling) begins.
1532 – Henry VIII of England and Francis I of France sign the “Treaty of Closer Amity With France” (also known as the Pommeraye treaty), pledging mutual aid against Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor.
1565 – Dragut, commander of the Ottoman navy, dies during the Great Siege of Malta.
1594 – The Action of Faial, Azores. The Portuguese carrack Cinco Chagas, loaded with slaves and treasure, is attacked and sunk by English ships with only 13 survivors out of over 700 on board.
1611 – The mutinous crew of Henry Hudson’s fourth voyage sets Henry, his son and seven loyal crew members adrift in an open boat in what is now Hudson Bay; they are never heard from again.
1683 – William Penn signs a friendship treaty with Lenni Lenape Indians in Pennsylvania.
1713 – The French residents of Acadia are given one year to declare allegiance to Britain or leave Nova Scotia, Canada.
1757 – Battle of Plassey: Three thousand British troops under Robert Clive defeat a 50,000-strong Indian army under Siraj ud-Daulah at Plassey.
1758 – Seven Years’ War: Battle of Krefeld: British, Hanoverian, and Prussian forces defeat French troops at Krefeld in Germany.
1760 – Seven Years’ War: Battle of Landeshut: Austria defeats Prussia.
1780 – American Revolution: Battle of Springfield fought in and around Springfield, New Jersey (including Short Hills, formerly of Springfield, now of Millburn Township).
1794 – Empress Catherine II of Russia grants Jews permission to settle in Kiev.
1810 – John Jacob Astor forms the Pacific Fur Company.
1812 – War of 1812: Great Britain revokes the restrictions on American commerce, thus eliminating one of the chief reasons for going to war.
1860 – The United States Congress establishes the Government Printing Office.
1865 – American Civil War: At Fort Towson in the Oklahoma Territory, Confederate Brigadier General Stand Watie surrenders the last significant Confederate army.
1868 – Christopher Latham Sholes received a patent for an invention he called the “Type-Writer”.
1887 – The Rocky Mountains Park Act becomes law in Canada creating the nation’s first national park, Banff National Park.
1894 – The International Olympic Committee is founded at the Sorbonne in Paris, at the initiative of Baron Pierre de Coubertin.
1913 – Second Balkan War: The Greeks defeat the Bulgarians in the Battle of Doiran.
1914 – Mexican Revolution: Pancho Villa takes Zacatecas from Victoriano Huerta.
1917 – In a game against the Washington Senators, Boston Red Sox pitcher Ernie Shore retires 26 batters in a row after replacing Babe Ruth, who had been ejected for punching the umpire.
1919 – Estonian War of Independence: The decisive defeat of the Baltische Landeswehr in the Battle of Cēsis; this date is celebrated as Victory Day in Estonia.
1926 – The College Board administers the first SAT exam.
1931 – Wiley Post and Harold Gatty take off from Roosevelt Field, Long Island in an attempt to circumnavigate the world in a single-engine plane.
1938 – The Civil Aeronautics Act is signed into law, forming the Civil Aeronautics Authority in the United States.
1940 – Adolf Hitler goes on a three-hour tour of the architecture of Paris with architect Albert Speer and sculptor Arno Breker in his only visit to the city.
1940 – Henry Larsen begins the first successful west-to-east navigation of Northwest Passage from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
1941 – The Lithuanian Activist Front declares independence from the Soviet Union and forms the Provisional Government of Lithuania; it lasts only briefly as the Nazis will occupy Lithuania a few weeks later.
1942 – World War II: Germany’s latest fighter aircraft, a Focke-Wulf Fw 190, is captured intact when it mistakenly lands at RAF Pembrey in Wales.
1946 – The 1946 Vancouver Island earthquake strikes Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada.
1947 – The United States Senate follows the United States House of Representatives in overriding U.S. President Harry S. Truman’s veto of the Taft–Hartley Act.
1951 – The ocean liner SS United States is christened and launched.
1956 – The French National Assembly takes the first step in creating the French Community by passing the Loi Cadre, transferring a number of powers from Paris to elected territorial governments in French West Africa.
1959 – Convicted Manhattan Project spy Klaus Fuchs is released after only nine years in prison and allowed to emigrate to Dresden, East Germany where he resumes a scientific career.
1960 – The United States Food and Drug Administration declares Enovid to be the first officially approved combined oral contraceptive pill in the world.
1961 – The Antarctic Treaty System, which sets aside Antarctica as a scientific preserve and limits military activity on the continent, its islands and ice shelves, comes into force.
1967 – Cold War: U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson meets with Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin in Glassboro, New Jersey for the three-day Glassboro Summit Conference.
1969 – Warren E. Burger is sworn in as Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court by retiring Chief Justice Earl Warren.
1969 – IBM announces that effective January 1970 it will price its software and services separately from hardware thus creating the modern software industry.
1972 – Watergate scandal: U.S. President Richard M. Nixon and White House Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman are taped talking about using the Central Intelligence Agency to obstruct the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s investigation into the Watergate break-ins.
1972 – Title IX of the United States Civil Rights Act of 1964 is amended to prohibit sexual discrimination to any educational program receiving federal funds.
1973 – A fire at a house in Hull, England, which kills a six-year-old boy is passed off as an accident; it later emerges as the first of 26 deaths by fire caused over the next seven years by serial arsonist Peter Dinsdale.
1985 – A terrorist bomb explodes at Narita International Airport near Tokyo. An hour later, the same group detonates a second bomb aboard Air India Flight 182, bringing the Boeing 747 down off the coast of Ireland killing all 329 aboard.
1994 – NASA’s Space Station Processing Facility, a new state-of-the-art manufacturing building for the International Space Station, officially opens at Kennedy Space Center.
2001 – The 8.4 Mw southern Peru earthquake shakes coastal Peru with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VIII (Severe). A destructive tsunami followed, leaving at least 74 people dead, and 2,687 injured.
2012 – Ashton Eaton breaks the decathlon world record at the United States Olympic Trials.
2013 – Nik Wallenda becomes the first man to successfully walk across the Grand Canyon on a tight rope.
2013 – Militants stormed a high-altitude mountaineering base camp near Nanga Parbat in Gilgit–Baltistan, Pakistan killing ten climbers, and a local guide.
2014 – The last of Syria’s declared chemical weapons are shipped out for destruction.
2016 – The United Kingdom votes in a referendum to leave the European Union, by 52% to 48%.
2017 – A series of terrorist attacks took place in Pakistan resulting in 96 deaths and wounded 200 others.
