July 6

• July 6, 1189
  Richard I, known as Richard the Lionheart, ascends the throne of England after his father Henry II of England dies at age 56
• July 6, 1253
  Mindaugas, the ruler of Lithuania, is crowned in city of Novgorodok, modern-day Belarus, becoming the first and only King of Lithuania
• July 6, 1415
  Jan Hus, Bohemian religious reformer who spoken out against Church corruption, is burned as a heretic at the stake at Constance, Germany
• July 6, 1495
  The Holy League beat French army and temporarily expel them from the Italian Peninsula in the Battle of Fornovo, the first battle of series of conflicts known as the Italian Wars
• July 6, 1519
  Charles I of Spain is elected Holy Roman emperor as Charles V in Barcelona combining the crowns of Spain, Burgundy with the Netherlands, Austria and Germany
• July 6, 1535
  Sir Thomas More is beheaded in England for refusing to renounce the Catholic church in favor of King Henry VIII's Church of England
• July 6, 1553
  Edward VI Tudor, King of England, died of tuberculosis at the age of nine, making lady Jane Grey, an English noblewoman, becomes the Queen of England
• July 6, 1685
  Royal army of James II defeat Rebel army of James Scott, the Duke of Monmouth, at the Battle of Sedgemoor, the last major battle to be fought on English soil
• July 6, 1687
  Isaac Newton, an English physicist and mathematician, publishes Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica where he formulates law of universal gravitation and stats laws of motion, forming the foundation of classical mechanics
• July 6, 1699
  Captain William Kidd, a Scottish pirate, is arrested in Boston
• July 6, 1777
  British forces under General Burgoyne capture Fort Ticonderoga, on Lake Champlain, from the Americans
• July 6, 1781
  In Virginia the Battle of Green Spring on the Jamestown Peninsula and becomes the last major engagement of the Revolutionary War prior to the Colonial's final victory at Yorktown
• July 6, 1785
  US Congress decides that the country's monetary system would be based on a silver coin called a dollar, similar to that of the Spanish dollar and adopt the first nation decimal money system
• July 6, 1788
  Bad harvests and harsh winters in France lead to bread riot in the poorer districts
• July 6, 1809
  Napoleon beat Austria's archduke Charles at the Battle of Wagram, crushing the Fifth Coalition
• July 6, 1836
  French General Thomas Robert Bugeaud defeats Abdelkader El Djezairi's forces beside the Sikkak River in Algeria
• July 6, 1885
  French scientist Louis Pasteur successfully tests an anti-rabies vaccine on a boy bitten by an infected dog, owing to the fact that the death rate from rabies dropped to almost zero by 1888
• July 6, 1892
  Homestead Strike, a major labor dispute between union steelworkers and the Carnegie Steel Company in Homestead, Pennsylvania, culminates in a battle between strikers and private security agents
• July 6, 1964
  Nyasaland gains independence from Britain and is renamed in Malawi
• July 6, 1967
  Biafran War, or Nigerian Civil War, erupts as Nigerian forces invade Biafra, seceded May 30
• July 6, 1994
  Forrest Gump, romantic-comedy-drama film depicts several decades in the life of a slow-witted man, is released in the United States
• July 6, 1995
  IBM completes its US$3.5 billion acquisition of Lotus Development, making it a wholly-owned subsidiary

June 8

• June 8, 68
  Galba, a commander of Roman forces in Spain, assumes the title of Caesar beginning a year of civil war known as the Year of the Four Emperors
• June 8, 452
  Attila, military leader of Huns and one of the greatest of the barbarian rulers, invades Italy
• June 8, 632
  Mohammed, the founder of Islam and unifier of Arabia, dies, and Abu Bakr, his father-in-law, becomes the first Caliph of Rashidun Caliphate, the term comprising the first four "Rightly Guided" caliphs in Islam's history
• June 8, 793
  Vikings, seafaring north Germanic people, raid the Northumbrian coast in England and sack the city of Lindisfarne, beginning the Viking Age of Scandinavian history
• June 8, 1675
  Three Wampanoag Indians are hanged in Plymouth, Massachusetts for the recent murder of John Sassamon, an advisor to Metacom, a Native American Christian convert, triggering King Philip's War
• June 8, 1783
  Laki Volcano in southern Iceland begins 18-month eruption, pumping more ash into the atmosphere than any previous volcano in recorded history and wiping out 75% of the crops, which led to a severe famine that killed some 10,000 people or 20% of the population
• June 8, 1815
  The Congress of Vienna ends with creation of German Confederation, a loose association of 39 German states in Central Europe
• June 8, 1861
  One the second referendum Tennessee vote to secede from the Union and join the Confederacy, becoming the last state to do so
• June 8, 1869
  Ives W McGaffey of Chicago patents first vacuum cleaner, working with a belt driven fan cranked by hand
• June 8, 1906
  Antiquities Act, an act giving the President of the United States the authority to restrict the use of particular public land owned by the federal government, is signed by Theodore Roosevelt
• June 8, 1948
  Texaco Star Theater, one of the first successful examples of American television broadcasting, hosted by an American comedian Milton Berle, starts
• June 8, 1949
  English novelist George Orwell publishes his dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, in which describes totalitarian practices
• June 8, 2009
  American car-maker General Motors files for bankruptcy, the third-largest in U.S. history and the largest ever in United States manufacturing, forcing the United States government provide US$30 billion of additional taxpayer funds to restructure