June 19

• June 19, 1821
  The Ottomans defeat the Greeks at the Battle of Dragasani
• June 19, 1862
  Congress prohibits slavery in all current and future United States territories
• June 19, 1867
  Mexican Emperor Maximilian is executed on the orders of Benito Juárez by a firing squad in Queretaro
• June 19, 1953
  Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were convicted of conspiring to pass U.S. atomic secrets to the Soviets, are executed by electric chair at Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, New York
• June 19, 1961
  Kuwait regains complete independence from Britain
• June 19, 2014
  King Juan Carlos I of Spain abdicates in favor of his son, who ascends the Spanish throne as King Felipe VI

June 17

• June 17, 362
  Roman emperor Julian decrees religious toleration in the empire and attempts to reestablish paganism
• June 17, 1397
  The Union of Kalmar, which grows out of the dynastic ties of the Scandinavian countries, unites Denmark, Sweden and Norway under one monarch
• June 17, 1579
  Sir Francis Drake sails into San Francisco Bay and proclaims English sovereignty over New Albion in modern-day California
• June 17, 1696
  John III Sobieski, King of Lithuania and Poland, dies
• June 17, 1767
  English navigator Samuel Wallis becomes the first European to visit Tahiti in existing records
• June 17, 1789
  The Third Estate of the Estates-General in France declare itself a national assembly, and undertake to frame a constitution
• June 17, 1797
  Mohammad Khan Qajar, cruel ruler of Persia, is killed, and his nephew Fath Ali Shah succeeded him
• June 17, 1848
  Austrian General Alfred Windisch-Grätz crushes a Czech uprising in Prague against Habsburg control
• June 17, 1930
  United States President Herbert Hoover signs the Hawley-Smoot Tariff bill, which increases some 900 American import duties, so contributing to the depth of the Depression
• June 17, 1942
  First World War II American expeditionary force lands in Africa
• June 17, 1944
  Republic of Iceland proclaimed at Thingvallir, Iceland
• June 17, 1950
  Julius Rosenberg is arrested in the US on suspicion of espionage, accused of heading a spy ring that passed top-secret information concerning the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union
• June 17, 1967
  China becomes world's fourth thermonuclear power
• June 17, 1972
  Five men are arrested for breaking and entering into the DNC headquarters at the Watergate complex, beginning the Watergate scandal

April 5

• April 5, 1242
  At the Battle on the Ice the Republic of Novgorod under 20-year-old Prince Alexander Nevsky defeat the Livonian branch of the Teutonic Knights halting the Northern Crusades directed against pagans and Eastern Orthodox Christians
• April 5, 1462
  Ivan III becomes the Grand Prince of Moscow starting the uniting Russia
• April 5, 1614
  American Indian princess Pocahontas, daughter of chief Powhatan, marries English Jamestown colonist John Rolfe in Virginia, bringing a temporary peace between the English settlers and the Algonquians
• April 5, 1632
  The Swedish and Imperial armies exchange cannon fire for six hours, killing 2000 of the Swedish force, and 3000 of the Imperial force. Tilly is fatally wounded; Maximilian and the army escape during the night to Ingolstadt
• April 5, 1648
  Spanish troops and feudal barons struck down people's uprising in Naples
• April 5, 1722
  Jacob Roggeveen, a Dutch explorer sent to find Terra Australis, discovers on Easter Sunday a Polynesian Island 1400 miles from the coast of South America and names it Easter Island
• April 5, 1762
  British take Grenada, West Indies, from French
• April 5, 1768
  The world's oldest English-speaking chamber of commerce forms in New York City, New York
• April 5, 1794
  Georges Danton, French revolutionary leader, is guillotined along with Marie-Jean Herault de Sechelles, French author, politician, and Camille Desmoulins, popular journalist during French Reign of Terror
• April 5, 1795
  Treaty of Basel between Prussia and France marks end of First Coalition in French Revolutionary Wars
• April 5, 1856
  Booker T. Washington, an African-American educator, is born in Franklin County, Virginia
• April 5, 1933
  United States President Franklin Roosevelt issues Executive Order 6102, requiring public to turn in gold certificates, bullion, and coins for placement in the Federal Reserve
• April 5, 1939
  Membership in Hitler Youth, the youth organization of the Nazi Party, becomes obligatory in Germany
• April 5, 1951
  American communists Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are sentenced to death for espionage and transmitting nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union, becoming the only two American civilians to be executed for espionage during the Cold War
• April 5, 1974
  World's tallest building, the World Trade Center opens in New York City