June 16 - Events

Events

• 363 – Emperor Julian marches back up the Tigris and burns his fleet of supply ships. During the withdrawal Roman forces suffering several attacks from the Persians.
• 1487 – Battle of Stoke Field, the final engagement of the Wars of the Roses.
• 1586 – Mary, Queen of Scots, recognizes Philip II of Spain as her heir and successor.
• 1745 – British troops take Cape Breton Island, which is now part of Nova Scotia, Canada.
• 1745 – War of the Austrian Succession: New England colonial troops under the command of William Pepperell capture the French Fortress of Louisbourg in Louisbourg, Nova Scotia (Old Style).
• 1746 – War of Austrian Succession: Austria and Sardinia defeat a Franco-Spanish army at the Battle of Piacenza.
• 1755 – French and Indian War: the French surrender Fort Beauséjour to the British, leading to the expulsion of the Acadians.
• 1774 – Foundation of Harrodsburg, Kentucky.
• 1779 – Spain declares war on the Kingdom of Great Britain, and the Great Siege of Gibraltar begins.
• 1795 – First Battle of Groix otherwise known as "Cornwallis' Retreat".
• 1815 – Battle of Ligny and Battle of Quatre Bras, two days before the Battle of Waterloo.
• 1816 – Lord Byron reads Fantasmagoriana to his four house guests at the Villa Diodati, Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, Claire Clairmont, and John Polidori, and inspires his challenge that each guest write a ghost story, which culminated in Mary Shelley writing the novel Frankenstein, John Polidori writing the short story The Vampyre, and Byron writing the poem Darkness.
• 1836 – The formation of the London Working Men's Association gives rise to the Chartist Movement.
• 1846 – The Papal conclave of 1846 concludes. Pope Pius IX is elected Pope beginning the longest reign in the history of the papacy (not counting St. Peter).
• 1858 – Abraham Lincoln delivers his House Divided speech in Springfield, Illinois.
• 1858 – The Battle of Morar takes place during the Indian Mutiny.
• 1871 – The University Tests Act allows students to enter the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Durham without religious tests (except for those intending to study theology).
• 1883 – The Victoria Hall theatre panic in Sunderland, England kills 183 children.
• 1891 – John Abbott becomes Canada's third Prime Minister.
• 1897 – A treaty annexing the Republic of Hawaii to the United States is signed; the Republic would not be dissolved until a year later.
• 1903 – The Ford Motor Company is incorporated.
• 1903 – Roald Amundsen commences the first east-west navigation of the Northwest Passage, leaving Oslo, Norway.
• 1904 – Eugen Schauman assassinates Nikolai Bobrikov, Governor-General of Finland.
• 1904 – Irish author James Joyce begins a relationship with Nora Barnacle and subsequently uses the date to set the actions for his novel Ulysses; this date is now traditionally called "Bloomsday".
• 1911 – IBM founded as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company in Endicott, New York.
• 1911 – A 772 gram stony meteorite strikes the earth near Kilbourn, Wisconsin damaging a barn.
• 1915 – Foundation of the British Women's Institute.
• 1922 – General election in the Irish Free State: the pro-Treaty Sinn Féin win a large majority.
• 1924 – The Whampoa Military Academy is founded.
• 1925 – The most famous Young Pioneer camp of the Soviet Union, Artek, is established.
• 1930 – Sovnarkom establishes decree time in the USSR.
• 1933 – The National Industrial Recovery Act is passed.
• 1940 – World War II: Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain becomes Chief of State of Vichy France (Chef de l'État Français).
• 1940 – A Communist government is installed in Lithuania.
• 1958 – Imre Nagy, Pál Maléter and other leaders of the 1956 Hungarian Uprising are executed.
• 1961 – Rudolf Nureyev defects from the Soviet Union.
• 1963 – Soviet Space Program: Vostok 6 Mission – Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova becomes the first woman in space.
• 1967 – The Monterey Pop Festival begins
• 1972 – Red Army Faction member Ulrike Meinhof is captured by police in Langenhagen.
• 1972 – The largest single-site hydro-electric power project in Canada is inaugurated at Churchill Falls, Labrador.
• 1976 – Soweto uprising: a non-violent march by 15,000 students in Soweto, South Africa turns into days of rioting when police open fire on the crowd.
• 1977 – Oracle Corporation is incorporated in Redwood Shores, California, as Software Development Laboratories (SDL) by Larry Ellison, Bob Miner and Ed Oates.
• 1989 – Imre Nagy, the former Hungarian Prime Minister, is reburied in Budapest.
• 1997 – The Dairat Labguer massacre in Algeria; 50 people are killed.
• 2000 – Israel complies with UN Security Council Resolution 425 22 years after its issuance, which calls on Israel to completely withdraw from Lebanon. Israel withdraws from all of Lebanon, except the disputed Shebaa Farms.
• 2012 – China successfully launches its Shenzhou 9 spacecraft, carrying three astronauts – including the first female Chinese astronaut, Liu Yang – to the Tiangong-1 orbital module.
• 2012 – The United States Air Force's robotic Boeing X-37B spaceplane returns to Earth after a classified 469-day orbital mission.