Births on June 23
47 BC – Caesarion, Egyptian king (d. 30 BC)
1385 – Stefan, Count Palatine of Simmern-Zweibrücken (d. 1459)
1433 – Francis II, Duke of Brittany (d. 1488)
1456 – Margaret of Denmark, Queen of Scotland (d. 1486)
1489 – Charles II, Duke of Savoy, Italian nobleman (d. 1496)
1534 – Oda Nobunaga, Japanese warlord (d. 1582)
1596 – Johan Banér, Swedish field marshal (d. 1641)
1616 – Shah Shuja, Mughal prince (d. 1661)
1625 – John Fell, English churchman and influential academic (d. 1686)
1668 – Giambattista Vico, Italian jurist, historian, and philosopher (d. 1744)
1683 – Étienne Fourmont, French orientalist and sinologist (d. 1745)
1711 – Giovanni Battista Guadagnini, Italian instrument maker (d. 1786)
1716 – Fletcher Norton, 1st Baron Grantley, English lawyer and politician, Solicitor General for England and Wales (d. 1789)
1750 – Déodat Gratet de Dolomieu, French geologist and academic (d. 1801)
1763 – Joséphine de Beauharnais, French wife of Napoleon I (d. 1814)
1799 – John Milton Bernhisel, American physician and politician (d. 1881)
1800 – Karol Marcinkowski, Polish physician and activist (d. 1846)
1824 – Carl Reinecke, German pianist, composer, and conductor (d. 1910)
1843 – Paul Heinrich von Groth, German scientist (d. 1927)
1860 – Albert Giraud, Belgian poet and librarian (d. 1929)
1863 – Sándor Bródy, Hungarian author and journalist (d. 1924)
1877 – Norman Pritchard, Indian-English hurdler and actor (d. 1929)
1879 – Huda Sha’arawi, Egyptian feminist and journalist (d. 1947)
1884 – Cyclone Taylor, Canadian ice hockey player and politician (d. 1979)
1888 – Bronson M. Cutting, American publisher and politician (d. 1935)
1889 – Anna Akhmatova, Ukrainian-Russian poet and author (d. 1966)
1889 – Verena Holmes, English engineer (d. 1964)
1894 – Harold Barrowclough, New Zealand military leader, lawyer and Chief Justice (d. 1972)
1894 – Alfred Kinsey, American entomologist and sexologist (d. 1956)
1894 – Edward VIII, King of the United Kingdom (d. 1972)
1899 – Amédée Gordini, Italian-born French race car driver and sports car manufacturer (d. 1979)
1900 – Blanche Noyes, American aviator, winner of the 1936 Bendix Trophy Race (d. 1981)
1901 – Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, Turkish author, poet, and scholar (d. 1962)
1903 – Paul Martin Sr., Canadian lawyer and politician (d. 1992)
1904 – Quintin McMillan, South African cricketer (d. 1938)
1905 – Jack Pickersgill, Canadian civil servant and politician, 35th Secretary of State for Canada (d. 1997)
1906 – Tribhuvan of Nepal (d. 1955)
1907 – Dercy Gonçalves, Brazilian actress and singer (d. 2008)
1907 – James Meade, English economist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1995)
1909 – David Lewis, Russian-Canadian lawyer and politician (d. 1981)
1909 – Georges Rouquier, French actor, director, and screenwriter (d. 1989)
1910 – Jean Anouilh, French playwright and screenwriter (d. 1987)
1910 – Gordon B. Hinckley, American religious leader, 15th President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (d. 2008)
1910 – Milt Hinton, American bassist and photographer (d. 2000)
1910 – Bill King, English commander and author (d. 2012)
1910 – Lawson Little, American golfer (d. 1968)
1912 – Alan Turing, English mathematician and computer scientist (d. 1954)
1913 – William P. Rogers, American commander, lawyer, and politician, 55th United States Secretary of State (d. 2001)
1915 – Frances Gabe, American artist and inventor (d. 2016)
1916 – Len Hutton, English cricketer and soldier (d. 1990)
1916 – Irene Worth, American actress (d. 2002)
1916 – Al G. Wright, American bandleader and conductor
1919 – Mohamed Boudiaf, Algerian politician, President of Algeria (d. 1992)
1920 – Saleh Ajeery, Kuwaiti astronomer
1921 – Paul Findley, American politician (d. 2019)
1922 – Morris R. Jeppson, American lieutenant and physicist (d. 2010)
1922 – Hal Laycoe, Canadian ice hockey player and coach (d. 1998)
1923 – Peter Corr, Irish-English footballer and manager (d. 2001)
1923 – Elroy Schwartz, American screenwriter and producer (d. 2013)
1923 – Doris Johnson, American politician
1923 – Jerry Rullo, American professional basketball player (d. 2016)
1923 – Giuseppina Tuissi, Italian communist and Partisan (d. 1945)
1924 – Frank Bolle, American comic-strip artist, comic-book artist, and illustrator (d. 2020)
1925 – Miriam Karlin, English actress (d. 2011)
1925 – Art Modell, American businessman (d. 2012)
1925 – Anna Chennault, Chinese widow of Lieutenant General Claire Lee Chennault (d. 2018)
1926 – Lawson Soulsby, Baron Soulsby of Swaffham Prior, English microbiologist and parasitologist (d. 2017)
1926 – Magda Herzberger, Romanian author, poet and composer, a survivor of the Holocaust
2000 – Peter Dubovský, Slovak footballer (b. 1972)
2002 – Pedro Alcázar, Panamanian boxer (b. 1975)
2005 – Shana Alexander, American journalist and author (b. 1926)
2005 – Manolis Anagnostakis, Greek poet and critic (b. 1925)
2006 – Aaron Spelling, American actor, producer, and screenwriter, founded Spelling Television (b. 1923)
2007 – Rod Beck, American baseball player (b. 1968)
2008 – Claudio Capone, Italian-Scottish actor (b. 1952)
2008 – Arthur Chung, Guyanese surveyor and politician, 1st President of Guyana (b. 1918)
2008 – Marian Glinka, Polish actor and bodybuilder (b. 1943)
2009 – Raymond Berthiaume, Canadian singer-songwriter and producer (b. 1931)
2009 – Ed McMahon, American game show host and announcer (b. 1923)
2009 – Jerri Nielsen, American physician and explorer (b. 1952)
2010 – John Burton, Australian public servant and diplomat (b. 1915)
2011 – Peter Falk, American actor (b. 1927)
2011 – Dennis Marshall, Costa Rican footballer (b. 1985)
2011 – Fred Steiner, American composer and conductor (b. 1923)
2012 – James Durbin, English economist and statistician (b. 1923)
2012 – Brigitte Engerer, French pianist and educator (b. 1952)
2012 – Alan McDonald, Northern Ireland footballer and manager (b. 1963)
2012 – Frank Chee Willeto, American soldier and politician, 4th Vice President of the Navajo Nation (b. 1925)
2012 – Walter J. Zable, American football player and businessman, founded the Cubic Corporation (b. 1915)
2013 – Bobby Bland, American singer-songwriter (b. 1930)
2013 – Gary David Goldberg, American screenwriter and producer (b. 1944)
2013 – Frank Kelso, American admiral and politician, United States Secretary of the Navy (b. 1933)
2013 – Kurt Leichtweiss, German mathematician and academic (b. 1927)
2013 – Richard Matheson, American author and screenwriter (b. 1926)
2013 – Darryl Read, English singer-songwriter, drummer, and actor (b. 1951)
2013 – Sharon Stouder, American swimmer (b. 1948)
2014 – Nancy Garden, American author (b. 1938)
2014 – Euros Lewis, Welsh cricketer (b. 1942)
2014 – Paula Kent Meehan, American businesswoman, co-founded Redken (b. 1931)
2015 – Miguel Facussé Barjum, Honduran businessman (b. 1924)
2015 – Nirmala Joshi, Indian nun, lawyer, and social worker (b. 1934)
2015 – Dick Van Patten, American actor (b. 1928)
2016 – Ralph Stanley, American singer and banjo player (b. 1927)
Holidays and observances on June 23
Christian feast day:
Æthelthryth
Marie of Oignies
Joseph Cafasso
June 23 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
Earliest day on which Feast of Raḥmat can fall, while June 24 is the latest. (Bahá’í Faith)
Father’s Day (Nicaragua, Poland)
Grand Duke’s Official Birthday (Luxembourg)
International Widows Day (international)
National Day of Remembrance for Victims of Terrorism (Canada)
Okinawa Memorial Day (Okinawa Prefecture)
St John’s Eve and the first day of the Midsummer celebrations [although this is not the real summer solstice; see June 20] (Roman Catholic Church, Europe):
Bonfires of Saint John (Spain)
First night of Festa de São João do Porto (Porto)
First day of Golowan Festival (Cornwall)
Jaaniõhtu (Estonia)
Jāņi (Latvia)
Kupala Night (Belarus, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Ukraine)
1579 – Sir Francis Drake claims a land he calls Nova Albion (modern California) for England.
