June 22

• June 22, 168 BC
  Rome under general Lucius Aemilius Paullus defeats Philip V of Macedon at battle of Pydna and assures dominance in Greece
• June 22, 431
  First Council of Ephesus, the third ecumenical council of the early Christian Church, opens
• June 22, 1476
  The Swiss overcome Burgundy's Charles the Bold at the Battle of Morat during Burgundian Wars
• June 22, 1497
  Antitax insurrection in Cornwall is suppressed at Blackheath, London
• June 22, 1633
  Italian scientist Galileo Galilei is forced to recant that the Earth orbits the Sun and commuted to house arrest by the Roman Catholic Inquisition
• June 22, 1691
  Ahmed II succeeded Suleiman II in the Ottoman House of Osman
• June 22, 1740
  King Frederick II of Prussia ends torture and guarantees freedom of religion and the press
• June 22, 1783
  A poisonous cloud from Laki volcanic eruption in Iceland reaches Le Havre in France
• June 22, 1799
  In France a scientific congress adopts the length of the meter as one ten-millionth of the distance along the surface of the Earth from its equator to its pole, in a curved line of latitude passing through the center of Paris
• June 22, 1815
  Napoleon Bonaparte abdicates a second time, in favour of his son, Napoléon Francis Joseph Charles Bonaparte
• June 22, 1816
  An English statute establishes a single gold standard for money, with silver coins reduced to status of tokens of limited legal tender
• June 22, 1847
  The first doughnut with a hole in it is created in United States
• June 22, 1874
  Doctor Andrew Taylor Still of Macon, Missouri, founds osteopathy, a type of alternative medicine, that claims that the wellbeing of an individual depends on their bones, muscles, ligaments and connective tissue functioning smoothly together
• June 22, 1922
  The Irish Civil War begins between Irish republicans over the Anglo-Irish Treaty shortly after the establishment of the Irish Free State
• June 22, 1922
  Pius XI becomes Pope
• June 22, 1940
  After German blitz France formally surrenders at the signing ceremony, held in the same wagon-lit railroad car used by French Marshal Ferdinand Foch to accept the surrender of Germany in 1918
• June 22, 1941
  Over 4 million soldiers of the Axis powers invade the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa, the largest military operation in human history, opening the Eastern Front of World War II
• June 22, 1944
  Soviet forces, comprised of about 1.2 million men, 2715 tanks, and 5327 aircraft, launch Operation Bagration on German Army Group Centre to clear German forces from the Belorussian SSR and eastern Poland
• June 22, 1945
  Okinawa, Japan, is declared captured by the Allies with total US casualties about 80,000 and 120,000 Japanese
• June 22, 1978
  Charon, a satellite of the dwarf planet Pluto, is discovered by James Christy
• June 22, 1992
  Two skeletons excavated in Yekaterinburg are identified as Czar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra

May 24

• May 24, 1153
  Malcolm IV, also known as Malcolm the Maiden, becomes king of Scotland
• May 24, 1300
  King Philip IV of France occupies Flanders. Guy, Count of Flanders is captured
• May 24, 1370
  Hanseatic League and Danish king Valdemar IV sign peace treaty ending the war and giving an effective trade and political monopoly in Scandinavia to the League
• May 24, 1543
  Nicolaus Copernicus, a mathematician and astronomer, dies in Poland
• May 24, 1658
  Battle of the Dunes ends with a victory of the French army and their Commonwealth of England allies over the Spanish army and their English Royalist and French Fronde rebels
• May 24, 1667
  French troops invade the Southern Netherlands beginning the War of Devolution between France and Spain as a result of the claim by Louis XIV that the ownership of the Spanish Netherlands devolved to his wife upon the death of her father, Philip IV of Spain
• May 24, 1689
  English Parliament passes the Act of Toleration, protecting Protestants, but Roman Catholics are specifically excluded from exemption
• May 24, 1798
  Believing that a French invasion of Ireland is imminent, Irish nationalists rise up against the British occupation
• May 24, 1822
  At Battle of Pichincha in Ecuador General Antonio José de Sucre win a decisive victory against Spanish forces
• May 24, 1823
  The Liverpool and Manchester Railway Company is founded to build a railway between the North West England towns of Liverpool and Manchester in the United Kingdom, the first railway to rely exclusively on steam power
• May 24, 1844
  Samuel Morse sends the first telegraphic message via publicly funded telegraph line in the world between Washington, DC and Baltimore ushering in the age of the telegraph
• May 24, 1856
  The Pottawatomie Massacre takes place in Kansas when John Brown, American abolitionist and horse thief, preside over the hacking to death with machetes of five unarmed pro-slavery Border Ruffians in Potawatomi, Kansas
• May 24, 1883
  The Brooklyn Bridge, one of the oldest suspension bridges, is dedicated by President Chester Arthur and New York Govener Grover Cleveland, and officially opened to traffic linking the boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn
• May 24, 1923
  Irish Civil War ends with victory of Pro-Treaty
• May 24, 1993
  Eritrea gains independence from Ethiopia
• May 24, 2006
  East Timor's Foreign Minister José Ramos-Horta officially requests military assistance from the governments of Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia and Portugal