American bombers deluge Budapest—with leaflets

Following a revolt by the English nobility against his rule, King John puts his royal seal on Magna Carta, or “the Great Charter.” The document is seen as a cornerstone in the development of democratic England and influenced the U.S. Constitution.

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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. […]

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 […]

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 […]