1596 – The Dutch explorer Willem Barentsz discovers the Arctic archipelago of Spitsbergen.
1631 – Mumtaz Mahal dies during childbirth. Her husband, Mughal emperor Shah Jahan I, will spend the next 17 years building her mausoleum, the Taj Mahal.
1665 – Battle of Montes Claros: Portugal definitively secured independence from Spain in the last battle of the Portuguese Restoration War.
1673 – French explorers Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet reach the Mississippi River and become the first Europeans to make a detailed account of its course.
1767 – Samuel Wallis, a British sea captain, sights Tahiti and is considered the first European to reach the island.
1773 – Cúcuta, Colombia, is founded by Juana Rangel de Cuéllar.
1775 – American Revolutionary War: Colonists inflict heavy casualties on British forces while losing the Battle of Bunker Hill.
1789 – In France, the Third Estate declares itself the National Assembly.
1794 – Foundation of Anglo-Corsican Kingdom.
1795 – The burghers of Swellendam expel the Dutch East India Company magistrate and declare a republic.
1839 – In the Kingdom of Hawaii, Kamehameha III issues the edict of toleration which gives Roman Catholics the freedom to worship in the Hawaiian Islands. The Hawaii Catholic Church and the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace are established as a result.
1843 – The Wairau Affray, the first serious clash of arms between Māori and British settlers in the New Zealand Wars, takes place.
1861 – American Civil War: Battle of Vienna, Virginia.
1863 – American Civil War: Battle of Aldie in the Gettysburg Campaign.
1876 – American Indian Wars: Battle of the Rosebud: 1,500 Sioux and Cheyenne led by Crazy Horse beat back General George Crook’s forces at Rosebud Creek in Montana Territory.
1877 – American Indian Wars: Battle of White Bird Canyon: The Nez Perce defeat the U.S. Cavalry at White Bird Canyon in the Idaho Territory.
1885 – The Statue of Liberty arrives in New York Harbor.
1898 – The United States Navy Hospital Corps is established.
1900 – Boxer Rebellion: Western Allied and Japanese forces capture the Taku Forts in Tianjin, China.
1901 – The College Board introduces its first standardized test, the forerunner to the SAT.
1910 – Aurel Vlaicu pilots an A. Vlaicu nr. 1 on its first flight.
1922 – Portuguese naval aviators Gago Coutinho and Sacadura Cabral complete the first aerial crossing of the South Atlantic.
1929 – The town of Murchison, New Zealand Is rocked by a 7.8 magnitude earthquake killing 17. At the time it was New Zealand’s worst natural disaster.
1930 – U.S. President Herbert Hoover signs the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act into law.
1932 – Bonus Army: Around a thousand World War I veterans amass at the United States Capitol as the U.S. Senate considers a bill that would give them certain benefits.
1933 – Union Station massacre: In Kansas City, Missouri, four FBI agents and captured fugitive Frank Nash are gunned down by gangsters attempting to free Nash.
1939 – Last public guillotining in France: Eugen Weidmann, a convicted murderer, is executed in Versailles outside the Saint-Pierre prison.
1940 – World War II: RMS Lancastria is attacked and sunk by the Luftwaffe near Saint-Nazaire, France. At least 3,000 are killed in Britain’s worst maritime disaster.
1940 – World War II: The British Army’s 11th Hussars assault and take Fort Capuzzo in Libya, Africa from Italian forces.
1940 – The three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania fall under the occupation of the Soviet Union.
1944 – Iceland declares independence from Denmark and becomes a republic.
1948 – United Airlines Flight 624, a Douglas DC-6, crashes near Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania, killing all 43 people on board.
1952 – Guatemala passes Decree 900, ordering the redistribution of uncultivated land.
1953 – Cold War: East Germany Workers Uprising: In East Germany, the Soviet Union orders a division of troops into East Berlin to quell a rebellion.
1958 – The Ironworkers Memorial Second Narrows Crossing, in the process of being built to connect Vancouver and North Vancouver (Canada), collapses into the Burrard Inlet killing 18 ironworkers and injuring others.
1960 – The Nez Perce tribe is awarded $4 million for 7 million acres (28,000 km2) of land undervalued at four cents/acre in the 1863 treaty.
1963 – The United States Supreme Court rules 8–1 in Abington School District v. Schempp against requiring the reciting of Bible verses and the Lord’s Prayer in public schools.
1963 – A day after South Vietnamese President Ngô Đình Diệm announced the Joint Communiqué to end the Buddhist crisis, a riot involving around 2,000 people breaks out. One person is killed.
1967 – Nuclear weapons testing: China announces a successful test of its first thermonuclear weapon.
1972 – Watergate scandal: Five White House operatives are arrested for burgling the offices of the Democratic National Committee during an attempt by members of the administration of President Richard M. Nixon to illegally wiretap the political opposition as part of a broader campaign to subvert the democratic process
1985 – Space Shuttle program: STS-51-G mission: Space Shuttle Discovery launches carrying Sultan bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the first Arab and first Muslim in space, as a payload specialist.
1987 – With the death of the last individual of the species, the dusky seaside sparrow becomes extinct.
1991 – Apartheid: The South African Parliament repeals the Population Registration Act which required racial classification of all South Africans at birth.
