June 12 in History

Thomas Willett was a Plymouth Colony fur trader, merchant, land purchaser and developer, Captain of the Plymouth Colony militia, Magistrate of the colony, and was the first Mayor of New York, prior to the consolidation of the five boroughs into the City of New York in 1898.

Marc-Joseph Marion du Fresne was a French privateer, East India captain, and explorer. The expedition he led to find the hypothetical Terra Australis in 1771 made important geographic discoveries in the south Indian Ocean and anthropological discoveries in Tasmania and New Zealand. In New Zealand, they spent longer living on shore than any previous European expedition. Half way through the expedition's stay, Marion was killed during a military assault by Ngare Raumati: one of the oldest Māori tribes from the Whangārei region.

The Virginia Declaration of Rights was drafted in 1776 to proclaim the inherent rights of men, including the right to reform or abolish "inadequate" government. It influenced a number of later documents, including the United States Declaration of Independence (1776) and the United States Bill of Rights (1789).

USRC Surveyor was a 6-gun cutter of the United States Revenue-Marine captured by British forces during the War of 1812. Despite the vessel's loss, the "gallant and desperate" defense of her crew against a superior British force is commemorated by the United States Coast Guard. Along with the British frigate which bested her in battle, HMS Narcissus, Surveyor is among six legendary ships memorialized in the lyrics of the Coast Guard march "Semper Paratus".

Badi VII was the last ruler of the Funj Sultanate.

The American Civil War was a civil war in the United States between the Union and the Confederacy, which was formed in 1861 by states that had seceded from the Union to preserve slavery in the United States, which they saw as threatened because of the election of Abraham Lincoln and the growing abolitionist movement in the North. The war ended with Union victory, the dissolution of the Confederacy and the abolition of slavery, freeing four million African Americans.

The 1899 New Richmond tornado was an estimated F5 tornado that formed in the early evening of Monday, June 12, 1899, leaving a 45-mile-long (72 km) path of destruction through St. Croix, Polk, and Barron counties in west-central Wisconsin. There were a total of 117 fatalities and 150 injuries, with hundreds more reported as displaced. The worst devastation occurred in the city of New Richmond, which took a direct hit from the storm. Over half of New Richmond was left in ruins due to the tornado, which also caused minor damage to surrounding communities. The damage was reported to be over $300,000 (USD). As of 2019, it is ranked as the ninth deadliest tornado in United States history, as well as the deadliest tornado ever recorded in Wisconsin.

The massacre of Phocaea occurred in June 1914, as part of the ethnic cleansing policies of the Ottoman Empire that included exile, massacre and deportations. It was perpetrated by irregular Turkish bands against the predominantly ethnic Greek town of Phocaea, modern Foça, on the east coast of the Aegean Sea. The massacre was part of a wider anti-Greek campaign of genocide launched by the Young Turk Ottoman authorities, which included boycott, intimidation, forced deportations and mass killings; and was one of the worst attacks during the summer of 1914.

Bolivia, officially the Plurinational State of Bolivia, is a landlocked country located in central South America. Its geography primarily consists of an Andean region to the west and tropical lowlands to the east and north. The country has a diverse environment, including the vast Amazonian plain, the Gran Chaco, temperate valleys, the high-altitude Altiplano plateau, snow-capped peaks, and mountains, encompassing a wide range of climates and biomes across its regions and cities. It includes part of the Pantanal, the largest tropical wetland in the world, along its eastern border. Bolivia is bordered by Brazil to the north and east, Paraguay to the southeast, Argentina to the south, Chile to the southwest, and Peru to the west. The seat of government is La Paz, which contains the executive, legislative, and electoral branches of government, while the constitutional capital is Sucre, the seat of the judiciary. While most population and urban centers lie in the Andean region, the largest city and principal industrial center is Santa Cruz de la Sierra, located in the eastern tropical lowlands.

The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum is a history museum and hall of fame in Cooperstown, New York, operated by a private foundation. It serves as the central collection and gathering space for the history of baseball in the United States displaying baseball-related artifacts and exhibits, honoring those who have excelled in playing, managing, and serving the sport. The Hall's motto is "Preserving History, Honoring Excellence, Connecting Generations". Cooperstown is often used as shorthand for the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. The museum also established and manages the process for honorees into the Hall of Fame.

Annelies Marie Frank was a German-born Jewish diarist and Holocaust victim. She gained worldwide notability posthumously for keeping a diary documenting her life in hiding during the German occupation of the Netherlands. In the diary, she regularly described her family's everyday life in their hiding place in an Amsterdam attic from 1942 until their arrest in 1944.

The Battle of Carentan was an engagement in World War II between airborne forces of the United States Army and the German Wehrmacht during the Battle of Normandy. The battle took place from 10 to 14 June 1944, on the approaches to and within the town of Carentan, France.

Pope Pius XII was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of Vatican City from 2 March 1939 until his death on 9 October 1958.

Cleopatra is a 1963 American epic historical drama film directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who co-wrote the screenplay with Ranald MacDougall and Sidney Buchman, adapted from the 1957 book The Life and Times of Cleopatra by Carlo Maria Franzero, and from histories by Plutarch, Suetonius, and Appian. The film stars Elizabeth Taylor in the eponymous role, along with Richard Burton, Rex Harrison, Roddy McDowall and Martin Landau. It chronicles the struggles of the young queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt to resist the imperial ambitions of Rome.

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that turn on questions of U.S. constitutional or federal law. It also has original jurisdiction over a narrow range of cases, specifically "all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party". In 1803, the court asserted itself the power of judicial review, the ability to invalidate a statute for violating a provision of the Constitution. It is also able to strike down presidential directives for violating either the Constitution or statutory law.

Bryan Lewis Allen is an American self-taught hang glider pilot and cyclist. He achieved fame when he piloted the two aircraft that won the first two Kremer prizes for human-powered flight: the Gossamer Condor and Gossamer Albatross. He later set world distance and duration records in a small pedal-powered blimp named "White Dwarf."

New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States. It is located at the southern tip of New York State on New York Harbor, one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs—Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island; each is coextensive with its respective county. It is the geographical and demographic center of both the Northeast megalopolis and the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the United States by both population and urban area. New York is a global center of finance and commerce, culture, technology, entertainment and media, academics and scientific output, the arts and fashion, and, as home to the headquarters of the United Nations, international diplomacy. New York City is known for its fast pace and continuous urban energy.

The Cold War was a period of international geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc. It began in the aftermath of the Second World War and ended with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The term cold war is used because there was no direct fighting between the two superpowers, though each supported opposing sides in regional conflicts known as proxy wars. In addition to the struggle for ideological and economic influence and an arms race in both conventional and nuclear weapons, the Cold War was expressed through technological rivalries such as the Space Race, espionage, propaganda campaigns, embargoes, and sports diplomacy.

Russia Day, called Day of Adoption of the Declaration of State Sovereignty of RSFSR before 2002, is the national holiday of Russia. It has been celebrated annually on 12 June since 1992; the day commemorates the adoption of the Declaration of State Sovereignty of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) on 12 June 1990. The passage of this Declaration by the First Congress of People's Deputies marked the beginning of constitutional reform in the Russian Soviet state, culminating in outright independence in 1991.

On June 12, 1991, 152 minority Sri Lankan Tamil civilians were massacred by members of the Sri Lankan military in the village Kokkadichcholai near the eastern province town of Batticaloa. The Sri Lankan government instituted a presidential commission to investigate the massacre. The commission found the commanding officer negligent in controlling his troops and recommended that he be removed from office, and identified nineteen other members of the Sri Lankan military to be responsible for mass murder. In a military tribunal that followed in the presidential commission in the capital city of Colombo, all nineteen soldiers were acquitted.

The Kosovo War was an armed conflict in Kosovo that lasted from 28 February 1998 until 11 June 1999. It was fought between the forces of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY), which controlled Kosovo before the war, and the Kosovo Albanian separatist militia known as the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). The conflict ended when the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) intervened by beginning air strikes in March 1999 which resulted in Yugoslav forces withdrawing from Kosovo.

Shia Islam in Iraq has a history going back to the times of Ali ibn Abi Talib who moved the capital of the Rashidun Caliphate from Medina to Kufa, two decades after the death of Muhammad. Iraqi Shias constitute the chief component of Iraqi society and the term is used as a socio-political and religious identifier. Their historical stronghold has been Lower Mesopotamia, historically known as Babylonia.

The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic consisting of 50 states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 contiguous states border Canada to the north and Mexico to the south, with the semi-exclave of Alaska in the northwest and the archipelago of Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean. The United States also asserts sovereignty over five major island territories and various uninhabited islands in Oceania and the Caribbean. It is a megadiverse country, with the world's third-largest land area and third-largest population, exceeding 341 million.

On 12 June 2024, an early-morning fire broke out at a residential building in Mangaf in Kuwait's Ahmadi Governorate housing 196 male migrant workers of NBTC Group, killing 50 migrant workers, at least 46 of whom were from India, and injuring around 50 others. Most victims died of smoke inhalation, while others were fatally injured from falling. The building's owner was arrested in the wake of the fire.