June 6

• June 6, 1002
  German king Henry II is crowned by Archbishop of Mainz at Mainz, the first time when a German king was crowned outside Aachen Cathedral since Emperor Otto I
• June 6, 1134
  Norbert of Xanten, founder of the Premonstratensian order, dies
• June 6, 1523
  Sweden gains independence from the Kalmar Union and a member of noble family Gustav Vasa is elected Gustavus I of Sweden
• June 6, 1674
  Shivaji, an aristocrat of the clan within the Maratha Kshatriya culture, crowns himself King of India, founding Maratha Empire in Indian subcontinent
• June 6, 1683
  The Ashmolean Museum, the world's first university museum, is opened in Oxford to house natural-history artifacts given to Oxford University by Elias Ashmole
• June 6, 1698
  Streltsy, the Russian regiments, remove their commanding officers and make their way to Moscow, beginning Streltsy Uprising against military service hardships and harassment
• June 6, 1719
  The first slaves, over five hundred black slaves coming from Africa, arrive in Louisiana on two French ships, the Du Maine and the Aurore arrive in Louisiana, starting expansion of slavery
• June 6, 1772
  Haitian explorer Jean Baptiste-Pointe DuSable settles Chicago
• June 6, 1809
  Sweden establish new constitution, which establishes a separation of powers between the King and the legislative branch, the Riksdag of the Estates
• June 6, 1844
  YMCA, the Young Men's Christian Association, is founded in London, England
• June 6, 1882
  An electric iron, weighed almost 7 kilograms, is patented by Henry W. Seely in New York City
• June 6, 1918
  Battle of Belleau Wood becomes the first United States victory of the First World War
• June 6, 1925
  Walter Percy Chrysler founds the Chrysler Corporation
• June 6, 1944
  About 155,000 Allied troops land 90 km of Normandy coastline in France during the D-Day, beginning the invasion of German-occupied western Europe
• June 6, 1946
  National Basketball Association, the premier men's professional basketball league in the world, is founded
• June 6, 1967
  Six-day war between Israel and Arab neighbors begins
• June 6, 1984
  Indian troops storm the Golden Temple at Amritsar, the Sikhs' holiest shrine, killing an estimated 2000 people
• June 6, 1993
  Mongolia holds its first direct presidential elections
• June 6, 2002
  An asteroid or comet estimated at 5-10 metres in diameter explodes over the Mediterranean Sea between Greece and Libya with an estimated force slightly more powerful than the Nagasaki atomic bomb
• June 6, 2013
  American Edward Snowden releases classified documents concerning mass surveillance by a U.S. government and flees the country, later being granted temporary asylum in Russia

June 5

• June 5, 1595
  Henry IV's army defeat the and forces of Spanish and the Catholic League at the Battle of Fontaine-Française
• June 5, 1806
  Batavian Republic becomes the Kingdom of Holland
• June 5, 1832
  In Paris an anti-monarchist insurrection takes place during General Lamarque's funeral when insurgents get as far as the Rue Montorgueil and are then driven back by national guard
• June 5, 1849
  Denmark peacefully becomes a constitutional monarchy when King Frederick VII accepts a new constitution agreeing to share power with a bicameral parliament called the Rigsdag
• June 5, 1941
  4,000 people are asphyxiated in a tunnel during bombing of Chinese city of Chongqing by Imperial Japanese Army Air Service
• June 5, 1945
  The European Advisory Committee announces the unconditional political capitulation of Germany, so control of the country is divided into four occupation zones, controlled by the United States, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union
• June 5, 1968
  US Senator Robert F. Kennedy is fatally shot and five others are wounded by assassins in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California
• June 5, 1972
  United Nations Conference on the Human Environment opens in Stockholm, Sweden
• June 5, 1981
  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that five homosexual men in Los Angeles, California have a rare form of pneumonia seen only in patients with weakened immune systems, the first reported case of AIDS
• June 5, 1982
  The first Rubik's Cube World Championships is held in Budapest, Hungary
• June 5, 1984
  The Indian government begins Operation Blue Star, the planned attack to flush out separatist militants from Harimandir Sahib, the most sacred shrine of Sikhism
• June 5, 1989
  The Tank Man halts the progress of a column of advancing tanks for over half an hour after the Chinese military had suppressed the Tiananmen Square protests
• June 5, 1989
  The Tank Man halts the progress of a column of advancing tanks for over half an hour after the Chinese military had suppressed the Tiananmen Square protests
• June 5, 1989
  The Tank Man halts the progress of a column of advancing tanks for over half an hour after the Chinese military had suppressed the Tiananmen Square protests
• June 5, 2007
  NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft makes its second fly-by of Venus en route to Mercury
• June 5, 2011
  Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh travels to Saudi Arabia for treatment of an injury sustained during an attack on the presidential palace by protesters, who celebrate his transfer of power to his Vice-President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi

April 12

• April 12, 1204
  Combined forces of Franks and Venetians led by Boniface of Montferrat occupy and plunder Christian city of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade instead of planned conquest of Muslim-controlled Jerusalem
• April 12, 1606
  England's King James I decreed the design of the original Union Flag, also referred to as the Union Jack, which combined the flags of England and Scotland
• April 12, 1770
  British Parliament repeal the Townsend Acts that put duties on certain products imported to the US
• April 12, 1782
  The British navy win its only naval engagement against the colonists in the American Revolution at the Battle of the Saintes in the West Indies off Dominica
• April 12, 1787
  Philadelphia's Free Africa Society, the first black mutual aid society in the city, is organized by free blacks Richard Allen and Absalom Jones
• April 12, 1798
  French government proclaims Helvetic Republic in occupied Old Swiss Confederacy
• April 12, 1861
  Shore batteries of Confederacy formed by seven Southern slave states, under General P. G. T. Beauregard open fire on US-held Fort Sumter in South Carolina's Charleston Bay, triggering American Civil War
• April 12, 1877
  British annex Transvaal, in South Africa, to resolving the border dispute between the Boers and the Zulus
• April 12, 1927
  Chiang Kai-shek, an influential member of the Kuomintang, the Chinese Nationalist Party, begins counter revolution against Communist Party in Shanghai, starting a full-scale purge of Communists in all areas
• April 12, 1927
  The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland officially becomes the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland with commencement of Royal and Parliamentary Titles Act
• April 12, 1940
  Italy annexes Albania
• April 12, 1945
  Vice President Harry S. Truman becomes President of the United States after the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt
• April 12, 1955
  Researchers announce results of year-long Jonas Salk's polio vaccine trials, that the vaccine is safe and effective
• April 12, 1961
  Yuri Gagarin, a Soviet cosmonaut, becomes the first person in space after his Vostok spacecraft completes an orbit of the Earth
• April 12, 1967
  Astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee die in the NASA Apollo 1 fire during rehearsal test
• April 12, 1980
  Samuel Doe takes over Liberia and President William R. Tolbert among 27 others are killed in a coup d'etat, ending over 130 years of democratic presidential succession in that country
• April 12, 1981
  First orbital flight of the Space Shuttle, a reusable Earth orbital spacecraft system, is completed by Space Shuttle Columbia
• April 12, 1982
  A 200-mile 'total exclusion zone' around the Falklands proclaimed by the United Kingdom comes into effect
• April 12, 1992
  The Euro Disney Resort, featuring the Euro Disneyland park with six hotels with 5200 rooms and five themed lands, opens in Marne-la-Vallee, France, east of Paris
• April 12, 2011
  Japan raises the nuclear damage level of the Fukushima reactor to INES Level 7, same category as Chernobyl in the Ukraine
• April 12, 2012
  Mutinous soldiers in Guinea-Bissau stage a coup d'etat and take control of the capital city, Bissau, and arrest interim President Raimundo Pereira and leading presidential candidate Carlos Gomes Junior in the midst of a presidential election campaign

March 29

• March 29, 1461
  Edward IV secures his claim to the English throne in defeating Henry VI's Lancastrians at the battle of Towton in which about 28,000 are killed
• March 29, 1638
  The first permanent white settlement is established in Delaware by Swedish Lutherans who build the first log cabins in America
• March 29, 1673
  The English Parliament pass the Test Act, which excludes Roman Catholics from public functions
• March 29, 1792
  King Gustav III King of Sweden, dies of wounds from assassination attempt, Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden succeeds
• March 29, 1849
  Britain formally annexes Punjab, the territories of modern-day eastern Pakistan and northern western India, after Duleep Singh, the last Maharaja of the Sikh Empire, signs away all claims to the rule of the Punjab
• March 29, 1873
  Puerto Rican government decrees the freedom of about 29,000 slaves and abolishes the slavery
• March 29, 1879
  Some 2,000 British and Colonial troops of the 90th Light Infantry Regiment under the command of Colonel Henry Evelyn Wood repulse a major attack by 20,000 Zulu tribesmen at Kambula, Zululand, which becomes the turning point of the Anglo-Zulu War
• March 29, 1912
  Captain Robert Scott, blizzard-bound in a tent 18 km from the South Pole, makes last entry in his diary "the end cannot be far"
• March 29, 1959
  Some Like It Hot, an American comedy film directed by Billy Wilder and starring Marilyn Monroe, is released
• March 29, 1961
  After a 4.5-year trial, Nelson Mandela is acquitted on treason charge
• March 29, 1973
  The last U.S. combat troops leave South Vietnam as Hanoi frees the remaining American prisoners of war held in North Vietnam
• March 29, 1974
  First close-up images of Mercury are taken by American robotic space probe Mariner 10
• March 29, 1976
  One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, a drama film based on the novel by Ken Kesey, wins all five major Academy Awards, and along with five Golden Globe Awards, becomes the first to do this
• March 29, 1989
  I. M. Pei's pyramidal entrance to the Louvre opens in Paris, France
• March 29, 2004
  The largest expansion of North Atlantic Treaty Organization to date takes place, allowing former Eastern Bloc countries Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia into the organization
• March 29, 2010
  Two female suicide bombers kill at least 41 people on Moscow metro trains, injuring 88 others, during the attack quickly blamed on the North Caucasus