1992 – A “joint understanding” agreement on arms reduction is signed by U.S. President George Bush and Russian President Boris Yeltsin (this would be later codified in START II).
1994 – Following a televised low-speed highway chase, O. J. Simpson is arrested for the murders of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman.
2015 – Nine people are killed in a mass shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
2017 – A series of wildfires in central Portugal kill at least 64 people and injure 204 others.
Births on June 17
801 – Drogo of Metz, Frankish bishop (d. 855)
1239 – Edward I, English king (d. 1307)
1530 – François de Montmorency, French nobleman (d. 1579)
1571 – Thomas Mun, English writer on economics (d. 1641)
1603 – Joseph of Cupertino, Italian mystic and saint (d. 1663)
421 – Emperor Theodosius II marries Aelia Eudocia at Constantinople (Byzantine Empire).
879 – Pope John VIII recognizes the Duchy of Croatia under Duke Branimir as an independent state.
1002 – Henry II, a cousin of Emperor Otto III, is elected and crowned King of Germany.
1099 – First Crusade: The Siege of Jerusalem begins.
1420 – Troops of the Republic of Venice capture Udine, ending the independence of the Patria del Friuli.
1494 – Spain and Portugal sign the Treaty of Tordesillas which divides the New World between the two countries.
1628 – The Petition of Right, a major English constitutional document, is granted the Royal Assent by Charles I and becomes law.
1654 – Louis XIV is crowned King of France.
1692 – Port Royal, Jamaica, is hit by a catastrophic earthquake; in just three minutes, 1,600 people are killed and 3,000 are seriously injured.
1776 – Richard Henry Lee presents the “Lee Resolution” to the Continental Congress. The motion is seconded by John Adams and will lead to the United States Declaration of Independence.
1788 – French Revolution: Day of the Tiles: Civilians in Grenoble toss roof tiles and various objects down upon royal troops.
1800 – David Thompson reaches the mouth of the Saskatchewan River in Manitoba.
1810 – The newspaper Gazeta de Buenos Ayres is first published in Argentina.
1832 – The Great Reform Act of England and Wales receives royal assent.
1832 – Asian cholera reaches Quebec, brought by Irish immigrants, and kills about 6,000 people in Lower Canada.
1862 – The United States and the United Kingdom agree in the Lyons–Seward Treaty to suppress the African slave trade.
1863 – During the French intervention in Mexico, Mexico City is captured by French troops.
1866 – One thousand eight hundred Fenian raiders are repelled back to the United States after looting and plundering the Saint-Armand and Frelighsburg areas of Canada East.
1880 – War of the Pacific: The Battle of Arica, the assault and capture of Morro de Arica (Arica Cape), ends the Campaña del Desierto (Desert Campaign).
1892 – Homer Plessy is arrested for refusing to leave his seat in the “whites-only” car of a train; he lost the resulting court case, Plessy v. Ferguson.
1899 – American Temperance crusader Carrie Nation begins her campaign of vandalizing alcohol-serving establishments by destroying the inventory in a saloon in Kiowa, Kansas.
1905 – Norway’s parliament dissolves its union with Sweden. The vote was confirmed by a national plebiscite on August 13 of that year.
1906 – Cunard Line’s RMS Lusitania is launched from the John Brown Shipyard, Glasgow (Clydebank), Scotland.
1917 – World War I: Battle of Messines: Allied soldiers detonate a series of mines underneath German trenches at Messines Ridge, killing 10,000 German troops.
1919 – Sette Giugno: Nationalist riots break out in Valletta, the capital of Malta. British soldiers fire into the crowd, killing four people.
1929 – The Lateran Treaty is ratified, bringing Vatican City into existence.
1938 – The Douglas DC-4E makes its first test flight.
1938 – Second Sino-Japanese War: The Chinese Nationalist government creates the 1938 Yellow River flood to halt Japanese forces. Five hundred to nine hundred thousand civilians are killed.
1940 – King Haakon VII, Crown Prince Olav and the Norwegian government leave Tromsø and go into exile in London. They return exactly five years later.
1942 – World War II: The Battle of Midway ends in American victory.
1942 – World War II: Aleutian Islands Campaign: Imperial Japanese soldiers begin occupying the American islands of Attu and Kiska, in the Aleutian Islands off Alaska.
1944 – World War II: The steamer Danae, carrying 350 Cretan Jews and 250 Cretan partisans, is sunk without survivors off the shore of Santorini.
1944 – World War II: Battle of Normandy: At Ardenne Abbey, members of the SS Division Hitlerjugend massacre 23 Canadian prisoners of war.
1945 – King Haakon VII of Norway returns from exactly five years in exile during World War II.
1946 – The United Kingdom’s BBC returns to broadcasting its television service, which has been off air for seven years because of the Second World War.
1948 – Anti-Jewish riots in Oujda and Jerada take place.
1948 – Edvard Beneš resigns as President of Czechoslovakia rather than signing the Ninth-of-May Constitution, making his nation a Communist state.
1955 – Lux Radio Theatre signs off the air permanently. The show launched in New York in 1934, and featured radio adaptations of Broadway shows and popular films.
1962 – The Organisation Armée Secrète (OAS) sets fire to the University of Algiers library building, destroying about 500,000 books.
1965 – The Supreme Court of the United States hands down its decision in Griswold v. Connecticut, prohibiting the states from criminalizing the use of contraception by married couples.
1967 – Six-Day War: Israeli soldiers enter Jerusalem.
1971 – The United States Supreme Court overturns the conviction of Paul Cohen for disturbing the peace, setting the precedent that vulgar writing is protected under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
1971 – The Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms Division of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service raids the home of Ken Ballew for illegal possession of hand grenades.
1977 – Five hundred million people watch the high day of the Silver Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II begin on television.
1981 – The Israeli Air Force destroys Iraq’s Osiraq nuclear reactor during Operation Opera.
1982 – Priscilla Presley opens Graceland to the public; the bathroom where Elvis Presley died five years earlier is kept off-limits.
1989 – Surinam Airways Flight 764 crashes on approach to Paramaribo-Zanderij International Airport in Suriname because of pilot error, killing 176 of 187 aboard.
1991 – Mount Pinatubo erupts, generating an ash column 7 kilometres (4.3 mi) high.
2000 – The United Nations defines the Blue Line as the border between Israel and Lebanon.
2013 – A bus catches fire in the Chinese city of Xiamen, killing at least 47 people and injuring more than 34 others.
2013 – A gunman opens fire at Santa Monica College in Santa Monica, California, after setting a house on fire nearby, killing six people, including the suspect.
2014 – At least 37 people are killed in an attack in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s South Kivu province.
