June 20

June 20 is the 171st day of the year (172nd every 4 years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 194 days remaining until the end of the year.

Events

Up to 1950

• 451 – The Battle of Chalons, Flavius Aetius' victory over Attila the Hun.
• 1214 – University of Oxford receives its charter.
• 1605 – Tsar Feodor III of Russia is murdered.
• 1631 – The sack of Baltimore: the Irish village of Baltimore was attacked by Algerian pirates.
• 1667 – Pope Clement IX is elected.
• 1685 – Monmouth Rebellion: The Duke of Monmouth declared himself King of England at Bridgwater.
• 1756 – English garrison imprisoned in the Black Hole of Calcutta.
• 1782 – The U.S. Congress adopts the Great Seal of the United States.
• 1789 – Deputies of the French Third Estate took the Tennis Court Oath
• 1791 – The Flight to Varennes began.
• 1819 – The US vessel Savannah arrives at Liverpool. She is the first steam-propelled vessel to cross the Atlantic, most of the journey was made under sail.
• 1837 – Queen Victoria succeeds to the British throne.
• 1840 – Samuel Morse receives a patent for the telegraph.
• 1862 – Barbu Catargiu is assassinated in Romania.
• 1863 – West Virginia is admitted as the 35th U.S. state.
• 1877 – Alexander Graham Bell installs world's first commercial telephone service in Hamilton Ontario.
• 1884 – The Pentre Ifan Neolithic site in Pembrokeshire, west Wales, gets the special status of a "Scheduled Monument".
• 1887 – Victoria Terminus, the busiest railway station in India, opens in Bombay.
• 1893 – Lizzie Borden is found innocent of murdering her stepmother and father.
• 1895 – The Kiel Canal, crossing the base of the Jutland peninsula in Northern Germany, is officially opened.
• 1900 – In China, the Boxer Rebellion begins.
• 1919 – 150 die at the Teatro Yaguez fire, Mayagüez, Puerto Rico.
• 1921 – Workers of the Buckingham and Carnatic Mills in Chennai, India, begin a four-month strike.
• 1939 – Benny Goodman's Song School ends its radio series.
• 1940 – World War II: Italy begins
• 1943 – The Detroit race riots break out.
• 1944 – World War II: The Battle of the Philippine Sea finishes, with a decisive US Naval victory.
• 1944 – Continuation War: The Soviet Union demands the unconditional surrender of Finland, which the Finnish government refuses.
• 1945 – The United States Secretary of State approves the transfer of Wernher von Braun and his team of Nazi rocket scientists to the US.
• 1948 – Toast of the Town, later The Ed Sullivan Show, debuts.

1951 – 2000

• 1954 – 1954 FIFA World Cup: West Germany loses a group game 8-3 to the Hungary national football team, which they go on to beat 3–2 in the final.
• 1956 – A Venezuelan Super-Constellation crashed in Atlantic Ocean off Ashbury Park, New Jersey killing 74 people
• 1959 – A rare June hurricane strikes Canada's Gulf of Saint Lawrence, killing 35 people.
• 1960 – Independence of Mali and Senegal.
• 1963 – "Hotline" established between Soviet Union and United States.
• 1966 – Canada sells 336 million bushels of wheat to Soviet Union.
• 1969 – Jacques Chaban-Delmas becomes Prime Minister of France.
• 1973 – Ezeiza massacre in Buenos Aires – Snipers fire on left-wing Peronists, killing 13 people.
• 1976 – The Czechoslovakia national football team defeats the West Germany national football team to win UEFA Euro 1976.
• 1977 – Menachem Begin becomes Prime Minister of Israel.
• 1977 – Oil begins to flow through the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS).
• 1979 – ABC News correspondent Bill Stewart is shot dead by a Nicaraguan soldier under the regime of Anastasio Somoza Debayle.
• 1980 – Roberto Duran starts his classic boxing trilogy with Sugar Ray Leonard by defeating him in Canada by a decision in 15 rounds, to gain the WBC world Welterweight championship.
• 1981 – Iran is taken over by what is now known as the Islamic Republic of Iran after two and a half years of intimidation.
• 1982 – Jacky Ickx wins the 24-hour motor race at Le Mans, France.
• 1990 – Asteroid Eureka is discovered.
• 1991 – German parliament decides to move the capital city from Bonn back to Berlin.
• 1992 – Estonia takes the Kroon as its national currency.
• 1994 – In Mashad, Iran, a bomb attack on a mosque kills 26 people and injures 80.
• 1995 – In Kenya the Safina political party is founded by Richard Leakey and opposition activists.

