Tag: june

Here are 30 newsworthy and notable historical anniversaries in June 2025 (listed six months in advance so you have time to write about them)

Historical anniversaries are great for ‘On This Day in History’ features, articles, biographies and other anniversary tie-ins. They’re popular with newspaper and magazine readers and radio stations, and editors, producers and presenters love them. They’re easy to research too. You can also turn them into movies, documentaries, novels, use them to plan events and exhibitions, and much more.
(Find out more at the end of this article.)

We’ve randomly selected an anniversary for each day of the month from The Date-A-Base Book 2025, which lists more than 3,600 anniversaries. The Date-A-Base Book 2026, 2027, 2028 and 2029 are also available. The 2030 edition will be published in April 2025.

1 Jun 1935 – 90 years ago
Driving tests became compulsory for all new drivers in Britain. Anyone who had started driving on or after 1^st April 1934 had to pass the test.

2 Jun 1985 – 40 years ago
UEFA banned all English football clubs from playing in European competitions following the Heysel Stadium disaster of 28^th May. On 6^th June FIFA extended the ban to cover all worldwide competitions except friendly matches. It did not apply to the England national team. The ban was lifted after five years.

3 Jun 1875 – 150 years ago
Death of Georges Bizet, French Romantic composer. Best known for his opera Carmen. (Heart attack, aged 36.)

4 Jun 1975 – 50 years ago
The California Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975 was signed into law. California became the first U.S. state to give farm-workers collective bargaining rights.

5 Jun 1965 – 60 years ago
The rock song (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction by the Rolling Stones was released in the USA. (UK: 20^th August.)

6 Jun 1925 – 100 years ago
The Chrysler Corporation was founded in the USA.

7 Jun 1825 – 200 years ago
Birth of R. D. Blackmore, British novelist. Best known for Lorna Doone.

8 Jun 1625 – 400 years ago
Birth of Giovanni Domenico Cassini, Italian-born French astronomer, astrologer and engineer. He discovered four of Saturn’s moons, and the divisions in Saturn’s rings. The Cassini Division in the rings was named in his honour, as was the US-European-Italian space mission Cassini-Huygens, which reached Saturn in 2004.

9 Jun 1975 – 50 years ago
The first live radio broadcast of proceedings from Britain’s House of Commons.

10 Jun 1925 – 100 years ago
The United Church of Canada was established.

11 Jun 1935 – 90 years ago
American inventor Edwin Armstrong gave the first public demonstration of FM radio, in Alpine, New Jersey.

12 Jun 1775 – 250 years ago
American Revolution: British general Thomas Gage declared an amnesty and pardon to all colonists who laid down their arms and demonstrated their loyalty to the British Crown (except for Samuel Adams and John Hancock, who would be executed if they were captured). His amnesty had the opposite effect of that intended, as it fired up the colonists with rage and determination. He was recalled to Britain in September.

13 Jun 1525 – 500 years ago
German Protestant Reformer Martin Luther married Katharina von Bora, a nun whom he had helped to escape from a convent. He had previously sworn to remain single – mainly because he thought he could be killed at any moment. As a result of his marriage, members of the Protestant clergy were also allowed to marry.

14 Jun 1775 – 250 years ago
American Revolutionary War: the Second Continental Congress established the Continental Army. It later became the United States Army. On 15^th June, George Washington, who would become the first President of the USA, became the Army’s Commander-in-Chief.

15 Jun 1925 – 100 years ago
Birth of Richard Baker, British broadcaster. Best known as a BBC newsreader – he was the first person to read the BBC Television News in 1954 (which was only in voice-over at that time). He also presented radio and TV programmes on classical music, as well as several other radio shows, and he narrated the animated children’s TV series Mary, Mungo and Midge. (Died 2018.)

16 Jun 1925 – 100 years ago
Artek, the Soviet Union’s best-known Young Pioneer camp, was established in Crimea, Ukraine. It is now an international children’s centre.

17 Jun 1950 – 75 years ago
The first human kidney transplant was performed by Dr. Richard H. Lawler at the Little Company of Mary Hospital, Evergreen Park, Chicago, Illinois, USA.

18 Jun 1975 – 50 years ago
The first North Sea oil was pumped ashore in Britain.

19 Jun 1875 to 1878 – 150 years ago
The Herzegovinian uprising against the Ottoman Empire.
The uprising led to the Serbian–Ottoman War and the Montenegrin–Ottoman War, which led to the Russo–Turkish War and the Great Eastern Crisis.