Births on June 7
1003 – Emperor Jingzong of Western Xia (d. 1048)
1402 – Ichijō Kaneyoshi, Japanese noble (d. 1481)
1422 – Federico da Montefeltro, Italian condottiero (d. 1482)
1502 – John III of Portugal (d. 1557)
1529 – Étienne Pasquier, French lawyer and jurist (d. 1615)
1687 – Gaetano Berenstadt, Italian actor and singer (d. 1734)
1702 – Louis George, Margrave of Baden-Baden (d. 1761)
1757 – Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire (d. 1806)
1761 – John Rennie the Elder, Scottish engineer (d. 1821)
1770 – Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool, English politician, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (d. 1828)
1778 – Beau Brummell, English cricketer and fashion designer (d. 1840)
1811 – James Young Simpson, Scottish obstetrician (d. 1870)
1831 – Amelia Edwards, English journalist and author (d. 1892)
1837 – Alois Hitler, Austrian civil servant (d. 1903)
1840 – Carlota of Mexico (d. 1927)
1845 – Leopold Auer, Hungarian violinist, composer, and conductor (d. 1930)
1847 – George Washington Ball, American legislator from Iowa (d. 1915)
1848 – Paul Gauguin, French painter and sculptor (d. 1903)
1851 – Ture Malmgren, Swedish journalist and politician (d. 1922)
1861 – Robina Nicol, New Zealand photographer and suffragist (d. 1942)
1862 – Philipp Lenard, Slovak-German physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1947)
1863 – Bones Ely, American baseball player and manager (d. 1952)
1868 – Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Scottish painter and architect (d. 1928)
1877 – Roelof Klein, Dutch-American rower and engineer (d. 1960)
1879 – Knud Rasmussen, Danish anthropologist and explorer (d. 1933)
1879 – Joan Voûte, Dutch astronomer and academic (d. 1963)
1884 – Ester Claesson, Swedish landscape architect (d. 1931)
1883 – Sylvanus Morley, American archaeologist and scholar (d. 1948)
1886 – Henri Coandă, Romanian engineer, designed the Coandă-1910 (d. 1972)
1888 – Clarence DeMar, American runner and educator (d. 1958)
1892 – Leo Reise, Canadian ice hockey player (d. 1975)
1893 – Gillis Grafström, Swedish figure skater and architect (d. 1938)
1894 – Alexander P. de Seversky, Georgian-American pilot and engineer, co-designed the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt (d. 1974)
1896 – Douglas Campbell, American lieutenant and pilot (d. 1990)
1896 – Robert S. Mulliken, American physicist and chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1986)
1896 – Imre Nagy, Hungarian soldier and politician, 44th Prime Minister of Hungary (d. 1958)
1897 – George Szell, Hungarian-American conductor and composer (d. 1970)
1899 – Elizabeth Bowen, Anglo-Irish author and critic (d. 1973)
1902 – Georges Van Parys, French composer (d. 1971)
1902 – Herman B Wells, American banker, author, and academic (d. 2000)
1905 – James J. Braddock, American lieutenant and boxer (d. 1974)
1906 – Glen Gray, American saxophonist and bandleader (d. 1963)
1907 – Sigvard Bernadotte, Count of Wisborg (d. 2002)
1909 – Virginia Apgar, American anesthesiologist and pediatrician, developed the Apgar test (d. 1974)
1909 – Peter W. Rodino, American captain, lawyer, and politician (d. 2005)
1909 – Jessica Tandy, English-American actress (d. 1994)
1910 – Arthur Gardner, American actor and producer (d. 2014)
1910 – Mike Sebastian, American football player and coach (d. 1989)
1910 – Bradford Washburn, American mountaineer, photographer, and cartographer (d. 2007)
1910 – Marion Post Wolcott, American photographer (d. 1990)
1911 – Brooks Stevens, American engineer and designer, designed the Wienermobile (d. 1995)
1912 – Jacques Hélian, French bandleader (d. 1986)
1917 – Gwendolyn Brooks, American poet (d. 2000)
1917 – Dean Martin, American singer, actor, and producer (d. 1995)
1920 – Georges Marchais, French mechanic and politician (d. 1997)
1921 – Myrtle Edwards, Australian cricketer and softball player (d. 2010)
1921 – Brian Talboys, New Zealand politician, 7th Deputy Prime Minister of New Zealand (d. 2012)
1922 – Leo Reise, Jr., Canadian ice hockey player (d. 2015)
1923 – Jules Deschênes, Canadian lawyer and judge (d. 2000)
1925 – Ernestina Herrera de Noble, Argentine publisher and executive (d. 2017)
1926 – Jean-Noël Tremblay, Canadian lawyer and politician (d. 2020)
1927 – Charles de Tornaco, Belgian race car driver (d. 1953)
1927 – Paul Salamunovich, American conductor and educator (d. 2014)
1928 – Dave Bowen, Welsh footballer and manager (d. 1995)
1928 – James Ivory, American director, producer, and screenwriter
1928 – Randolph Turpin, English boxer (d. 1966)
1929 – Ernie Roth, American wrestling manager (d. 1983)
1929 – John Turner, Canadian lawyer and politician, 17th Prime Minister of Canada
1931 – Virginia McKenna, English actress and author
1932 – Per Maurseth, Norwegian historian, academic, and politician (d. 2013)
1933 – Romeo Galán, Argentine athlete
1935 – Harry Crews, American novelist, playwright, short story writer, and essayist (d. 2012)
1935 – Shyama, Indian actress (d. 2017)
1936 – Bert Sugar, American author and boxing historian (d. 2012)
1938 – Ian St John, Scottish international footballer, forward and manager
1939 – Yuli Turovsky, Russian-Canadian cellist, conductor and educator (d. 2013)
1940 – Tom Jones, Welsh singer and actor
1940 – Ronald Pickup, English actor
1944 – Annette Lu, Taiwanese lawyer and politician, 8th Vice President of the Republic of China
1944 – Clarence White, American guitarist and singer (d. 1973)
1945 – Gilles Marotte, Canadian ice hockey player (d. 2005)
1945 – John Olsen, Australian politician, 42nd Premier of South Australia
1945 – Wolfgang Schüssel, Austrian lawyer and politician, 26th Chancellor of Austria
1947 – Don Money, American baseball player and coach
1947 – Thurman Munson, American baseball player (d. 1979)
1948 – Jim Walton, American businessman
1952 – Liam Neeson, Irish-American actor
1952 – Orhan Pamuk, Turkish-American novelist, screenwriter, and academic, Nobel Prize laureate
1953 – Johnny Clegg, English- born South African singer-songwriter, guitarist and anthropologist (d. 2019)
1954 – Louise Erdrich, American novelist and poet
1955 – William Forsythe, American actor and producer
1955 – Tim Richmond, American race car driver (d. 1989)
1956 – L.A. Reid, American songwriter and producer, co-founded LaFace Records
1957 – Juan Luis Guerra, Dominican singer-songwriter and producer
1957 – Paddy McAloon, English singer-songwriter
