June 15
763 BC
Assyrians record a solar eclipse that is later used to fix the chronology of
Mesopotamian history.
1215 King
John of England puts his seal to the
Magna Carta.
1219
Northern Crusades: Danish victory at the
Battle of Lyndanisse (modern-day Tallinn) establishes the Danish Duchy of Estonia. According to legend, this battle also marks the first use of the
Dannebrog, the world's oldest national flag still in use, as the national flag of Denmark.
1300 The city of
Bilbao, Spain is founded.
1648
Margaret Jones is hanged in Boston for witchcraft in the first such execution for the
Massachusetts Bay Colony.
1667 The first human blood transfusion is administered by
Dr. Jean-Baptiste Denys.
1752 Benjamin Franklin proves that lightning is electricity (traditional date, the exact date is unknown).
1775
American Revolutionary War: George Washington is appointed commander-in-chief of the
Continental Army.
1816 At the
Villa Diodati in the village of Cologny, Switzerland,
Lord Byron reads
Fantasmagoriana to his four house guests
Percy Shelley,
Mary Shelley,
Claire Clairmont, and
John Polidori and challenges each guest to write a ghost story, which culminates in Mary Shelley writing the novel
Frankenstein, John Polidori writing the short story
The Vampyre, and Byron writing an unfinished vampire novel
Fragment of a Novel and the poem
Darkness.
1836
Arkansas is admitted as the 25th U.S. state.
1844
Charles Goodyear receives a patent for
vulcanization, a process to strengthen rubber.
1864
Arlington National Cemetery is established when 200 acres (0.81 km2) around Arlington Mansion (formerly owned by
Confederate General Robert E. Lee) are officially set aside as a military cemetery by U.S. Secretary of War
Edwin M. Stanton.
1877
Henry Ossian Flipper becomes the first African American cadet to graduate from the
United States Military Academy.
1878
Eadweard Muybridge takes a series of photographs to prove that all four feet of a horse leave the ground when it runs; the study becomes the basis of motion pictures.
1896 The
deadliest tsunami in Japan's history kills more than 22,000 people.
1904 A fire aboard the steamboat
SS General Slocum in New York City's East River kills 1,000 people.
1916 U.S. President Woodrow Wilson signs a bill incorporating the
Boy Scouts of America, making them the only American youth organization with a federal charter.
1934 The U.S.
Great Smoky Mountains National Park is founded.
1944 World War II:
Battle of Saipan: The United States invade Japanese-occupied Saipan.
1970
Charles Manson goes on trial for the
Sharon Tate murders.
1991 In the Philippines,
Mount Pinatubo erupts in the second largest volcanic eruption of the 20th Century. In the end, over 800 people die.
1992 The United States Supreme Court rules in
United States v. Αlvarez-Machaνn that it is permissible for the United States to forcibly extradite suspects in foreign countries and bring them to the USA for trial, without approval from those other countries.
1996 The Troubles: The
Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) detonates a powerful
truck bomb in the middle of Manchester, England, devastating the city centre and injuring 200 people.
Births
1330 Edward, the Black Prince; 1908 Sam Giancana; 1914 Yuri Andropov; 1917 Lash LaRue; 1930 Victor Lundin (Star Trek's first Klingon); 1932 Mario Cuomo; 1937 Waylon Jennings; 1941 Harry Nilsson; 1943 Johnny Hallyday,
Xaviera Hollander; 1946 Noddy Holder; 1947 John Hoagland; 1948 Mike Holmgren; 1949 Dusty Baker, Russell Hitchcock, Jim Varney (
Ernest); 1951 Steve Walsh; 1954 Jim Belushi; 1955 Julie Hagerty; 1957 Brad Gillis; 1958 Wade Boggs; 1963 Helen Hunt; 1964 Courteney Cox; 1969 Ice Cube; 1972 Andy Pettitte; 1973 Neil Patrick Harris

; 1980 Mary Carey; 1984 Tim Lincecum
Deaths
1849 James K. Polk; 1968 Wes Montgomery; 1989 Victor French; 1991 Happy Chandler; 1996 Ella Fitzgerald; 2003 Hume Cronyn; 2014 Casey Kasem; 2015 Kirk Kerkorian; 2015
Mighty Sam McClain