THIS DAY IN HISTORY ― JUNE 26

June 26 is the 177th day of the year(178th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 188 days remaining until the end of the year.   

NATIONAL CHOCOLATE PUDDING DAY 

4 – Augustus adopts Tiberius.  Born Tiberius Claudius Nero, a Claudian, Tiberius was the son of Tiberius Claudius Nero and Livia Drusilla. His mother divorced Nero and married Octavian, later known as Augustus, in 39 BC, making him a step-son of Octavian. Tiberius would later marry Augustus' daughter (from his marriage to Scribonia), Julia the Elder, and even later be adopted by Augustus, by which act he officially became a Julian, bearing the name Tiberius Julius Caesar. The subsequent emperors after Tiberius would continue this blended dynasty of both families for the following thirty years; historians have named it the Julio-Claudian dynasty. In relations to the other emperors of this dynasty, Tiberius was the stepson of Augustus, grand-uncle of Caligula, paternal uncle of Claudius, and great-grand uncle of Nero.

363 ― Roman Emperor Julian (Flavius Claudius Iulianus Augustus) is killed during the retreat from the Sassanid Empire. General Jovian is proclaimed Emperor by the troops on the battlefield. 

1284 ― The Pied Piper lures 130 children of Hamelin, Germany away (actually happened).


1483 ― The Duke of Gloucester appoints himself King Richard III of England.


1541 ― Spanish explorer and conquistador, Francisco Pizarro, the governor of Peru and conqueror of the Inca civilization, is assassinated in Lima by Spanish rivals.

1718 ― Tsarevich Alexei Petrovich of Russia, Peter the Great's son, mysteriously dies after being sentenced to death by his father for plotting against him.


1857 ― The first 62 recipients are awarded the Victoria Cross for valor in the Crimean war by England's Queen Victoria.

1862 ― Day 2 of the seven- day Battle of Mechanicsville, VA (Meadow Bridge).

1870 ― Christmas is declared a federal holiday in the United States by Congress.


1894 ― German, Karl Benz, receives U.S. patent for gasoline-driven auto.

1909 ― The (Queen) Victoria and Albert Museum opens in London, the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design with 4.5 million objects.

1914 ― The Indian Relief Act, passes after a protracted period of Passive Resistance led by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi; it abolishes a £3 tax imposed on Indians who had not renewed their indentures and recognizes "the validity of Indian customary marriages".


1917 ― The 1st U.S. Expeditionary Force arrive in France during WW I. 


1927 ― Comet 7P/Pons-Winnecke approaches within 0.0394 AUs (3.2648 million miles) of Earth.

1934 ― FDR signs the Federal Credit Union Act, establishing Credit Unions.

1940 ― The end of the USSR's experimental calendar; the Gregorian calendar is re-adopted on June 27th.

1941 ― Lithuanian fascists massacre 2,300 Jews in Kovno.

1945 ― United Nations Charter is signed by 50 nations in San Francisco.


1948 ― U.S. and British pilots begin delivering food and supplies by airplane to Berlin (the Berlin Airlift) after the city is isolated by a Soviet Union blockade.

1956 ― The U.S. Congress approves the Federal Highway Act, which allocates more than $30 billion for the construction of some 41,000 miles of interstate highways; it will be the largest public construction project in U.S. history to that date.

1959 ― Queen Elizabeth II and President Dwight D. Eisenhower open the St. Lawrence Seaway.

1968 ― The United States returns Iwo Jima and Bonin Islands to Japan. 

1973 ― At the Plesetsk Cosmodrome (USSR) 9 people are killed in an explosion of a Cosmos 3-M rocket. (Video) ― From ABC News)

1974 ― The Universal Product Code is scanned for the first time to sell a package of Wrigley's chewing gum at the Marsh Supermarket in Troy, Ohio.

1978 ― First dedicated oceanographic satellite, SEASAT 1, launched.


1984 ― The first flight of Shuttle Discovery (41-D) is scrubbed at T minus 4. A "countdown" is actually a count-up with negative time being prior to launch (-4, -3, -2, -1, 0).

1990 ― 122°F in Phoenix, Arizona. I flew through Phoenix that day. All planes were required to take off on the 747 runway due to ultra-dry air (lift problems). Stepped outside the airport to see what 122F felt like. Hot is hot.

1997 ― The U.S. Supreme Court rules that the Communications Decency Act violates the First Amendment.


1997 ― Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is published, the first installment of the best selling series by J. K. Rowling.

BORN TODAY

1730 – Charles Messier, French astronomer and academic (d. 1817)

1819 – Abner Doubleday, American general, credited with the invention of the game of baseball (d. 1893)

1878 – Leopold Löwenheim, German mathematician and logician (d. 1957)

1898 – Willy Messerschmitt, German engineer and businessman, airplane designer (d. 1978)

1913 – Maurice Wilkes, English computer scientist and physicist (d. 2010)

1936 – Edith Pearlman, American short story writer

1949 – Mary Styles Harris, American biologist and geneticist

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