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King John puts his seal on Magna Carta

Born on This Day

Waylon Jennings

1937 - 2002

Country music star who spurned the Nashville establishment with his fellow 1970s "Outlaws" and produced hits like "Good Ol' Boys."

Thurgood Marshall

1908 - 1993

First African American Supreme Court Justice and civil rights lawyer who argued the landmark "Brown v. Board of Education" case.

Neil Patrick Harris

1973 -

Comedic actor known for his unconventional characters in "Doogie Howser, M.D.," "How I Met Your Mother" and "Gone Girl."

Waylon JenningsBeth Gwinn 1987

Thurgood MarshallBettmann Archive

Neil Patrick HarrisGetty Images

1667

JUN15

French physician Jean-Baptiste Denis performs the first blood transfusion on a feverish boy—using lamb's blood. The boy recovers, but two other patients die from the procedure, leading to centuries-long bans on transfusions.

Timeline

Also on This Day in History

Discover more of the major events, famous births, notable deaths and everything else history-making that happened on June 15th

Dante is named prior of Florence

Poet Dante Alighieri becomes one of six priors of Florence, active in governing the city. Dante’s political activities, which include the banishment of several rivals, lead to his own exile from Florence, his native city, after 1302. He will write his great work, The Divine Comedy, as a virtual wanderer, seeking protection for his family […]

Congress votes to have George Washington lead the Continental Army

On June 15, 1775, the Continental Congress votes to appoint George Washington, who would one day become the first American president, the commander of the colonies’ first official army. Four days later, he accepts the assignment and signs his commission. Washington had been managing his family’s plantation and serving in the Virginia House of Burgesses […]

Delaware declares independence

On June 15, 1776, the Assembly of the Lower Counties of Pennsylvania declares itself independent of British and Pennsylvanian authority, thereby creating the state of Delaware. Delaware did not exist as a colony under British rule. As of 1704, Pennsylvania had two colonial assemblies: one for the “Upper Counties,” originally Bucks, Chester and Philadelphia, and […]

U.S.-Canadian border established west of the Rocky Mountains

Representatives of Great Britain and the United States sign the Oregon Treaty, which settles a long-standing dispute with Britain over who controlled the Oregon territory. The treaty established the 49th parallel from the Rocky Mountains to the Strait of Georgia as the boundary between the United States and British Canada. The United States gained formal […]

President Lincoln calls for new militia from Mid-Atlantic states

On June 15, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issues a proclamation in which he calls for the mustering of new militia in the Mid-Atlantic states of Maryland, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio—in part to help protect Washington, D.C., America’s capital city. Throughout June, Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia was on the move. […]

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Battle of Petersburg begins

During the Civil War, Ulysses S. Grant’s Army of the Potomac and Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia collide for the last time as the first wave of Union troops attacks Petersburg, a vital Southern rail center 23 miles south of the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia. The two massive armies would not become […]

Riverboat fire leaves more than 1,000 dead

More than 1,000 people taking a pleasure trip on New York City’s East River are drowned or burned to death when a fire sweeps through the boat. This was one of the United States’ worst maritime disasters. The riverboat-style steamer General Slocum was built in 1890 and used mostly as a vehicle for taking large […]

Robert Falcon Scott’s Terra Nova expedition begins

Robert Falcon Scott’s ship, the Terra Nova, sets sail from Cardiff, Wales on June 15, 1910, bound for Antarctica. Though it will succeed in reaching its objective, the expedition will end in tragedy as Scott and his companions give up their lives in order to become the second party to reach the South Pole. Scott […]

U.S. Congress passes Espionage Act

On June 15, 1917, some two months after America’s formal entrance into World War I against Germany, the United States Congress passes the Espionage Act. Enforced largely by A. Mitchell Palmer, the United States attorney general under President Woodrow Wilson, the Espionage Act essentially made it a crime for any person to convey information intended […]

SS Colonel Paul Blobel launches effort to cover up Nazi atrocities

On June 15, 1943, Paul Blobel, an SS colonel, is given the assignment of coordinating the destruction of the evidence of the grossest of Nazi atrocities, the systematic extermination of European Jews. As the summer of 1943 approached, Allied forces had begun making cracks in Axis strongholds, in the Pacific and in the Mediterranean specifically. […]

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American bombers deluge Budapest—with leaflets

On June 15, 1944, American aircraft bomb German-occupied Budapest—with leaflets threatening “punishment” for those responsible for the deportation of Hungarian Jews to the gas chambers at Auschwitz. The U.S. government wanted the SS and Hitler to know it was watching, to deter further deportations. Admiral Miklas Horthy, regent and virtual dictator of Hungary, vehemently anticommunist […]

President Johnson decides against asking Congress for authority to wage war

At a meeting of the National Security Council, McGeorge Bundy, national security advisor to President Lyndon B. Johnson, informs those in attendance that President Johnson has decided to postpone submitting a resolution to Congress asking for authority to wage war. The situation in South Vietnam had rapidly deteriorated, and in March 1964, Secretary of Defense […]

“All the President’s Men” published, detailing the Watergate scandal

On June 15, 1974, Simon & Schuster releases All the President’s Men, the first definitive book about the Watergate scandal, authored by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the two Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporters from The Washington Post who broke the explosive story. Two months later, President Richard Nixon resigns from office in disgrace. In the […]

Police search Van der Sloot home in Holloway disappearance

On June 15, 2005, more than two weeks after American teen Natalee Holloway vanished while on a high school graduation trip to the Caribbean island of Aruba, police there search the home of 17-year-old Joran Van der Sloot, one of the last known people to see the young woman alive. Although Van der Sloot would […]

Nik Wallenda walks across Niagara Falls on tightrope

On June 15, 2012, 33-year-old aerialist Nik Wallenda becomes the first person to walk across high wire stretched over Niagara Falls, which lie on the border between New York state and Ontario, Canada. More than 100,000 people gather at the falls and 10 million viewers watch on television. Wallenda started around 10:15 p.m. from the […]

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