July 19

• July 19, 64
  The Great Fire begins in Rome and destroys ten of the fourteen districts of city during next six days, which lets Roman Emperor Nero to blame Christians and begins persecutions of them
• July 19, 1553
  15-year-old Lady Jane Grey, daughter of John Dudley, the Duke of Northumberland, is deposed as Queen of England after claiming the crown for nine days; Mary, the daughter of King Henry VIII, is s proclaimed Queen
• July 19, 1610
  Polish King Wladyslaw IV Vasa is crowned Tsar of Russia
• July 19, 1821
  The coronation of George IV of England is held
• July 19, 1834
  Edgar Degas, French impressionist painter, is born
• July 19, 1870
  Emperor Napoleon III of France declares war on Germany under Otto von Bismarck beginning Franco-Prussian War, which results in the unifications of Germany and Italy and the emergence of a New Imperialism
• July 19, 1943
  Allied air forces raid Rome, Italy
• July 19, 1970
  Edward Heath becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
• July 19, 1975
  Apollo, an Apollo spacecraft, and Soviet spacecraft Soyuz 19, linked in orbit for two days, separate
• July 19, 1993
  President Bill Clinton announces "don't ask, don't tell" policy concerning gays serving in the U.S. military
• July 19, 2009
  Amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley discovers impact on Jupiter that causes a black spot in the planet's atmosphere

June 28

• June 28, 1577
  Peter Paul Rubens, a Flemish painter, is born in Germany, in family of protestants exiled from Antwerp
• June 28, 1635
  The French colony of Guadeloupe is established in the Caribbean
• June 28, 1650
  Lord Cromwell set off for Scotland at the head of an army of 16,354 men
• June 28, 1675
  Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg and Duke of Prussia, crushes the Swedes, who invaded and occupied parts of Brandenburg, at Fehrbellin
• June 28, 1745
  American New Englanders capture France's most imposing North American stronghold on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia
• June 28, 1758
  British colonel James Wolfe issues the Wolfe's Manifesto for psychological intimidation of French forces
• June 28, 1776
  Colonists repulse a British sea attack on Charleston, South Carolina
• June 28, 1838
  Britain's Queen Victoria is crowned in Westminster Abbey
• June 28, 1914
  Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie are shot to death by Bosnian Serb nationalist Gavrilo Princip during an official visit to the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, triggering World War I
• June 28, 1919
  The Treaty of Versailles, signed by Germany and the Allied Powers, blames Germany for World War I, establishes the Weimar Republic, redraws European borders, and creates a League of Nations
• June 28, 1935
  United States President Franklin Roosevelt orders the construction of a gold vault at Fort Knox, Kentucky
• June 28, 1941
  U.S. President Roosevelt signs Executive Order 8807, which creates the Office of Scientific Research and Development
• June 28, 1969
  Stonewall riots, a spontaneous demonstrations by members of the gay community against a police raid, marks start of the gay liberation movement
• June 28, 1978
  Seasat, the first Earth-orbiting satellite designed for remote sensing of the Earth's oceans, is launched by NASA

June 20

• June 20, 451
  Combined Roman and Visigoth forces under Roman general Flavius Aetius stop Attila's army at the Catalaunian Plains in eastern France, the last great military campaign by Western Roman Empire
• June 20, 656
  Caliph Uthman ibn Affan is assassinated, thus Ali becomes caliph
• June 20, 840
  King of the Franks Louis the Pious dies triggering the Civil war in Frankish kingdom between his sons
• June 20, 1646
  In England, Parliament signs a peace treaty with Royalists
• June 20, 1675
  A band of Pokanoket retaliate for the execution of three of their people and attack several isolated homesteads in the small Plymouth colony settlement of Swansea, starting King Philip's War
• June 20, 1743
  The British warship Centurion under Commodore George Anson engaged and overcame the Spanish treasure galleon, Nuestra Senora de Covadonga, near the Philippines killing 58 Spaniards and capturing over 1 million Spanish silver dollars and 500 pounds of native silver
• June 20, 1756
  In India rebels defeat the British army at Calcutta and imprison between 64 and 146 British soldiers in a suffocating cell that gained notoriety as the Black Hole of Calcutta
• June 20, 1789
  Oath on the Tennis Court in Versailles, France, bonds members of the Third Estate to resist eviction until they have a new constitution
• June 20, 1791
  King Louis XVI is caught trying to escape French Revolution in the so-called Flight to Varennes
• June 20, 1793
  Eli Whitney, an American inventor, petitions patent for a cotton gin, a machine which cleans the tight-clinging seeds from short-staple cotton, which becomes one of the key inventions of the Industrial Revolution
• June 20, 1819
  The paddle-wheel steamship Savannah arrives in Liverpool, England, after a voyage of 27 days and 11 hours and becomes the first steamship to successfully cross the Atlantic
• June 20, 1837
  Queen Victoria ascends the British throne following the death of her uncle, King William IV, and beginning the Victorian era when the British Empire get the apex
• June 20, 1877
  Alexander Graham Bell installs the world's first commercial telephone service in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
• June 20, 1893
  A jury in New Bedford, Massachusetts, finds Lizzie Borden innocent of the ax murders of her father, wealthy Fall River, Massachusetts, businessman Andrew Borden and his wife, Abby Borden, however, is ostracized for the rest of her life
• June 20, 1948
  West German Finance Minister Ludwig Erhard eliminates most price controls and introduces a new currency, the "Deutsche mark"
• June 20, 1960
  Federation of Mali, with Senegal, becomes independent of France
• June 20, 1990
  The asteroid Eureka, the first Mars trojan, is discovered by David H. Levy
• June 20, 1991
  The Bundestag in Bonn decides that Berlin should become the German capital
• June 20, 2003
  The North East MRT Line, the world's first fully automated and driverless subway opens in Singapore