1958 – Prince, American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer, and actor (d. 2016)
1958 – Surakiart Sathirathai, Thai politician and diplomat
1959 – Mike Pence, 48th Vice President of the United States, 50th Governor of Indiana
1960 – Hirohiko Araki, Japanese manga artist and creator of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure
1960 – Bill Prady, American screenwriter and producer
1961 – Dave Catching, American guitarist, songwriter, and producer
1962 – Thierry Hazard, French singer-songwriter
1962 – Takuya Kurosawa, Japanese race car driver
1963 – Gordon Gano, American musician
1964 – Gia Carides, Australian actress
1964 – Graeme Labrooy, Sri Lankan cricketer
1965 – Mick Foley, American wrestler, actor, and author
1965 – Jean-Pierre François, French footballer and singer
1965 – Damien Hirst, English painter and art collector
1966 – Eric Kretz, American drummer, songwriter, and producer
1966 – Tom McCarthy, American director, screenwriter and actor
1966 – Stéphane Richer, Canadian ice hockey player
1967 – Dave Navarro, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer
1970 – Helen Baxendale, English actress
1970 – Cafu, Brazilian footballer
1970 – Andrei Kovalenko, Russian ice hockey player
1970 – Mike Modano, American ice hockey player
1972 – Karl Urban, New Zealand actor
1974 – Bear Grylls, English adventurer, author, and television host
1975 – Allen Iverson, American basketball player
1976 – Necro, American rapper, producer, and director
1976 – Mirsad Türkcan, Turkish basketball player
1977 – Marcin Baszczyński, Polish footballer
1978 – Mini Andén, Swedish-American model, actress, and producer
1978 – Bill Hader, Two-time Emmy winning American actor, comedian, and screenwriter
1979 – Kevin Hofland, Dutch footballer
1979 – Anna Torv, Australian actress
1980 – Ed Moses, American swimmer
1981 – Stephen Bywater, English footballer
1981 – Anna Kournikova, Russian tennis player
1981 – Kevin Kyle, Scottish footballer
1983 – Milan Jurčina, Slovak ice hockey player
1983 – Piotr Małachowski, Polish discus thrower
1984 – Ari Koivunen, Finnish singer-songwriter
1984 – Eri Yanetani, Japanese snowboarder
1985 – Arkadiusz Piech, Polish footballer
1985 – Charlie Simpson, English singer-songwriter and guitarist
1985 – Richard Thompson, Trinidadian sprinter
1986 – Keegan Bradley, American golfer
1988 – Michael Cera, Canadian actor
1988 – Milan Lucic, Canadian ice hockey player
1990 – Iggy Azalea, Australian rapper
1990 – T. J. Brodie, Canadian ice hockey player
1990 – Allison Schmitt, American swimmer
1991 – Cenk Tosun, Turkish professional footballer
1991 – Fetty Wap, American rapper
1992 – Sara Niemietz, American singer-songwriter and actress
1992 – Mathias Gehrt, Danish professional footballer
1992 – Alípio, Brazilian footballer
1993 – George Ezra, English singer, songwriter and guitarist
Deaths on June 7
555 – Vigilius, Pope of the Catholic Church (b. 500)
862 – Al-Muntasir, Abbasid caliph (b. 837)
929 – Ælfthryth, Countess of Flanders (b. 877)
940 – Qian Hongzun, heir apparent of Wuyue (b. 925)
951 – Lu Wenji, Chinese chancellor (b. 876)
1329 – Robert the Bruce, Scottish king (b. 1274)
1337 – William I, Count of Hainaut (b. 1286)
1341 – An-Nasir Muhammad, Egyptian sultan (b. 1285)
1358 – Ashikaga Takauji, Japanese shōgun (b. 1305)
1394 – Anne of Bohemia, English queen (b. 1366)
1492 – Casimir IV Jagiellon, Grand Duke of Lithuania from 1440 and King of Poland from 1447 (b. 1427)
1594 – Rodrigo Lopez, physician of Queen Elizabeth (b. 1525)
1618 – Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr, English politician, Colonial Governor of Virginia (b. 1577)
1660 – George II Rákóczi, Prince of Transylvania (b. 1621)
1711 – Henry Dodwell, Irish scholar and theologian (b. 1641)
1779 – William Warburton, English bishop and critic (b. 1698)
1792 – Benjamin Tupper, American general and surveyor (b. 1738)
1810 – Luigi Schiavonetti, Italian engraver and etcher (b. 1765)
1826 – Joseph von Fraunhofer, German optician, physicist, and astronomer (b. 1787)
1840 – Frederick William III of Prussia (b. 1770)
1843 – Friedrich Hölderlin, German lyric poet (b. 1770)
1853 – Norbert Provencher, Canadian missionary and bishop (b. 1787)
1854 – Charles Baudin, French admiral (b. 1792)
1859 – David Cox, English painter (b. 1783)
1861 – Patrick Brontë, Anglo-Irish priest and author (b. 1777)
1863 – Antonio Valero de Bernabé, Latin American liberator (b. 1790)
1866 – Chief Seattle, American tribal chief (b. 1780)
1879 – William Tilbury Fox, English dermatologist and academic (b. 1836)
1896 – Pavlos Carrer, Greek composer (b. 1829)
1911 – Maurice Rouvier, French politician, Prime Minister of France (b. 1842)
1915 – Charles Reed Bishop, American banker and politician, founded the First Hawaiian Bank (b. 1822)
1916 – Émile Faguet, French author and critic (b. 1847)
1927 – Archie Birkin, English motorcycle racer (b. 1905)
1927 – Edmund James Flynn, Canadian lawyer and politician, 10th Premier of Quebec (b. 1847)
1932 – John Verran, English-Australian politician, 26th Premier of South Australia (b. 1856)
455 – Emperor Petronius Maximus is stoned to death by an angry mob while fleeing Rome.
1223 – Mongol invasion of the Cumans: Battle of the Kalka River: Mongol armies of Genghis Khan led by Subutai defeat Kievan Rus’ and Cumans.
1293 – Mongol invasion of Java was a punitive expedition against King Kertanegara of Singhasari, who had refused to pay tribute to the Yuan and maimed one of its ministers. However, it ended with failure for the Mongols. Regarded as establish City of Surabaya
1578 – King Henry III lays the first stone of the Pont Neuf (New Bridge), the oldest bridge of Paris, France.
1669 – Citing poor eyesight as a reason, Samuel Pepys records the last event in his diary.
1775 – American Revolution: The Mecklenburg Resolves are adopted in the Province of North Carolina.
1790 – Manuel Quimper explores the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
1790 – The United States enacts its first copyright statute, the Copyright Act of 1790.
1795 – French Revolution: The Revolutionary Tribunal is suppressed.
1805 – French and Spanish forces begin the assault against British forces occupying Diamond Rock.
1813 – In Australia, William Lawson, Gregory Blaxland and William Wentworth reach Mount Blaxland, effectively marking the end of a route across the Blue Mountains.
1859 – The clock tower at the Houses of Parliament, which houses Big Ben, starts keeping time.
