June 26 – This Day in History – Today is the 178th day of 2024 in the Gregorian calendar. There are 188 days left in the year.
4 – Augustus adopts Tiberius.
221 – Roman emperor Elagabalus adopts his cousin Alexander Severus as his heir and receives the title of Caesar.
363 – Roman Emperor Julian was killed during the retreat from the Sassanid Empire. General Jovian was proclaimed Emperor by the troops on the battlefield.
684 – Pope Benedict II is the last pope to require confirmation by the Byzantine emperor before taking office.
699 – En no Ozuno, a Japanese mystic and apothecary who will later be regarded as the founder of a folk religion Shugendō, is banished to Izu Ōshima.
1243 – Mongols defeat the Seljuk Turks at the Battle of Köse Dağ.
1284 – The legendary Pied Piper led 130 children out of Hamelin.
1295 – Przemysł II crowned king of Poland, following Ducal period. The white eagle is added to the Polish coat of arms..
1409 – Western Schism: the Roman Catholic church was led into a double schism as Petros Philargos was crowned Pope Alexander V after the Council of Pisa, joining Pope Gregory XII in Rome and Pope Benedict XII in Avignon.
1483 – Richard III was crowned king of England.
1541 – Francisco Pizarro was assassinated in Lima by the son of his former companion and later antagonist, Diego Almagro the younger.
1699 – Marie Thérèse Rodet Geoffrin, French businesswoman, was born (d. 1777).
1718 – Tsarevich Alexei Petrovich of Russia, Peter the Great’s son, mysteriously died after being sentenced to death by his father for plotting against him.
1723 – After a siege and bombardment by cannon, Baku surrendered to the Russians.
1817 – Branwell Bronte, British painter, and poet, was born (d. 1848).
1848 – End of the June Days Uprising in Paris.
1857 – The first investiture of the Victoria Cross in Hyde Park.
1866 – George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon, English financier of Egyptian excavations, was born (d. 1923).
1870 – Christmas was declared a federal holiday in the United States.
1892 – Pearl S. Buck, American writer, Nobel laureate, was born (d. 1973).
1898 – Willy Messerschmitt, German aircraft designer, was born (d. 1978).
1908 – Salvador Allende, Former President of Chile (1970-1973), was born (d. 1973)
1909 – Colonel Tom Parker, Elvis Presley’s manager, was born (d. 1997)
1909 – The Science Museum in London became an independent entity.
1913 – Maurice Wilkes, the British computer scientist, was born.
1914 – Laurie Lee, British writer, was born (d. 1997).
1917 – The first U.S. troops arrived in France to fight alongside the allies in World War I.
1918 – The Australian steamer Wimmera was sunk by a mine laid the year before by the German raider Wolf north of Cape Maria van Diemen.
1918 – World War I, Western Front: Battle for Belleau Wood – Allied Forces under John J. Pershing and James Harbord defeated Imperial German Forces under Wilhelm, German Crown Prince.
1921 – Violette Szabo, French WWII secret agent, was born (d. 1945).
1924 – American occupying forces left the Dominican Republic.
1927 – The Cyclone roller coaster opened on Coney Island.
1929 – June Bronhill, Australian soprano, and actress, was born (d. 2005).
1934 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Federal Credit Union Act, which establishes credit unions.
1936 – Initial flight of the Focke-Wulf Fw 61, the first practical helicopter. The twin-rotor Focke-Wulf Fw 61 was first tested in Bremen, Germany. None of the first prototypes survived World War II but a replica can be seen at the Hubschraubermuseum in Bückeburg, Germany.
1940 – Billy Davis, Jr., American singer (The 5th Dimension), was born.
1940 – World War II: under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the Soviet Union presented an ultimatum to Romania requiring it to cede Bessarabia and the northern part of Bukovina.
1942 – The first flight of the Grumman F6F Hellcat.
1943 – Georgie Fame, British singer, was born.