May 6

• May 6, 523
  Thrasamund, King of the Vandals and Alans, dies and Hilderic succeeds
• May 6, 1085
  Alfonso VI of León and Castile occupies the city of Toledo
• May 6, 1527
  Spanish and German mutinous mercenaries sack Rome during the conflict between Emperor Charles V and the League of Cognac — the alliance of France, Milan, Venice, Florence and the Papacy, which is considered the end of the Italian Renaissance
• May 6, 1576
  The Fifth War of Religion in France ends with the Edict of Beaulieu by which the Huguenots are granted freedom of worship in all places except Paris
• May 6, 1682
  King Louis XIV of France officially establishes his court in new Palace of Versailles, some 20 kilometres southwest of the French capital, making it the centre of political power
• May 6, 1757
  Frederik II of Prussia beat emperor's army at the Battle at Prague
• May 6, 1794
  After the French declared an end to slavery, Toussaint Louverture, Haitian rebel leader, ends his alliance with the Iberian monarchy and embraces the French Republicans
• May 6, 1856
  Sigmund Freud, father of psychology and the Viennese physician who discovered the unconscious, is born
• May 6, 1856
  Robert Peary, arctic explorer, is born
• May 6, 1877
  Chief Crazy Horse and his warriors fight their final losing battle against the U.S. Cavalry in Montana and surrenders
• May 6, 1882
  President Chester A. Arthur signs the Chinese Exclusion Act, which prohibits the immigration of Chinese laborers into the United States for 10 years
• May 6, 1889
  The Eiffel Tower is officially opened to the public with opening of Universal Exposition in Paris, France and becomes the tallest structure in the world until the Chrysler Building in New York City built in 1930
• May 6, 1896
  Samuel Pierpont Langley, American physicist and aviation pioneer, launches the first reasonably large, steam-powered model aircraft
• May 6, 1910
  George V ascends to British throne after death of his father Edward VII and becomes King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions and Emperor of India
• May 6, 1919
  German East Africa is assigned to Britain and France, German Southwest Africa to South Africa after Paris Peace Conference disposes of German colonies
• May 6, 1937
  Hindenburg, the largest rigid airship by envelope volume, is destroyed by fire during its attempt to dock with its mooring mast in New Jersey
• May 6, 1942
  American forces at Corregidor Island surrenders to the Japanese, putting all of the Philippines under Japanese control
• May 6, 1953
  John Heysham Gibbon, an American surgeon, performes the first successful open heart procedure on a human utilizing Gibbon's heart lung machine
• May 6, 1981
  A jury of architects and sculptors unanimously selects Maya Lin's design for the US Vietnam Veterans Memorial from 1,421 other entries
• May 6, 1994
  Channel Tunnel, 50.5-kilometre rail tunnel linking Folkestone in the United Kingdom, with Coquelles in northern France beneath the English Channel, is opened
• May 6, 2000
  Operation Palliser, begun by British forces, effectively ending Sierra Leone Civil War
• May 6, 2001
  The first space tourist, United States multimillionaire Dennis Tito, returns to Earth aboard Russian spacecraft Soyuz TM-31, while Soyuz TM-32, which delivered the crew to the International Space Station, is left docked as a new lifeboat
• May 6, 2007
  Nicolas Sarkozy is elected President of the French Republic, defeating Ségolène Royal with 53 percent of the vote in the French Presidential Election