From 2001

• 2001 – Pervez Musharraf becomes President of Pakistan
• 2001 – Andrea Yates drowns her children in a bathtub and admits the crime. She was later sentenced to life in prison.
• 2003 – Formation of Wikimedia Foundation is announced.
• 2009 – In Tehran, student Neda Agha-Soltan is shot dead. As it happened during post-election protests, she becomes a symbol of the Iranian opposition.
• 2010 – Juan Manuel Santos is elected President of Colombia.
• 2012 – Antonis Samaras becomes Prime Minister of Greece, after a second election in the space of six weeks, during the country's economic crisis.
• 2013 – At 1 p.m., the 3-hour PSI reading in Singapore reached record levels once again with a reading of 371 in the Hazardous range, as Singapore experienced its worst haze to date.
• 2014 – 2014 FIFA World Cup: Costa Rica secures a place in the second round after beating Italy 1–0, from a group also containing England and Uruguay. It is one of the surprises of the tournament.
• 2019 – Iran shoots down a US surveillance drone over the Strait of Hormuz; US President Donald Trump later admits to having ordered a strike on Iran which he later cancelled.
• 2019 – Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt become the final two candidates for the leadership of the British Conservative Party and the post of Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
• 2025 – A violent EF5 tornado in Enderlin, North Dakota becomes the first EF5-rated tornado in twelve years in the United States.

Births

Up to 1900

• 1005 – Ali az-Zahir, Egyptian caliph (d. 1036)
• 1389 – John of Lancaster, 1st Duke of Bedford (d. 1435)
• 1469 – Gian Galeazzo Sforza, consort of Isabella of Naples (d. 1496)
• 1566 – Sigismund III Vasa, King of Poland and Sweden (d. 1632)
• 1583 – Jacob De la Gardie, Swedish soldier and statesman (d. 1652)
• 1634 – Charles Emmanuel II of Savoy (d. 1675)
• 1642 – George Hickes, English theologian and writer (d. 1715)
• 1647 – John George III, Elector of Saxony (d. 1691)
• 1717 – Jacques Saly, French sculptor (d. 1776)
• 1723 – Adam Ferguson, Scottish philosopher and historian (d. 1816)
• 1737 – Tokugawa Ieharu, Japanese shogun (d. 1786)
• 1753 – Antoine de Rivarol, French writer (d. 1801)
• 1754 – Landgravine Amalie of Hesse-Darmstadt (d. 1832)
• 1756 – Joseph Martin Kraus, German composer (d. 1792)
• 1760 – Richard Wellesley, 1st Marquess Wellesley, British statesman (d. 1842)
• 1763 – Wolfe Tone, Irish lawyer and independence campaigner (d. 1798)
• 1771 – Thomas Douglas, 5th Earl of Selkirk, Scottish philanthropist (d. 1820)
• 1778 – Jean Baptiste Gay, vicomte de Martignac, French statesman (d. 1832)
• 1786 – Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, French writer (d. 1859)
• 1819 – Jacques Offenbach, German-French composer (d. 1880)
• 1832 – Benjamin Bristow, American politician (d. 1896)
• 1833 – Leon Bonnat, French painter (d. 1922)
• 1858 – Charles W. Chesnutt, American writer (d. 1932)
• 1860 – Alexander Winton, Scottish automobile designer and racer (d. 1932)
• 1860 – Jack Worrall, Australian cricketer and footballer (d. 1932)
• 1861 – Frederick Gowland Hopkins, English chemist, won the 1929 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1947)
• 1862 – Marco Praga, Italian playwright (d. 1929)
• 1869 – Lucy Kemp-Welch, English painter (d. 1958)
• 1872 – George Carpenter, 5th General of the Salvation Army (d. 1948)
• 1875 – Reginald Punnett, British geneticist (d. 1967)
• 1884 – Johannes Heinrich Schultz, German psychiatrist (d. 1970)
• 1887 – Kurt Schwitters, German painter and writer (d. 1948)
• 1889 – John S. Paraskevopoulos, Greek-South African astronomer (d. 1951)
• 1891 – John A. Costello, Irish Taoiseach (d. 1976)
• 1891 – Giannina Arangi-Lombardi, Italian soprano (d. 1951)
• 1896 – Wilfrid Pelletier, Canadian conductor, pianist, composer and arts administrator (d. 1982)
• 1897 – Elisabeth Hauptmann, German writer (d. 1973)
• 1897 – Jimmy Driftwood, American folk musician and songwriter (d. 1998)
• 1899 – Jean Moulin, French resistance leader (d. 1943)