20 Jun 1950 – 75 years ago
The Standards Eastern Automatic Computer (SEAC) went into service in Washington D.C. It was the first fully operational stored-program electronic computer in the USA, and the first all-diode computer.

21 Jun 1965 – 60 years ago
The Byrds’ debut album Mr. Tambourine Man was released. It helped popularise the folk-rock music genre.

22 Jun 1945 to 1947 – 80 years ago
World War II: Operation Paperclip. The USA recruited 1,600 – 1,800 German scientists, engineers and technicians, plus 3,700 family members, and took them to the USA. They would work on government projects that would give the USA an advantage over the Soviet Union in fields such as space exploration. The first recruits left Germany for the USA on this day.

23 Jun 1775 – 250 years ago
The first Thames Regatta was held in London, England.

24 Jun 1950 – 75 years ago
Apartheid: South Africa passed the Group Areas Act. It established separate residential and business sections in urban areas for the different racial groups, and prohibited non-whites from living in the most-developed areas. (Effective from 30th March 1951.)

25 Jun 1925 – 100 years ago
The Vitaphone Company was founded by Warner Brothers and Western Electric to develop sound-on-disc technology for cinemas. The first Vitaphone film was Don Juan, which was released on 5^th August 1926. It had a musical score and sound effects, but no dialogue.

26 Jun 1945 – 80 years ago
The United Nations Charter was signed in San Francisco, California, USA by representatives from fifty countries. The United Nations was established on 24^th October.

27 Jun 1775 to Oct 1776 – 250 years ago
American Revolutionary War: the Invasion of Quebec (now in Canada). The newly formed Continental Army attempted to take control of the British Province of Quebec, but were unable to overcome the British. This may have been the first use of biological warfare: the British sent smallpox-infected prostitutes and civilians to the American front lines. At least 5,000 Americans were infected and many died.

28 Jun 1950 – 75 years ago
Korean War – the Bodo League massacre. The President of South Korea, Syngman Rhee, ordered the execution of communist members of the Bodo League and the South Korean Workers Party. Between 60,000 and 200,000 people were killed.

29 Jun 1925 – 100 years ago
Canada House opened in London, England.

30 Jun 1945 – 80 years ago
The first description of the logical design for an electronic, digital, stored-program computer was published by Hungarian-American physicist John von Neumann. His document, The First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC, described what is now known as the von Neumann architecture.

More anniversaries:

You’ll find hundreds more anniversaries for this month in The Date-A-Base Book 2025.

The 2026, 2027, 2028 and 2029 editions are also available if you work further ahead.

Each edition is available as a PDF ebook (with a free Excel spreadsheet) or as a printed paperback book.

How to use the anniversaries:

How can you turn the anniversaries listed here and in The Date-A-Base Books into articles for magazines, newspapers and websites? How do you get paid for writing them, and how can you make a great living from it?

Download our free guide Ditch Your Day Job. It tells you everything you need to know!

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Here are 30 newsworthy and notable historical anniversaries in June 2024 (listed six months in advance so you have time to write about them)

Historical anniversaries are great for ‘On This Day in History’ features, articles, biographies and other anniversary tie-ins. They’re popular with newspaper and magazine readers and radio stations, and editors, producers and presenters love them. They’re easy to research too. You can also turn them into movies, documentaries, novels, use them to plan events and exhibitions, and much more. (Find out more at the end of this article.)

We’ve randomly picked one anniversary for each day of the month from The Date-A-Base Book 2024, which lists more than 3,000 anniversaries (an average of eight newsworthy anniversaries for every day of the year).

1 Jun 1974 – 50 years ago
The Heimlich manoeuvre (a procedure for rescuing choking victims using abdominal thrusts) was first published in the journal Emergency Medicine.

2 Jun 1924 – 100 years ago
The Indian Citizenship Act came into effect in the USA. It granted full U.S. citizenship to all Native Americans born in the USA.

3 Jun 1949 – 75 years ago
The first episode of the police drama series Dragnet was broadcast on NBC radio in the USA. It ran until 1957. A TV version ran from 1967 to 1970.

4 Jun 1944 – 80 years ago
World War II: the liberation of Rome, Italy.

5 Jun 1964 – 60 years ago
The first manned deep-ocean research submersible DSV Alvin went into service with the U.S. Navy.

6 Jun 1944 – 80 years ago
World War II – D-Day: the Normandy landings.
Over 150,000 Allied troops landed on the beaches of Normandy, France at the start of the Battle of Normandy.
(The battle ended on 25^th August. Allied victory.)

7 Jun 1984 – 40 years ago
The U.S. première of the supernatural comedy film Ghostbusters. (Released 8^th June. UK 7^th December.)

