June 19
1865: Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, with news that the Civil War was over and that all remaining enslaved people in Texas were free — an event now celebrated nationwide as Juneteenth.
1910: The first Father’s Day in the United States was celebrated in Spokane, Wash.
1953: Julius Rosenberg, 35, and his wife, Ethel, 37, convicted of conspiring to pass U.S. atomic secrets to the Soviet Union, were executed.
June 20
1782: The Continental Congress approved the Great Seal of the United States, featuring the emblem of the bald eagle.
1837: Queen Victoria acceded to the British throne following the death of her uncle, King William IV.
1893: A jury in New Bedford, Mass., found Lizzie Borden not guilty of the ax murders of her father and stepmother.
1947: Gangster Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel was shot dead in Beverly Hills, Calif.
June 21
1788: The United States Constitution went into effect as New Hampshire became the required ninth state to ratify it.
1893: The first Ferris wheel opened to the public as part of the Chicago World’s Fair.
1982: A jury in Washington, D.C. found John Hinckley Jr. not guilty by reason of insanity in the shootings of President Ronald Reagan and three others.
June 22
1815: Napoleon Bonaparte abdicated for a second time as Emperor of the French.
1938: American Joe Louis knocked out German Max Schmeling in just two minutes and four seconds to retain his heavyweight boxing title in front of 70,000 spectators at New York’s Yankee Stadium.
1941: Nazi Germany launched Operation Barbarossa, a massive and ultimately ill-fated invasion of the Soviet Union that would prove pivotal to the Allied victory over the Axis powers.
June 23
1931: Aviators Wiley Post and Harold Gatty took off from Roosevelt Field in New York on a round-the-world flight that lasted eight days and 15 hours.
1972: President Richard Nixon signed into law the Education Amendments of 1972, including Title IX, which barred discrimination on the basis of sex for “any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.”
2016: Britain voted to leave the European Union after a bitterly divisive referendum campaign, toppling Prime Minister David Cameron.
June 24
1509: Henry VIII was crowned king of England; his wife, Catherine of Aragon, was crowned queen consort.
1939: The Southeast Asian country of Siam changed its name to Thailand. (It reverted to Siam in 1945, then became Thailand once again in 1949.)
1948: Communist forces cut off all land and water routes between West Germany and West Berlin, prompting the western allies to organize the Berlin Airlift.
June 25
1876: The Battle of the Little Bighorn, also known as Custer’s Last Stand, began in southeastern Montana Territory. As many as 100 Native Americans were killed in the battle, as were 268 people attached to the 7th Cavalry Regiment.
1947: “The Diary of a Young Girl,” the personal journal of Anne Frank, a German-born Jewish girl hiding with her family from the Nazis in Amsterdam during World War II, was first published. 1950: War broke out in Korea as forces from the communist North invaded the South.
