15th June is the 166th day of the year (167th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. 199 days remain until the end of the year. Today also marks Global Wind Day. Find out some important events that occurred on this day, 15th June, in history.
Historical events
763 BC — Assyrians record a solar eclipse that will be used to fix the chronology of Mesopotamian history.
1215 — King John signs Magna Carta, written in iron gall ink on parchment in medieval Latin, at Runnymede, near Windsor, England.
1219 — Dannebrog is the flag of Denmark and the oldest national flag in the world. According to legend, it fell from the sky during the Battle of Lyndanisse (now Tallinn) in Estonia and turned the Danes’ luck.
1643 — Able Tasman returns to Batavia after discovering Tasmania.
1667 — French physician Dr Jean-Baptiste Denys performs the first fully documented human blood transfusion by transfusing a small amount of sheep blood into a 15-year old boy. He survives the procedure.
1762 — Austria uses the first paper currency.
1785 — Two French balloonists die in the world’s first fatal aviation accident.
1844 — Charles Goodyear patents the vulcanisation of rubber.
1851 — Jacob Fussell, Baltimore dairyman, sets up the first ice-cream factory.
1867 — Atlantic Cable Quartz Lode gold mine located in Montana.
1869 — World’s first plastic Celluloid patented by John Wesley Hyatt in Albany, NY.
1876 — Tsunamis after earthquake floods NE coast of Japan, kills 28,000.
1877 — Henry Ossian Flipper becomes the first African American to graduate from West Point Military Academy.
1878 — World’s first moving pictures caught on camera. It uses 12 cameras, each taking one picture, to see if all four of a horse’s hooves leave the ground.
15th June in the 20th Century
1907 — Researcher George Soper publishes the results of his investigation into recent typhoid outbreaks in the New York area. He announces that Mary Mallon [Typhoid Mary] is the likely source of the outbreak.
1908 — World Congress for Women’s rights opens in Amsterdam.
1916 — Boeing Model 1 [B and W Seaplane], the first Boeing product, flies for the first time.
1919 — The first nonstop Atlantic flight (Alcock and Brown) lands in Ireland.
1920 — African American circus workers, Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson and Isaac McGhie are taken from jail and lynched by a white mob of thousands in Duluth, Minnesota.
1921 — Bessie Coleman reaches France as US first black pilot.
1924 — Ford Motor Company manufactures its 10 millionth automobile.
1924 — J. Edgar Hoover assumes leadership of the FBI.
1940 — World War II: France surrenders to Nazi Germany, German troops occupy Paris.
1940 — Soviet Army occupies Lithuania.
1943 — Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) forms.
1950 — Dutch police seize condoms.
1962 — South Africa passes a bill setting death penalty for many crimes.
1963 — “Sound of Music” closes at Lunt Fontanne Theater NYC after 1443 performances.
1963 — Buddy Nobles runs world record marathon (2:14:28).
1965 — Singer-Songwriter Bob Dylan records the single “Like a Rolling Stone” (#1 in Rolling Stone magazine’s “500 Greatest Songs of All Time”).
1965 — South Africa begins an economic boycott of Dutch products.
More 15th May dates
1967 — Governor Reagan signs liberalized California abortion bill.
1967 — “The Dirty Dozen”, based on E. M. Nathanson’s novel, directed by Robert Aldrich and starring Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine and Charles Bronson releases in the US.
1977 — Spain’s first free elections since 1936 (41 years).
1979 — The first space shuttle SRB qualification test firing; 122 seconds.
1983 — Supreme Court struck down state and local restrictions on abortion.
1983 — “Black Adder” TV comedy premieres starring Rowan Atkinson and Tony Robinson and written by Richard Curtis and Rowan Atkinson on BBC1.
1984 — American boxer Thomas Hearns retains WBC light middleweight title with two round KO of Roberto Durán of Panama at Caesar’s Palace, Las Vegas. This marks the first time in his illustrious career Durán knocked out.
1985 — En route to Halley’s Comet, USSR’s Vega 2 drops a lander on Venus.
1985 — Rembrandt’s painting Danaë attacked by a man later judged to be insane. He throws sulfuric acid on the canvas and cuts it twice with his knife.
1991 — Climactic eruption of the Mount Pinatubo volcano in the Philippines, the second-largest volcanic eruption on Earth of the 20th century.
1992 — Ghana Airways inaugurates flights to JFK Airport (NYC).
1992 — Dan Quayle, relying on a faulty card, erroneously instructs Trenton NJ, elementary student to spell “potato,” “potatoe” during a spelling bee.
1994 — Disney’s animated musical film “The Lion King” opens in theatres with $42 million.
1997 — British supermodel Naomi Campbell hospitalised due to a drug overdose.
15th June in the 21st Century
2001 — ExxonMobil and Qatar Petroleum sign a letter of intent for natural gas to liquids (GTL) project that would be the largest in the world.
2002 — Near earth asteroid 2002 MN missed the Earth by 75,000 miles (120,000 km), about one-third of the distance between the Earth and the Moon.
2005 — “Batman Begins”, directed by Christopher Nolan, starring Christian Bale, Michael Caine and Katie Holmes, goes on wide release.
2012 — Apple I computer sells for a record $374,500.
2015 — Remains of a 2,000-year-old woman dubbed “the sleeping beauty” announced discovered in Northern Ethiopia from the ancient kingdom of Aksum.
2015 — 800 year anniversary of “the birthplace of modern democracy”, the signing of the Magna Carta by King John at Runnymede, England.
2017 — Scotland Yard launches a criminal inquiry and British Prime Minister Theresa May announces a public inquiry a day after the Grenfell Tower fire.
2017 — New record set for the price of a parking lot in Hong Kong – $664,000.
2018 — Physicist Stephen Hawking’s ashes are interred in Westminster Abbey, London, between the remains of Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin.
2018 — Glasgow School of Art, designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh burns down four years after a previous fire.