1862 – American Civil War: Peninsula Campaign: Confederate forces under Joseph E. Johnston and G.W. Smith engage Union forces under George B. McClellan outside Richmond, Virginia.
1864 – American Civil War: Overland Campaign: Battle of Cold Harbor: The Army of Northern Virginia engages the Army of the Potomac.
1879 – Gilmore’s Garden in New York City is renamed Madison Square Garden by William Henry Vanderbilt and is opened to the public at 26th Street and Madison Avenue.
1884 – The arrival at Plymouth of Tāwhiao, King of Maoris, to claim the protection of Queen Victoria.
1889 – Johnstown Flood: Over 2,200 people die after a dam fails and sends a 60-foot (18-meter) wall of water over the town of Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
1902 – Second Boer War: The Treaty of Vereeniging ends the war and ensures British control of South Africa.
1909 – The National Negro Committee, forerunner to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), convenes for the first time.
1910 – The South Africa Act comes into force, establishing the Union of South Africa.
1911 – The RMS Titanic is launched in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
1911 – The President of Mexico Porfirio Díaz flees the country during the Mexican Revolution.
1916 – World War I: Battle of Jutland: The British Grand Fleet engages the High Seas Fleet in the largest naval battle of the war, which proves indecisive.
1921 – The Tulsa race massacre kills at least 39, but other estimates of black fatalities vary from 55 to about 300.
1935 – A 7.7 Mw earthquake destroys Quetta in modern-day Pakistan killing 40,000.
1941 – Anglo-Iraqi War: The United Kingdom completes the re-occupation of Iraq and returns ‘Abd al-Ilah to power as regent for Faisal II.
1942 – World War II: Imperial Japanese Navy midget submarines begin a series of attacks on Sydney, Australia.
1947 – Ferenc Nagy, the democratically elected Prime Minister of Hungary, resigns from office after blackmail from the Hungarian Communist Party accusing him of being part of a plot against the state. This grants the Communists effective control of the Hungarian government.
1961 – The South African Constitution of 1961 becomes effective, thus creating the Republic of South Africa, which remains outside the Commonwealth of Nations until 1 June 1994, when South Africa is returned to Commonwealth membership.
1961 – In Moscow City Court, the Rokotov–Faibishenko show trial begins, despite the Khrushchev Thaw to reverse Stalinist elements in Soviet society.
1962 – The West Indies Federation dissolves.
1970 – The 7.9 Mw Ancash earthquake shakes Peru with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VIII (Severe) and a landslide buries the town of Yungay, Peru. Between 66,794–70,000 were killed and 50,000 were injured.
1971 – In accordance with the Uniform Monday Holiday Act passed by the U.S. Congress in 1968, observation of Memorial Day occurs on the last Monday in May for the first time, rather than on the traditional Memorial Day of May 30.
1973 – The United States Senate votes to cut off funding for the bombing of Khmer Rouge targets within Cambodia, hastening the end of the Cambodian Civil War.
1977 – The Trans-Alaska Pipeline System is completed.
1985 – United States–Canada tornado outbreak: Forty-one tornadoes hit Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, and Ontario, leaving 76 dead.
1991 – Bicesse Accords in Angola lay out a transition to multi-party democracy under the supervision of the United Nations’ UNAVEM II mission.
2005 – Vanity Fair reveals that Mark Felt was “Deep Throat”.
2008 – Usain Bolt breaks the world record in the 100m sprint, with a wind-legal (+1.7 m/s) 9.72 seconds
2010 – Israeli Shayetet 13 commandos boarded the Gaza Freedom Flotilla while still in international waters trying to break the ongoing blockade of the Gaza Strip; nine Turkish citizens on the flotilla were killed in the ensuing violent affray.
2013 – The asteroid 1998 QE2 and its moon make their closest approach to Earth for the next two centuries.
2013 – A record breaking 2.6 mile wide tornado strikes El Reno, Oklahoma, United States, causing eight fatalities and over 150 injuries.
2017 – A car bomb explodes in a crowded intersection in Kabul near the German embassy during rush hour, killing over 90 and injuring 463.
2017 – U.S. President Donald Trump tweets the word “covfefe” and quickly becomes a worldwide viral phenomenon.
2019 – A shooting occurs inside a municipal building at Virginia Beach, Virginia, leaving 13 people dead, including the shooter, and four others injured.
Births on May 31
1443 (or 1441) – Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby (d. 1509)
1462 – Philipp II, Count of Hanau-Lichtenberg (d. 1504)
1469 – Manuel I of Portugal (d. 1521)
1535 – Alessandro Allori, Italian painter (d. 1607)
1556 – Jerzy Radziwiłł, Catholic cardinal (d. 1600)
1577 – Nur Jahan, Empress consort of the Mughal Empire (d. 1645)
1613 – John George II, Elector of Saxony (d. 1680)
1640 – Michał Korybut Wiśniowiecki, King of Poland (d. 1673)
1641 – Patriarch Dositheos II of Jerusalem (d. 1707)
1725 – Ahilyabai Holkar, Queen of the Malwa Kingdom under the Maratha Empire (d. 1795)
1732 – Count Hieronymus von Colloredo, Austrian archbishop (d. 1812)
1753 – Pierre Victurnien Vergniaud, French lawyer and politician (d. 1793)
1754 – Andrea Appiani, Italian painter and educator (d. 1817)
1773 – Ludwig Tieck, German poet, author, and critic (d. 1853)
1801 – Johann Georg Baiter, Swiss philologist and scholar (d. 1887)
1815 – Adye Douglas, English-Australian cricketer and politician, 15th Premier of Tasmania (d. 1906)
1818 – John Albion Andrew, American lawyer and politician, 25th Governor of Massachusetts (d. 1867)
1819 – Walt Whitman, American poet, essayist, and journalist (d. 1892)
1827 – Kusumoto Ine, first Japanese female doctor of Western medicine (d. 1903)
1835 – Hijikata Toshizō, Japanese commander (d. 1869)
1838 – Henry Sidgwick, English economist and philosopher (d. 1900)
1842 – John Cox Bray, Australian politician, 15th Premier of South Australia (d. 1894)
1847 – William Pirrie, 1st Viscount Pirrie, Canadian-Irish businessman and politician, Lord Mayor of Belfast (d. 1924)
1852 – Francisco Moreno, Argentinian explorer and academic (d. 1919)
1852 – Julius Richard Petri, German microbiologist, invented the Petri dish (d. 1921)
1857 – Pope Pius XI (d. 1939)
1858 – Graham Wallas, English socialist, social psychologist, and educationalist (d. 1932)
1860 – Walter Sickert, English painter (d. 1942)
1863 – Francis Younghusband, Indian-English captain and explorer (d. 1942)
1866 – John Ringling, American entrepreneur; one of the founders of the Ringling Brothers Circus (d. 1936)
