THIS DAY IN HISTORY ― JUNE 18

June 18 is the 169th day of the year (170th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 196 days remaining until the end of the year. 

FATHER'S DAY 

860 ― The Rus' Vikings lay siege on Constantinople.

1155 ― Pope Adrian IV crowns Frederick I Barbarossa Roman-German Emperor.


1541 ― The Irish parliament selects Henry VIII as King of Ireland.


1629 ― The naval battle at Dungeness: Piet Heyn defeats the Dunkirkers, commerce raiders in the service of the Spanish Monarchy.

1778 ― British troops abandon Philadelphia during the Philadelphia Campaign in the American Revolutionary War.

1812 ― The War of 1812 begins as the fledgling United States declares war against Britain. The war resolved many issues which remained from the American Revolutionary War but involved no boundary changes. The United States declared war for several reasons, including trade restrictions brought about by the British war with France, the impressment of American merchant sailors into the Royal Navy, British support of Indian tribes against American expansion, outrage over insults to national honor after humiliations on the high seas, and possible American interest in annexing British territory in modern-day Canada.

1815 ― The Battle of Waterloo is begins. Napoleon and France defeated by British forces under Wellington and Prussian troops under Blucher.

1873 ―  American social reformer and feminist, Susan Brownell Anthony, was fined $100 for voting for President in the previous election (November 5, 1872).

1898 ― The first amusement pier (the Steel Pier) opens in Atlantic City, NJ.

1903 ― Horatio Nelson Jackson begins the first transcontinental auto trip begins in San Francisco; arrives in New York City 3 months later.

1912 ― The Chicago National Republican Convention splits between President Taft and Theodore Roosevelt; after Taft is nominated, Roosevelt and progressive elements of the Party form the Progressive Party (also known as the 'Bull Moose Party').


1940 ― Winston Churchill's "this was their finest hour" speech urging perseverance during Battle of Britain delivered to British House of Commons. Peroration: "But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new dark age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'"


1945 ― William Brooke Joyce (Lord Haw-Haw) charged with treason. He was an American-born Irish-British Fascist politician and Nazi propaganda broadcaster to the United Kingdom during World War II.

1948 ― The U.S. National Security Council authorizes covert operations for the first time.


1948 ― The UN Commission on Human Rights adopts Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Eleanor Roosevelt was a significant contributor to the document's wording.

1951 ― In South Africa, the Suppression of Communism Act commences. The Act defined communism as any scheme that aimed "at bringing about any political, industrial, social, or economic change within the Union by the promotion of disturbance or disorder" or that encouraged "feelings of hostility between the European and the non-European races of the Union the consequences of which are calculated to further..." disorder. The government could deem any person to be a communist if it found that person's aims to be aligned with the presumed aims of communism.


1959 ― Governor of Louisiana Earl Kemp Long is committed to a state mental hospital; he responds by having the hospital's director fired and replaced with a crony who proceeds to proclaim him perfectly sane.

1969 ― A report published by the International Commission of Jurists on the British government's policy in Northern Ireland is critical of both the British government and the Northern Ireland government.

1972 ― A British European Airliners Trident airliner crashes after takeoff from Heathrow killing 118.

1977 ― Space Shuttle test model "Enterprise" carries a crew aloft for the first time. It was fixed to a modified Boeing 747.

1979 ― U.S. President Jimmy Carter and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev sign SALT II treaty limiting nuclear weapons. How could anyone respect a president named "Jimmy"?


1981 ― Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart retires. He is replaced by Ronald Reagan nominee, Sandra Day O'Connor, who becomes the first woman on US Supreme Court.

1981 ― The AIDS non-epidemic is formally recognized by medical professionals in San Francisco, California.

1982 ― The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is extended by the United States Senate by an 85-8 vote.


1996 ― Theodore John "Ted" Kaczynski, suspected of being the "Unabomber," is indicted on ten criminal counts.

2013 ― Russia passes a law banning foreign same-sex couples from adopting children.

BORN TODAY

1466 – Ottaviano Petrucci, Italian printer (d. 1539)

1799 – William Lassell, English astronomer and merchant (d. 1880)

1854 – E. W. Scripps, American publisher, founded the E. W. Scripps Company (d. 1926)

1886 – George Mallory, English lieutenant and mountaineer (d. 1924 on Mt.Everest)

1913 – Sylvia Porter, American economist and journalist (d. 1991)

1926 – Tom Wicker, American journalist and author (d. 2011)

1942 – Paul McCartney, English singer-songwriter and guitarist

From Wikipedia and Google (images), ex as noted.