8 Jun 1949 – 75 years ago
George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four was published.

9 Jun 1934 – 90 years ago
Walt Disney’s character Donald Duck made his first appearance, in the Silly Symphonies cartoon The Wise Little Hen.

10 Jun 1924 – 100 years ago
The first political convention to be broadcast on the radio: the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, USA was broadcast on NBC.

11 Jun 1959 – 65 years ago
British engineer Christopher Cockerell unveiled the first full-size practical hovercraft SRN-1 and gave a public demonstration.
It could carry four people over land or water at up to 28 mph.
On 25^th July it successfully crossed the English Channel from Calais to Dover.

12 Jun 1964 – 60 years ago
The Rivonia trial, Pretoria, South Africa.
Nelson Mandela (the future President of South Africa) and seven other leaders of the African National Congress (ANC) were sentenced to life imprisonment for acts of sabotage aimed at ending apartheid.
(Mandela was released in 1990. He became President in 1994.)

13 Jun 1774 – 250 years ago
Rhode Island becomes the first North American colony to ban the importation of slaves.
Current slaves, and their children, remained slaves.
In 1784 Rhode Island passed the Gradual Emancipation Act, which ruled that children born to slaves would not remain slaves.

14 Jun 1949 – 75 years ago
Albert II became the first monkey in space. The USA launched the rhesus monkey on a V-2 rocket to an altitude of 83 miles (134 km). His craft impacted the ground because of a parachute failure and he was killed.

15 Jun to 9 Jul 1944 – 80 years ago
World War II – the Pacific Campaign – the Battle of Saipan (Mariana Islands).
This battle has been called the ‘Pacific D-Day’.
U.S. victory leading to the resignation of Japanese Prime Minister Hideki Tōjō (on 22^nd July). It also gave the USA a strategic air base in range of the Japanese archipelago.

16 Jun 1624 – 400 years ago
The Virginia Company’s charter was revoked, and Virginia became a Royal Colony.

17 Jun 1994 – 30 years ago
American actor and former football player O. J. Simpson was arrested for murdering his ex-wife and her friend after a low-speed 60-mile pursuit by police.

18 Jun 1959 – 65 years ago
Civil rights: a federal court reversed Arkansas’s law that allowed schools to close to prevent integration. This ended the ‘lost year’ in Little Rock, where all public schools closed from September 1958 to August 1959.

19 Jun 1949 – 75 years ago
The first NASCAR race was held, at Charlotte Fairgrounds Speedway in North Carolina, USA. The winner was Jim Roper.

20 Jun 1944 – 80 years ago
The first man-made object to reach space. Germany launched a V-2 rocket (MW 18014) on a test flight from Peenemünde. It reached an altitude of 109 miles before falling back to Earth. The official boundary between the Earth’s atmosphere and outer space is the Karman line, at an altitude of 62 miles.

21 Jun 1964 – 60 years ago
Mississippi civil rights workers’ murders, USA. Three civil rights activists, Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney, were kidnapped and killed by members of the Ku Klux Klan. The activists had been working on the Freedom Summer campaign, which encouraged African Americans to register to vote. Seven Klan members were convicted at the time, but received relatively minor sentences. Another member, Edgar Ray Killen, was convicted in 2005 and received a 60-year sentence.

22 Jun 1874 – 150 years ago
The first lawn tennis sets went on sale in London. They were designed by Walter Clopton Wingfield and included balls, racquets, a net and poles, court markers and instructions. Wingfield is credited with inventing modern lawn tennis.
The world’s first lawn tennis club (Leamington Lawn Tennis Club) opened later that year, and held its first competition.
Wimbledon began hosting international lawn tennis championships in 1877.

23 Jun 1949 – 75 years ago
The first 12 women graduated from Harvard Medical School in the USA.

24 Jun 1949 – 75 years ago
The first episode of the television Western Hopalong Cassidy was broadcast on NBC in the USA. It was the first network Western TV series.

25 Jun 1524 to 1525 – 500 years ago
The German Peasants’ War (also called the Great Peasants’ Revolt).
Several insurrections broke out in south-west Germany and spread throughout the country. More than 100,000 peasants were killed when the insurrections were suppressed by the military.

26 Jun 1824 – 200 years ago
Birth of William Thomson, 1^st Baron Kelvin, British mathematician, physicist and engineer. He made important contributions to thermo-dynamics, electricity, and modern physics. The kelvin scale of absolute temperature was named in his honour.