1945 – The United Nations Charter was signed in San Francisco.
1948 – William Shockley filed the original patent for the grown junction transistor, the first bipolar junction transistor.
1948 – Shirley Jackson‘s short story The Lottery was published in The New Yorker magazine.
1952 – The Pan-Malayan Labour Party was founded, as a union of statewise labor parties.
1959 – The Saint Lawrence Seaway opened, opening North America’s Great Lakes to ocean-going ships.
1960 – The former British Protectorate of British Somaliland gains its independence as Somaliland.
British Somaliland, officially known as the Somaliland Protectorate, was a protectorate of the United Kingdom in what is now the Republic of Somaliland. On June 26, 1960, it became independent from the UK as the State of Somaliland.
Somaliland, with internationally defined borders, received recognition as a de jure state from 35 nations, including China, Egypt, Ethiopia, France, Ghana, Israel, Libya, and the Soviet Union. On June 27, 1960, the Somaliland Legislative Assembly passed a bill to formalize a union with the United Nations Trust Territory of Italian Somaliland, starting on July 1, 1960; however, the union was never ratified.
After enduring 31 years of annexation, characterized by persecution and genocide, Somaliland regained its sovereignty on May 18, 1991, reestablishing its original borders at independence. Despite showing resilience and a dedication to democratic principles, including holding free and fair elections for more than three decades, international re-recognition remains elusive.
June 26th marks Somaliland’s Independence Day, a public holiday that commemorates the proclamation of independence of the short-lived independent State of Somaliland on June 26, 1960.
1960 – Madagascar gained its independence from France.
1963 – John F. Kennedy spoke the famous words “Ich bin ein Berliner” on a visit to West Berlin. The speech was a welcome gesture of support for the people of West Berlin. East Germany had erected the Berlin Wall just two years earlier to stop mass emigration to the West.
1973 – At Plesetsk Cosmodrome 9 people were killed in an explosion of a Cosmos 3-M rocket.
1974– The Universal Product Code was scanned for the first time to sell a package of Wrigley’s chewing gum at the Marsh Supermarket in Troy, Ohio.
1975– Indira Gandhi established an emergency rule in India.
1975 – Two FBI agents and a member of the American Indian Movement were killed in a shootout on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.
1976 – The CN Tower, the world’s tallest free-standing structure on land, was opened to general public.
1977 – The Yorkshire Ripper killed 16-year-old shop assistant Jayne MacDonald in Leeds, changing public perception of the killer as she is the first victim who was not a prostitute.
1978 – Air Canada Flight 189 to Toronto overran the runway and crashed into the Etobicoke Creek ravine. Two of 107 passengers on board died.
1987 – A.J. Hackett bungy jumped from Eiffel Tower.
1991– Ten-Day War: the Yugoslav people’s army began the Ten-Day War in Slovenia.
1993 – The United States launched a missile attack targeting Baghdad intelligence headquarters in retaliation for a thwarted assassination attempt against former President George H.W. Bush in April in Kuwait.
1994– Microsoft no longer supported MS-DOS and the development ofFreeDOS began.
1995– Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani deposed his father Khalifa bin Hamad al-Thani, as the Emir of Qatar, in a bloodless coup.
1996– Irish Journalist Veronica Guerin was shot in her car while in traffic in the outskirts of Dublin.
1997 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Communications Decency Act violated the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
2003– The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Lawrence v. Texas that gender-based sodomy laws were unconstitutional.
2008 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in District of Columbia v. Heller that the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution protected an individual right, and that the District of Columbia handgun ban was unconstitutional.
2012 – The Waldo Canyon Fire descended into the Mountain Shadows neighborhood in Colorado Springs burning 347 homes in a matter of hours and killing two people.
2013 – Riots in China’s Xinjiang region killed at least 36 people and injuring 21 others.
2013 – Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani became Prime Minister of Qatar.
2015 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges declared that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marriage under the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution.