1875 – Rosa May Billinghurst, British suffragette and women’s rights activist (d.1953)
1879 – Frances Alda, New Zealand-Australian soprano (d. 1952)
1882 – Sándor Festetics, Hungarian politician, Hungarian Minister of War (d. 1956)
1883 – Lauri Kristian Relander, Finnish politician, 2nd President of Finland (d. 1942)
1885 – Robert Richards, Australian politician, 32nd Premier of South Australia (d. 1967)
1887 – Saint-John Perse, French poet and diplomat, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1975)
1892 – Michel Kikoine, Belarusian-French painter (d. 1968)
1892 – Erich Neumann, German lieutenant and politician (d. 1951)
1892 – Konstantin Paustovsky, Russian poet and author (d. 1968)
1892 – Gregor Strasser, German lieutenant and politician (d. 1934)
1894 – Fred Allen, American comedian, radio host, game show panelist, and author (d. 1956)
1898 – Norman Vincent Peale, American minister and author (d. 1993)
1900 – Lucile Godbold, American Olympic athlete (d. 1981)
1901 – Alfredo Antonini, Italian-American conductor and composer (d. 1983)
1908 – Don Ameche, American actor (d. 1993)
1909 – Art Coulter, Canadian-American ice hockey player (d. 2000)
1911 – Maurice Allais, French economist and physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2010)
1912 – Chien-Shiung Wu, Chinese-American experimental physicist (d. 1997)
1914 – Akira Ifukube, Japanese composer and educator (d. 2006)
1916 – Bert Haanstra, Dutch director, producer, and screenwriter (d. 1997)
1918 – Robert Osterloh, American actor (d. 2001)
1918 – Lloyd Quarterman, African American chemist (d. 1982)
1919 – Robie Macauley, American editor, novelist and critic (d. 1995)
1921 – Edna Doré, English actress (d. 2014)
1921 – Andrew Grima, Anglo-Italian jewellery designer (d. 2007)
1921 – Howard Reig, American radio and television announcer (d. 2008)
1921 – Alida Valli, Austrian-Italian actress and singer (d. 2006)
1922 – Denholm Elliott, English-Spanish actor (d. 1992)
1923 – Ellsworth Kelly, American painter and sculptor (d. 2015)
1923 – Rainier III, Prince of Monaco (d. 2005)
1925 – Julian Beck, American actor and director (d. 1986)
1927 – James Eberle, English admiral (d. 2018)
1927 – Michael Sandberg, Baron Sandberg, English lieutenant and banker (d. 2017)
1928 – Pankaj Roy, Indian cricketer (d. 2001)
1929 – Menahem Golan, Israeli director and producer (d. 2014)
1930 – Clint Eastwood, American actor, director, musician, and producer
1931 – John Robert Schrieffer, American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2019)
1931 – Shirley Verrett, American soprano and actress (d. 2010)
1932 – Ed Lincoln, Brazilian pianist, bassist, and composer (d. 2012)
1932 – Jay Miner, American computer scientist and engineer (d. 1994)
1933 – Henry B. Eyring, American religious leader, educator, and author
1934 – Jim Hutton, American actor (d. 1979)
1935 – Jim Bolger, New Zealand businessman and politician, 35th Prime Minister of New Zealand
1938 – Johnny Paycheck, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 2003)
1938 – John Prescott, British sailor and politician, Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
1938 – Peter Yarrow, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer
1939 – Terry Waite, English humanitarian and author
1940 – Anatoliy Bondarchuk, Ukrainian hammer thrower and coach
1940 – Augie Meyers, American musician and singer-songwriter
1940 – Gilbert Shelton, American illustrator
1941 – June Clark, Welsh nurse and educator
1941 – Louis Ignarro, American pharmacologist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate
1941 – William Nordhaus, American economist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate
1943 – Sharon Gless, American actress
1943 – Joe Namath, American football player, sportscaster, and actor
1945 – Rainer Werner Fassbinder, German actor, director, and screenwriter (d. 1982)
1945 – Laurent Gbagbo, Ivorian academic and politician, 4th President of Côte d’Ivoire
1945 – Bernard Goldberg, American journalist and author
1946 – Ted Baehr, American publisher and critic
1946 – Steve Bucknor, Jamaican cricketer and umpire
1946 – Krista Kilvet, Estonian journalist, politician, and diplomat (d. 2009)
1946 – Debbie Moore, English model and businesswoman
1947 – Junior Campbell, Scottish singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer
1947 – Gabriele Hinzmann, German discus thrower
1948 – Svetlana Alexievich, Belarusian journalist and author, Nobel Prize laureate
1948 – John Bonham, English musician, songwriter and drummer (d. 1980)
1948 – Martin Hannett, English bass player, guitarist, and record producer (d. 1991)
1948 – Duncan Hunter, American lieutenant, lawyer, and politician
1949 – Tom Berenger, American actor, film producer and television writer
1950 – Jean Chalopin, French director, producer, and screenwriter, founded DIC Entertainment
1950 – Gregory Harrison, American actor
1950 – Edgar Savisaar, Estonian politician, Estonian Minister of the Interior
1951 – Karl-Hans Riehm, German hammer thrower
1952 – Karl Bartos, German singer-songwriter and keyboard player
1953 – Pirkka-Pekka Petelius, Finnish actor and screenwriter
1954 – Thomas Mavros, Greek footballer
1954 – Vicki Sue Robinson, American actress and singer (d. 2000)
1955 – Tommy Emmanuel, Australian singer-songwriter and guitarist
1955 – Susie Essman, American actress, comedian, and screenwriter
1956 – Fritz Hilpert, German drummer and composer
1956 – John Young, English singer-songwriter and keyboard player
1957 – Jim Craig, American ice hockey player
1959 – Andrea de Cesaris, Italian racing driver (d. 2014)
1959 – Phil Wilson, English politician
1960 – Greg Adams, Canadian ice hockey player and businessman
1960 – Chris Elliott, American actor, comedian, and screenwriter
1960 – Peter Winterbottom, English rugby player
1961 – Ray Cote, Canadian ice hockey player
1961 – Justin Madden, Australian footballer and politician
1961 – Lea Thompson, American actress, director, and producer
1962 – Corey Hart, Canadian singer-songwriter and producer
1963 – David Leigh, holder of the Sir Samuel Hall Chair of Chemistry at the University of Manchester
1963 – Viktor Orbán, Hungarian politician, 38th Prime Minister of Hungary
1963 – Wesley Willis, American singer-songwriter and keyboard player (d. 2003)
1964 – Leonard Asper, Canadian lawyer and businessman
1964 – Stéphane Caristan, French hurdler and coach
1964 – Yukio Edano, Japanese politician, Japanese Minister for Foreign Affairs
1964 – Darryl “D.M.C.” McDaniels, American rapper and producer
1965 – Brooke Shields, American model, actress, and producer
1966 – Roshan Mahanama, Sri Lankan cricketer and referee
1967 – Phil Keoghan, New Zealand television host and producer
1967 – Kenny Lofton, American baseball player, coach, and sportscaster
