THIS DAY IN HISTORY ― JUNE 22

June 22 is the 173rd day of the year (174th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 192 days remaining until the end of the year. 

NATIONAL ONION RING DAY 

168 BC ― The Battle of Pydna is fourght: Romans under Lucius Aemilius Paullus defeat and capture Macedonian King Perseus, ending the Third Macedonian War.

1633 ― Italian astronomer, Galileo Galilei, is forced to recant Earth orbits Sun by Pope. On Oct 31, 1992, the Vatican admits it was wrong.

1675 ― The Royal Observatory is established at Greenwich, England by King Charles II.

1611 ― Henry Hudson is set adrift in Hudson Bay by mutineers on his ship Discovery and never seen again. -- Live Science

1807 ― British board the USS Chesapeake, one of the provocations leading to War of 1812.

1815 ― The second abdication of Napoleon (after his defeat Waterloo, Belgium).

1848 ― The Barnburners (anti-slavery) party nominates Martin Van Buren for President.

1864 ― Union forces attempt to capture a railroad that had been supplying Petersburg, Virginia, from the south, and extend their lines to the Appomattox River.

1870 ― US Congress creates the Department of Justice. The U.S. Attorney General was initially a one-person, part-time job. It was established by the Judiciary Act of 1789, but this grew with the bureaucracy. At one time the Attorney General gave legal advice to the U.S. Congress as well as the President, but this Congressional advice-giving had stopped by 1819 on account of the workload involved.

1900 ― In China, practically the whole foreign community in Peking, including many Chinese Christians, retreat to British compounds during the Boxer Rebellion.

1934 ― John Herbert Dillinger is informally named America's first Public Enemy Number One.


1940 ― France falls to Nazi Germany; an armistice is signed forcing France to disarm. 


1941 ― Operation Barbarossa begins: Nazi Germany invades the Soviet Union during WWII.

1943 ― American sociologist, historian, civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, author and editor, William Edward Burghardt "W.E.B." Du Bois, becomes the first black member of National Institute of Letters.

1944 ― U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt signs the GI Bill (Servicemen's Readjustment Act).


1945 ― During World War II, the U.S. 10th Army overcomes the last major pockets of Japanese resistance on Okinawa Island, ending one of the bloodiest battles of World War II.

1970 ― President Richard Milhous Nixon signs the 26th amendment (voting age lowered to 18).

1975 ― The Ulster Volunteer Force try to derail a train by planting a bomb on the railway line near County Kildare, Ireland; a civilian tries to stop the UVF volunteers, and is stabbed-to-death (his actions delay the explosion enough to let the train pass safely).

1978 ― James W. Christy's discovery of Pluto's moon Charon announced.

1992 ― The U.S. Supreme Court rules "hate crime" laws violated free-speech rights.

2009 ― Washington Metro subway crash: Two Metro trains collide in Washington, D.C., USA, killing 9 and injuring over 80.

BORN TODAY

1510 – Alessandro de' Medici, Duke of Florence (d. 1537)

1844 – Oscar von Gebhardt, German theologian and academic (d. 1906)

1899 – Richard Gurley Drew, American engineer, invented Masking tape (d. 1980)

1903 – John Dillinger, American criminal (d. 1934)

1906 – Billy Wilder, Austrian-born American director, producer, and screenwriter (d. 2002)

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