27 Jun 1999 – 25 years ago
The government of Colombia announced that it was including income earned from growing illegal drugs in its Gross Domestic Product (GDP). It exports an estimated 500 – 700 tons of cocaine each year (half the world’s supply) worth $4 – $10 billion.
The announcement was condemned by the United Nations.

28 Jun 1974 – 50 years ago
Chemists at the University of California, Irvine published the first report that warned that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) could damage the Earth’s ozone layer. CFCS were widely used in refrigerators, air conditioning systems, and as aerosol propellants. Production was heavily regulated from 1976, and later banned.

29 Jun 1949 – 75 years ago
The USA withdrew the last of its forces from South Korea following the end of WWII. This left South Korea with weak and ill-equipped defences. It was invaded by North Korea in June 1950, beginning the Korean War.

30 Jun 1934 – 90 years ago
The Night of the Long Knives – Adolf Hitler’s purge (execution) of senior Nazi officials, particularly leaders of the SA paramilitary group (also known as the ‘brownshirts’), and hundreds of other (perceived) political opponents.

More anniversaries:

You’ll find hundreds more anniversaries for this month in The Date-A-Base Book 2024. The 2025, 2026, 2027 and 2028 editions are also available if you work further ahead. The anniversaries are available as PDF ebooks, Excel spreadsheets, and printed paperback books.

How to use the anniversaries:

If you’d like to know more about how to turn the anniversaries listed here and in The Date-A-Base Books into articles for magazines and newspapers, take a look at our free 68-page guide, Ditch Your Day Job: the easiest way to make a living (or earn some extra cash) as a writer.

It has some terrific bonuses too, including a complete month of anniversaries from The Date-A-Base Book 2023, hundreds of article-writing tips and ideas, plus a 25 percent discount when you buy two or more editions of The Date-A-Base Book.

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Here are 30 newsworthy and notable historical anniversaries in June 2023
(listed six months in advance so you have time to write about them)

Historical anniversaries are great for “On This Day in History” features, articles, biographies and other anniversary tie-ins. They’re popular with newspaper and magazine readers and radio stations, and editors, producers and presenters love them. They’re easy to research too. You can also turn them into films, documentaries, novels, use them to plan events and exhibitions, and much more. (Find out more at the end of this article.)

We’ve randomly picked one anniversary for each day of the month from The Date-A-Base Book 2023, which lists more than 3,000 anniversaries.

1 Jun 1998 – 25 years ago
The European Central Bank was established in Frankfurt, Germany.

2 Jun 1953 – 70 years ago
The coronation of Queen Elizabeth II at Westminster Abbey, London.
This was also the first event where the British TV audience (20 million) was greater than the radio audience (12 million).

3 Jun 1898 – 125 years ago
Death of Samuel Plimsoll, British politician and social reformer. Best known for devising the Plimsoll line on a ship’s hull that indicates the minimum safe distance between the deck and the water line.

4 Jun 1948 – 75 years ago
Daniel François Malan (commonly known as D. F. Malan) became Prime Minister of South Africa.
He championed Afrikaner nationalism, and his government implemented apartheid.

5 Jun 1963 – 60 years ago
Profumo affair: British Secretary of State for War, John Profumo, resigned after it was revealed he had lied to the House of Commons about his affair with dancer/showgirl Christine Keeler.

6 Jun 1948 – 75 years ago
Death of Louis Lumière, French inventor, photographic pioneer and film-maker. He developed an early film camera and projector with his brother, Auguste, and made the first-ever movie.

7 Jun 1963 – 60 years ago
The Rolling Stones released their first single – a cover version of Chuck Berry’s song Come On.

8 Jun 1948 – 75 years ago
The first Porsche sports car (model 356) was completed. The hand-built aluminium prototype was road-certified on this date, entered into its first race, and won its class. The Porsche 356 would become the company’s first production car, and remained in production until 1965.

9 Jun 1898 – 125 years ago
Britain leased Hong Kong from China for 99 years and it became a British Crown Colony.
(It was transferred back to China in 1997.)

10 Jun 1923 – 100 years ago
Birth of Robert Maxwell, Czech-born British newspaper publisher, media proprietor and politician.
(Died 1991, after which serious discrepancies were found in his company’s finances, and he was found to have misappropriated the Mirror Group pension fund.)

11 Jun 1998 – 25 years ago
Death of Catherine Cookson, British novelist. Known for her stories set in the industrial north-east of England.
At the time of her death she was Britain’s most widely read novelist.

12 Jun 1948 – 75 years ago
The Women’s Armed Services Integration Act was enacted in the USA. It enabled women to serve as regular members of the U.S. Armed Forces.
The first women were sworn in on 7^th July. (Before this, women could only serve as nurses in the military, except during times of war.)