1901 – 1950

• 1902 – Juan Evaristo, Argentine footballer (d. 1978)
• 1905 – Lillian Hellman, American playwright (d. 1984)
• 1906 – Bob King, American high jumper (d. 1965)
• 1907 – Jimmy Driftwood, American singer-songwriter and banjo player (d. 1998)
• 1909 – Errol Flynn, Australian-American actor (d. 1959)
• 1913 – Lilian Jackson Braun, American writer (d. 2011)
• 1913 – Infante Juan, Count of Barcelona, Spanish royal, father of King Juan Carlos I of Spain (d. 1993)
• 1915 – Terence Young, British screenwriter and director (d. 1994)
• 1916 – Jean-Jacques Bertrand, 21st Premier of Quebec (d. 1973)
• 1917 – Helena Rasiowa, Polish mathematician (d. 1994)
• 1920 – Man Mohan Adhikari, Nepalese politician (d. 1999)
• 1920 – Eduardo Mondlane, Mozambican political activist (d. 1969)
• 1923 – Jerzy Nowak, Polish actor (d. 2013)
• 1923 – Peter Gay, German-American historian, educator and writer (d. 2015)
• 1924 – Chet Atkins, American guitarist and producer (d. 2001)
• 1924 – Fritz Koenig, German sculptor (d. 2017)
• 1924 – Rainer Barzel, German politician (d. 2006)
• 1925 – Audie Murphy, American soldier, actor and songwriter (d. 1971)
• 1925 – Doris Hart, American tennis player (d. 2015)
• 1926 – Giovanni Viola, Italian footballer (d. 2008)
• 1927 – Simin Behbahani, Iranian poet (d. 2014)
• 1927 – Josef Posipal, German footballer and manager (d. 1997)
• 1928 – Jean-Marie Le Pen, French far-right politician
• 1928 – Martin Landau, American actor (d. 2017)
• 1928 – Eric Dolphy, American jazz musician (d. 1964)
• 1929 – Edgar Bronfman, Sr., Canadian-American businessman (d. 2013)
• 1929 – Edith Windsor, American LGBT rights activist ad technological manager at IBM (d. 2017)
• 1930 – Magdalena Abakanowicz, Polish sculptor and artist (d. 2017)
• 1931 – Olympia Dukakis, American actress (d. 2021)
• 1932 – Robert Rozhdestvensky, Russian poet (d. 1994)
• 1933 – Danny Aiello, American actor
• 1933 – Dai Dower, Welsh boxer (d. 2016)
• 1933 – Brett Halsey, American actor
• 1934 – Sergio Balanzino, Italian diplomat, former Secretary-General of NATO.
• 1934 – Graham Leggat, Scottish footballer
• 1934 – Wendy Craig, English actress
• 1935 – Armando Picchi, Italian footballer (d. 1971)
• 1936 – Billy Guy, American singer (d. 2002)
• 1937 – Phil Skoglund, New Zealand lawn bowls player (d. 2015)
• 1938 – Joan Kirner, Australian politician, 42nd Premier of Victoria (d. 2015)
• 1939 – Konrad Spindler, German prehistorian (d. 2005)
• 1940 – John Mahoney, English-American actor (d. 2018)
• 1941 – Stephen Frears, British actor, director, producer
• 1941 – Ulf Merbold, German physicist and astronaut
• 1942 – Brian Wilson, American musician (The Beach Boys)
• 1945 – Anne Murray, Canadian singer
• 1945 – Jean-Claude Izzo, French writer (d. 2000)
• 1945 – Shekhar Mehta, Kenyan rally driver (d. 2006)
• 1946 – Lars Vilks, Swedish sculptor, artist and activist
• 1946 – Xanana Gusmao, former President of East Timor
• 1948 – Ludwig Scotty, former President of Nauru
• 1948 – Cirilo Flores, American bishop (d. 2014)
• 1948 – Alan Longmuir, Scottish musician and actor (Bay City Rollers) (d. 2018)
• 1949 – Lionel Richie, American singer and musician
• 1950 – Nouri al-Maliki, Prime Minister of Iraq

1951 – 1975

• 1951 – Tress MacNeille, American voice actress
• 1952 – John Goodman, American actor
• 1952 – Vikram Seth, Indian poet
• 1952 – Larry Riley, American actor
• 1952 – Mabel Rivera, Spanish actress
• 1953 – Ulrich Mühe, German actor (d. 2007)
• 1954 – Michael Anthony, American musician (Van Halen)
• 1954 – Allan Lamb, South African-English cricketer
• 1954 – Ilan Ramon, Israeli astronaut (d. 2003)
• 1958 – Barbara Rosenkranz, Austrian politician
• 1958 – Chuck Wagner, American actor
• 1959 – Chris Williams, African-American actor
• 1960 – John Taylor, British musician ("Duran Duran")
• 1963 – José Basualdo, Argentine footballer
• 1964 – Pierfrancesco Chili, Italian motorcycle racer
• 1964 – Silke Möller, German athlete
• 1966 – Boaz Yakin, American screenwriter and director
• 1967 – Nicole Kidman, Australian actress
• 1967 – Angela Melillo, Italian actress, model, singer and television personality
• 1968 – Mateusz Morawiecki, Polish politician, Prime minister of Poland
• 1969 – Paulo Bento, Portuguese footballer and manager
• 1970 – Prince Moulay Rachid of Morocco
• 1970 – Andrea Nahles, German politician
• 1971 – Josh Lucas, American actor
• 1971 – Jeordie White, American musician
• 1972 – Craig Thomson, Scottish football referee
• 1973 – Chino Moreno, American singer-songwriter and musician

From 1976

• 1976 – Juliano Belletti, Brazilian footballer
• 1978 – Frank Lampard, English footballer
• 1978 – Quinton Jackson, American mixed martial artist and actor
• 1979 – Masashi Motoyama, Japanese footballer
• 1980 – Carlo Festuccia, Italian rugby player
• 1980 – Vignir Svavarsson, Icelandic handball player
• 1981 – Brede Hangeland, Norwegian footballer
• 1982 – Aleksei Berezutski, Russian footballer
• 1982 – Vasili Berezutski, Russian footballer
• 1982 – Example, English rapper
• 1982 – George Forsyth, Peruvian footballer
• 1983 – Josh Childress, American basketball player
• 1984 – Hassan Adams, American basketball player
• 1985 – Souleymane Mamam, Togolese footballer
• 1986 – Luca Cigarini, Italian footballer
• 1987 – Itumeleng Khune, South African footballer
• 1987 – Alexey Korolev, Kazakhstani ski jumper
• 1987 – Paweł Rogaliński, Polish journalist
• 1987 – Asmir Begovic, Bosnia and Herzegovina footballer
• 1988 – Shefali Chowdhury, British actress
• 1989 – Javier Pastore, Argentine footballer
• 1989 – Christopher Mintz-Plasse, American actor
• 1990 – Ding Ning, Chinese table tennis player
• 1990 – Iselin Solheim, Norwegian singer
• 1991 – Rick ten Voorde, Dutch footballer
• 1993 – Sead Kolasinac, Bosnia and Herzegovina footballer
• 1996 – Majid Hosseini, Iranian footballer
• 1997 – Maria Lark, Russian-American actress
• 1997 – Jordan Larsson, Swedish footballer
• 1998 – Jadin Gould, American actress
• 1999 – Yui Mizuno, Japanese singer and model

Deaths

Up to 1900

• 451 – Theodorid, King of the Visigoths
• 537 – Pope Silverius
• 840 – Louis the Pious, King of the Franks, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire (b. 778)
• 1176 – Mikhail of Vladimir
• 1597 – Willem Barentsz, navigator (b. 1550)
• 1605 – Tsar Feodor II of Russia (b. 1589)
• 1668 – Heinrich Roth, German scholar (b. 1620)
• 1776 – Benjamin Huntsman, English inventor and manufacturer (b. 1704)
• 1787 – Karl Friedrich Abel, German composer
• 1810 – Axel von Fersen the Younger, Swedish statesman (b. 1755)
• 1820 – Manuel Belgrano, Argentine lawyer and politician (b. 1770)
• 1837 – King William IV of the United Kingdom (b. 1765)
• 1840 – Pierre Claude Francois Daunou, French statesman (b. 1761)
• 1847 – Juan Larrea, Argentine politician and businessman (b. 1782)
• 1862 – Barbu Catargiu, Romanian politician (b. 1807)
• 1869 – Hijikata Toshizo, Japanese military leader (b. 1835)
• 1870 – Jules de Goncourt, French writer (b. 1830)
• 1888 – Johannes Zukertort, German chess player (b. 1847)
• 1891 – Mihail Kogalniceanu, Romanian historian, writer and journalist (b. 1817)

1901 – 2000

• 1909 – Friedrich Martens, Estonian–Russian diplomat, lawyer and historian (b. 1845)
• 1925 – Josef Breuer, Austrian psychologist (b. 1842)
• 1929 – Emmanuel Benakis, Greek merchant and politician (b. 1843)
• 1933 – Clara Zetkin, German politician and feminist (b. 1857)
• 1940 – Jehan Alain, French organist and composer (b. 1911)
• 1945 – Bruno Frank, German writer (b. 1878)
• 1945 – Luis Fernando de Orleans y Borbon, Spanish prince (b. 1888)
• 1946 – Wan Rong, last Empress of China (b. 1906)
• 1947 – Bugsy Siegel, American gangster (b. 1906)
• 1947 – Howard Mason Gore, 17th Governor of West Virginia (b. 1877)
• 1952 – Luigi Fagioli, Italian racing driver (b. 1898)
• 1958 – Kurt Alder, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1902)
• 1965 – Bernard Baruch, American financier and politician (b. 1870)
• 1966 – Georges Lemaitre, Belgian theologian and astrophysicist (b. 1894)
• 1976 – Lou Klein, American baseball player (b. 1918)
• 1979 – Bill Stewart, American journalist (b. 1941)
• 1995 – Emil Cioran, Romanian-born French philosopher and essayist (b. 1911)
• 1997 – Lawrence Payton, American singer-songwriter and producer (b. 1938)
• 1998 – Conrad Schumann, East German borderguard, most famous escapee from East Germany (b. 1942)
• 1999 – Clifton Fadiman, writer (b. 1902)

From 2001

• 2001 – Gina Cigna, Italian-French opera singer and dramatic soprano (b. 1900)
• 2002 – Erwin Chargaff, Austrian biochemist (b. 1905)
• 2002 – Tinus Osendarp, Dutch sprinter (b. 1916)
• 2003 – Bob Stump, U.S. Congressman from Arizona (b. 1927)
• 2005 – Jack Kilby, American electrical engineer (b. 1923)
• 2009 – Neda Agha-Soltan, Iranian student (shot), symbol of the resistance to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (b. 1982)
• 2010 – Roberto Rosato, Italian footballer (b. 1943)
• 2011 – Ryan Dunn, American television star and stuntman (b. 1977)
• 2012 – Judy Agnew, wife of Spiro Agnew (b. 1920)
• 2013 – Ingvar Rydell, Swedish footballer (b. 1922)
• 2014 – Oberdan Cattani, Brazilian footballer (b. 1919)
• 2014 – Jaroslav Walter, Czech ice hockey player (b. 1939)
• 2015 – Elson Floyd, American educator (b. 1956)
• 2015 – Angelo Niculescu, Romanian football manager (b. 1921)
• 2015 – Takanonami Sadahiro, Japanese sumo wrestler (b. 1971)
• 2015 – François Delapierre, French politician (b. 1970)
• 2015 – Esther Brand, South African athlete (b. 1922)
• 2015 – William Brantley Aycock, American educator (b. 1915)
• 2016 – Frank Chapot, American equestrian (b. 1932)
• 2016 – Rich Olive, American politician (b. 1949)
• 2016 – Ernesto Maceda, Filipino politician (b. 1935)
• 2016 – Edgard Pisani, French politician (b. 1918)
• 2016 – Chayito Valdez, Mexican-American folk singer and actress (b. 1945)
• 2017 – Sergei Mylnikov, Russian ice hockey player (b. 1958)
• 2017 – Prodigy, American rapper (b. 1974)
• 2017 – Fredrik Skagen, Norwegian writer (b. 1936)
• 2018 – Ken Albiston, Australian rules football player (b. 1926)
• 2018 – Dante Caputo, Argentine politician (b. 1943)
• 2018 – Peter Thomson, Australian golfer (b. 1929)
• 2018 – Bill Hendon, American activist, writer and politician (b. 1944)
• 2018 – Ernie Hunt, English footballer (b. 1943)
• 2018 – Sándor Kányádi, Hungarian poet and translator (b. 1929)
• 2018 – Bill Speakman, British soldier (b. 1927)
• 2019 – Eddie Garcia, Filipino actor, director and television personality (b. 1929)
• 2019 – Rubén Suñé, Argentine footballer (b. 1947)
• 2019 – Mark Warawa, Canadian politician (b. 1950)

Observances

• World Refugee Day
• Flag Day (Argentina)
• West Virginia Day
• In Leap years: Northern Summer solstice and Southern Winter solstice