Knowledge Base Wiki

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

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.^[1]
• 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.

• 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)

• 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 – 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

• 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

• 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)

• 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)

• 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)

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