13 Jun 1773 – 250 years ago
Birth of Thomas Young, British scientist. He made several notable contributions to science, including the wave theory of light, and studies of eyesight, physiology, language and musical harmony. He also helped translate Egyptian hieroglyphs.
His work influenced later scientists including William Herschel, James Clerk Maxwell and Albert Einstein.

14 Jun 1923 – 100 years ago
American inventor Charles Francis Jenkins transmitted the first moving silhouette images using an experimental wireless television system, which he called ‘Radiovision’.

15 Jun 1993 – 30 years ago
Death of James Hunt, British racing driver, sports writer and television commentator. Formula One world champion in 1976.

16 Jun 1723? – 300 years ago
Birth of Adam Smith, (‘the Father of Economics’), Scottish economist and philosopher.
Known for his book The Wealth of Nations – the first modern work on economics.
(Baptised on this date – his date of birth is unknown.)

17 Jun 1873 – 150 years ago
Women’s suffrage leader Susan B. Anthony was found guilty of voting in the 1872 U.S. presidential election, in which only men were allowed to vote.
She was fined $100 (equivalent to about $2,500 today).

18 Jun 1923 – 100 years ago
The first Checker Cab taxi rolled off the production line in Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA.

19 Jun 1623 – 400 years ago
Birth of Blaise Pascal, French mathematician, physicist, inventor, theologian and philosopher. He invented one of the first mechanical calculators.
The computer programming language Pascal was named in his honour.

20 Jun 1923 or 20 July – 100 years ago
Death of Pancho Villa, Mexican revolutionary and guerilla leader. (Assassinated.)

21 Jun 1948 – 75 years ago
The ship HMT Empire Windrush docked in London, bringing the first large group of immigrants from the West Indies to the UK.

22 Jun 1983 – 40 years ago
The U.S. space shuttle Challenger retrieved a satellite from orbit for the first time.

23 Jun 1993 – 30 years ago
Lorena Bobbitt of Virginia, USA cut off her husband John’s penis with a kitchen knife after he sexually assaulted her. She then drove off and threw the severed penis out of her car window. (It was found and successfully reattached. At her trial the jury found her not guilty due to insanity. She also accused him of raping her, and of causing her actual harm and threatening harm, but he was acquitted.)

24 Jun 1948 to 12 May 1949 – 75 years ago
Cold War: The Berlin Blockade and Airlift.
The Soviet Union began a rail, road and canal blockade of Berlin, cutting off all routes between West Germany and West Berlin.
The Allies launched a massive airlift – over 200,000 flights – to take in nearly 9,000 tons of supplies each day. One plane laden with supplies landed every minute.

25 Jun 1973 – 50 years ago
Watergate scandal: White House Counsel John Dean, testifying before the Watergate committee, became the first official to implicate U.S. President Richard Nixon in the Watergate scandal. He told the committee about an ‘enemies list’ that the White House kept.

26 Jun 1963 – 60 years ago
U.S. President John F. Kennedy visited West Berlin, West Germany, and made his famous declaration ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ (I am a Berliner) to demonstrate the USA’s support.

27 Jun 2003 – 20 years ago
The USA’s National Do Not Call Registry was launched. It allowed residential phone users to opt out of receiving telemarketing calls.

28 Jun 1973 – 50 years ago
Elections were held for the Northern Ireland Assembly. It began operating on 1^st January 1974, but collapsed in May.
It was re-established in 1998 but collapsed again in 2017. The current Assembly was established in 2020.

29 Jun 1933 – 90 years ago
Death of Fatty Arbuckle, American actor, comedian and film director.

30 Jun 1948 – 75 years ago
The invention of the transistor was officially announced.
It was invented by John Bardeen and Walter Brattain at the Bell Telephone Laboratory in Murray Hill, New Jersey, USA in December 1947.
They were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1956.

More anniversaries:

You’ll find hundreds more anniversaries for this month in The Date-A-Base Book 2023. The 2024, 2025 and 2026 and 2027 editions are also available if you work further ahead. The 2028 edition will be available from April 2023. Find out more at ideas4writers.com.

How to use the anniversaries:

If you’d like to know more about how to turn the anniversaries listed here and in The Date-A-Base Books into articles for magazines and newspapers, take a look at our free 68-page guide, Ditch Your Day Job: the easiest way to make a living (or earn some extra cash) as a writer.

It has some terrific bonuses too, including a complete month of anniversaries from The Date-A-Base Book 2023, 301 article-writing ideas and tips, plus a 25 percent discount when you buy two or more editions of The Date-A-Base Book.

Share this: