June 12 in History

The first Battle of Lechfeld (the first Battle of Augsburg in Hungarian historiography), fought on 12 June 910, was an important victory by a Hungarian army over the combined forces of East Francia and Swabia (Alamannia) under the nominal command of Louis the Child. Located approximately 25 km (15.53 mi) south of Augsburg, the Lechfeld is the floodplain that lies along the river Lech. At this time the Grand Prince of the Hungarians was Zoltán, but there is no record of him taking part in the battle. After the battle, the victorious Hungarians broke into Franconia for the first time. On 22 June in Franconia, the same Hungarian army defeated a united army of the duchies of Franconia, Lotharingia and Bavaria in the Battle of Rednitz. The Bavarian, Frankish, Swabian and Saxonian duchies became taxpayers of the Hungarians. As consequence of this victory, in the next year, Hungarian attacks launched from the Carpathian Basin crossed the Rhine for the first time in 911. The battle is an example of successful use of the feigned retreat and Parthian shot tactics, usually carried out by nomadic warriors, and highlighting the effective use of psychological warfare.

Constantine IX Monomachos (Greek: Κωνσταντῖνος Μονομάχος, romanized: Kōnstantīnos Monomachos; c. 980/c. 1000 – 11 January 1055) reigned as Byzantine emperor from June 1042 to January 1055. A member of the urban aristocracy, Constantine became emperor through marriage to Augusta Zoë Porphyrogenita in 1042. The couple shared the throne with Zoë's sister Theodora Porphyrogenita. Constantine's energetic rule was one of the most consequential in the Byzantine Empire's tumultuous 11th century. Fiscally, Constantine's reign was marked by profligacy, and he depleted the abundant imperial treasury he had inherited from Basil II (r. 976–1025) and his successors. For reasons that remain obscure Constantine debased the gold currency of the empire, the first permanent debasement of the coinage since its introduction by Constantine the Great. In Constantinople Constantine spent lavishly on both personal gifts and religious projects. Presiding over a period of economic expansion, Constantine encumbered the state by his massive expansion of the aristocracy. In matters of provincial administration, Constantine attempted a series of reforms to varying levels of success. In the power struggle between the urban elite and the Dynatoi which was waged throughout the 11th century, Constantine made overtures towards both. He granted tax exemptions to the Dynatoi through an early form of the pronoia system and freely granted titles, privileges, and gifts of money to the civil elite. In response to the rising importance of civil judges (known as kritai) over theme commanders (strategoi) Constantine created the office of the Epi ton kriseon. Constantine attempted to reform the empire's legal system, centering on the creation of a law school headed by a nomophylax, but had limited success. Constantine was victorious in two civil wars, foiled several coup attempts and successfully fought off a raid by the Kievan Rus', but was humiliated by the Pechenegs in the West and failed to stop the rising Seljuq Turks in the East. Though the Byzantine Empire largely retained the borders established after the conquests of Basil II — even expanding eastwards through the annexation of the Armenian kingdom of Ani — Constantine is often blamed for the poor state of the army in the years leading up to Manzikert. In 1054 Constantine oversaw the decisive events of the Great Schism between the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches. His treatment of the papal legates of Leo IX exacerbated tensions between the legates and the patriarch Michael I Cerularius of Constantinople. He died one year later of an infection related to his chronic arthritis. Traditionally, Constantine Monomachos has been viewed as an incapable, militarily inept emperor and one of the architects of the Byzantine decline of the late 11th and 12th centuries. However, recent scholarship has done much to rehabilitate his reputation as a civil administrator and reformer. He was perhaps the only emperor between Basil II and the Battle of Manzikert to attempt a coherent program of reform, even if this program was flawed and unsuccessfully carried out. Constantine accordingly may be considered the last effective emperor of the Macedonian Renaissance.

Louis IX (25 April 1214 – 25 August 1270), also known as Saint Louis, was King of France from 1226 until his death in 1270. He is widely recognized as the most distinguished of the Direct Capetians, is the sole king of France to be canonised as a saint of the Catholic Church, and is also the direct ancestor of all subsequent French kings. Following the death of his father, Louis VIII, he was crowned in Reims at the age of 12. His mother, Blanche of Castile, effectively ruled the kingdom as regent until he came of age, and continued to serve as his trusted adviser until her death. During his formative years, Blanche successfully confronted rebellious vassals and championed the Capetian cause in the Albigensian Crusade, which had been ongoing for the past two decades. As an adult, Louis IX grappled with persistent conflicts involving some of the most influential nobles in his kingdom, including Hugh X of Lusignan and Peter I of Brittany. Concurrently, England's Henry III sought to reclaim the Angevin continental holdings, only to be decisively defeated at the Battle of Taillebourg. Louis expanded his territory by annexing several provinces, including parts of Aquitaine, Maine, and Provence. Keeping a promise he made while praying for recovery from a grave illness, Louis led the ill-fated Seventh and Eighth Crusades against the Muslim dynasties that controlled North Africa, Egypt, and the Holy Land. He was captured and ransomed during the Seventh Crusade, and later succumbed to dysentery during the Eighth Crusade. His son, Philip III, succeeded him. Louis instigated significant reforms in the French legal system, creating a royal justice mechanism that allowed petitioners to appeal judgments directly to the monarch. He abolished trials by ordeal, endeavored to terminate private wars, and incorporated the presumption of innocence into criminal proceedings. To implement his new legal framework, he established the offices of provosts and bailiffs. Louis IX's reign is often marked as an economic and political zenith for medieval France, and he held immense respect throughout Christendom. His reputation as a fair and judicious ruler led to his being solicited to mediate disputes beyond his own kingdom. Louis IX expanded upon the work of his predecessors, especially his grandfather Philip II of France, and reformed the administrative institutions of the French crown. He re-introduced, and expanded the scope of, the enquêtes commissioned to investigate governmental abuses and provide monetary restitutions for the crown. Louis's admirers through the centuries have celebrated him as the quintessential Christian monarch. His skill as a knight and engaging manner with the public contributed to his popularity. Saint Louis was extremely pious, earning the moniker of a "monk king". Louis was a staunch Christian and rigorously enforced Catholic orthodoxy. He enacted harsh laws against blasphemy, and he also launched actions against France's Jewish population, including ordering them to wear a yellow badge of shame, as well as the notorious burning of the Talmud following the Disputation of Paris.

The Peasants' Revolt, also named Wat Tyler's Rebellion or the Great Uprising, was a major uprising across large parts of England in 1381. The revolt had various causes, including the socio-economic and political tensions generated by the Black Death in the 1340s, the high taxes resulting from the conflict with France during the Hundred Years' War, and instability within the local leadership of London. The revolt heavily influenced the course of the Hundred Years' War by deterring later Parliaments from raising additional taxes to pay for military campaigns in France. Interpretations of the revolt by academics have shifted over the years. It was once seen as a defining moment in English history, in particular causing a promise by King Richard II to abolish serfdom, and a suspicion of Lollardy, but modern academics are less certain of its impact on subsequent social and economic history. The revolt has been widely used in socialist literature, including by the author William Morris, and remains a potent symbol for the political left, informing the arguments surrounding the introduction of the Community Charge in the United Kingdom during the 1980s.

The Armagnac–Burgundian Civil War was a conflict between two cadet branches of the French royal family: the House of Orléans and the House of Burgundy from 1407 to 1435. It began during a lull in the Hundred Years' War against the English and overlapped with the Western Schism of the papacy.

The Hundred Years' War (French: Guerre de Cent Ans; 1337–1453) was a series of conflicts between the kingdoms of England and France and a civil war in France during the late Middle Ages. It emerged from feudal disputes over the Duchy of Aquitaine and was triggered by a claim to the French throne made by Edward III of England. The war grew into a broader military, economic, and political struggle involving different factions from across Western Europe, fuelled by emerging nationalism on both sides. The periodisation of the war typically charts it as taking place over 116 years. However, it was an intermittent conflict which was frequently interrupted by external factors, such as the Black Death, and several years of truces. The Hundred Years' War was a significant conflict in the Middle Ages. During the war, five generations of kings from two rival dynasties fought for the throne of France, then the wealthiest and most populous kingdom in Western Europe. The war had a lasting effect on European history: both sides produced innovations in military technology and tactics, including professional standing armies and artillery, that permanently changed European warfare. Chivalry reached its height during the conflict and subsequently declined. Stronger national identities took root in both kingdoms, which became more centralized and gradually emerged as global powers. The term "Hundred Years' War" was adopted by later historians and included dynastically related conflicts in Spain and Belgium, resulting in the longest military conflict in European history. The war is commonly divided into three phases, separated by truces: the Edwardian War (1337–1360), the Caroline War (1369–1389), and the Lancastrian War (1415–1453). Each side drew many allies into the conflict, with English forces initially prevailing; however, the French forces under the House of Valois ultimately retained control over the Kingdom of France. The French and English monarchies thereafter remained separate, despite the monarchs of England and Great Britain styling themselves as sovereigns of France until 1802.

Helsinki, until about 1930 known in English by its Swedish name of Helsingfors, is the capital and most populous city in Finland. It is on the shore of the Gulf of Finland and is the seat of southern Finland's Uusimaa region. About 694,000 people live in the municipality, with 1.3 million in the capital region and 1.6 million in the metropolitan area. As the most populous urban area in Finland, it is the country's most significant centre for politics, education, finance, culture, and research. Helsinki is 80 kilometres (50 mi) north of Tallinn, Estonia, 400 kilometres (250 mi) east of Stockholm, Sweden, and 300 kilometres (190 mi) west of Saint Petersburg, Russia. Helsinki is a bilingual municipality with Finnish and Swedish as its official languages.

The Westminster Assembly of Divines was a council of divines (theologians) and members of the English Parliament appointed from 1643 to 1653 to restructure the Church of England. Several Scots also attended, and the Assembly's work was adopted by the Church of Scotland. As many as 121 ministers were called to the Assembly, with nineteen others added later to replace those who did not attend or could no longer attend. It produced a new Form of Church Government, a Confession of Faith or statement of belief, two catechisms or manuals for religious instruction (Shorter and Larger), and a liturgical manual, the Directory for Public Worship, for the Churches of England and Scotland. The Confession and catechisms were adopted as doctrinal standards in the Church of Scotland and other Presbyterian churches, where they remain normative. Amended versions of the Confession were also adopted in Congregational and Baptist churches in England and New England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Confession became influential throughout the English-speaking world, but especially in American Protestant theology. The Assembly was called by the Long Parliament before and during the beginning of the First English Civil War. The Long Parliament was influenced by Puritanism, a religious movement which sought further reform of the church. They were opposed to the religious policies of King Charles I and William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury. As part of a military alliance with Scotland, Parliament agreed that the outcome of the Assembly would bring the English Church into closer conformity with the Church of Scotland. The Scottish Church was governed by a system of elected assemblies of elders called presbyterianism, rather than rule by bishops, called episcopalianism, which was used in the English church. Scottish commissioners attended and advised the Assembly as part of the agreement. Disagreements over church government caused open division in the Assembly, despite attempts to maintain unity. The party of divines who favoured presbyterianism was in the majority, but the congregationalist party, which held greater influence in the military, favoured autonomy for individual congregations rather than the subjection of congregations to regional and national assemblies entailed in presbyterianism. Parliament eventually adopted a presbyterian form of government but lacked the power to implement it. During the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, all of the documents of the Assembly were repudiated and episcopal church government was reinstated in England. The Assembly worked in the Reformed Protestant theological tradition, also known as Calvinism. It took the Bible as the authoritative word of God, from which all theological reflection must be based. The divines were committed to the Reformed doctrine of predestination—that God chooses certain men to be saved and enjoy eternal life rather than eternal punishment. There was some disagreement at the Assembly over the doctrine of particular redemption—that Christ died only for those chosen for salvation. The Assembly also held to Reformed covenant theology, a framework for interpreting the Bible. The Assembly's Confession is the first of the Reformed confessions to teach a doctrine called the covenant of works, which teaches that before the fall of man, God promised eternal life to Adam on condition that he perfectly obeyed God.

The First Anglo-Dutch War, or First Dutch War, was a naval conflict between the Commonwealth of England and the Dutch Republic. Largely caused by disputes over trade, it began with English attacks on Dutch merchant shipping, but expanded to vast fleet actions. Despite a series of victories in 1652 and 1653, the Commonwealth was unable to blockade Dutch trade, although English privateers inflicted serious losses on Dutch merchant shipping. The economic damage eventually led to the Treaty of Westminster in 1654 where the Dutch were forced to make minor concessions to the Commonwealth. Both sides agreed to the exclusion of the House of Orange from the office of Stadtholder, but failed to resolve underlying commercial issues. In 1665, Dutch objections to the Navigation Acts and English concerns over their rival's trading practices led to the Second Anglo-Dutch War.

The French and Indian War (1754–1763) was a conflict in North America between Great Britain and France, along with their respective Indigenous allies. Historians generally consider it part of the global Seven Years' War, which lasted from 1756 to 1763, although in the United States it is often viewed as a distinct conflict unassociated with any larger European war.

Marc-Joseph Marion "Macé" du Fresne (22 May 1724 – 12 June 1772) 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. He is commemorated with the toponyms Marion Island, South Africa and Marion Bay, Tasmania, as well in the name of two successive French oceanic research and supply vessel the Marion Dufresne (1972) and the Marion Dufresne II, which service the French Southern Territories of Amsterdam Island, the Crozet Islands, the Kerguelen Islands, and Saint Paul Island.

The American Revolutionary War (April 19, 1775 – September 3, 1783), also known as the Revolutionary War or American War of Independence or simply the American Revolution, was the armed conflict that comprised the final eight years of the broader American Revolution, in which American Patriot forces organized as the Continental Army and, commanded by George Washington, defeated the British Army. The conflict was fought in North America, the Caribbean, and the Atlantic Ocean. The war's outcome seemed uncertain for most of the war, but Washington and the Continental Army's decisive victory in the Siege of Yorktown in 1781 led King George III and the Kingdom of Great Britain to negotiate an end to the war. In 1783, in the Treaty of Paris, the British monarchy acknowledged the independence of the Thirteen Colonies, leading to the establishment of the United States as an independent and sovereign nation. In 1763, after the British Empire gained dominance in North America following its victory over the French in the Seven Years' War, tensions and disputes began escalating between the British and the Thirteen Colonies, especially following passage of the Stamp and Townshend Acts. The British Army responded by seeking to occupy Boston militarily, leading to the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770. In mid-1774, with tensions escalating even further between the British Army and the colonies, the British Parliament imposed the Intolerable Acts, an attempt to disarm Americans, leading to the Battles of Lexington and Concord in April 1775, the first battles of the Revolutionary War. In June 1775, the Second Continental Congress voted to incorporate colonial-based Patriot militias into a central military, the Continental Army, and unanimously appointed Washington its commander-in-chief. Two months later, in August 1775, George III declared the colonies to be in a state of rebellion. In July 1776, the Second Continental Congress formalized the war, passing the Lee Resolution on July 2, and, two days later, unanimously adopting the Declaration of Independence, on July 4. In March 1776, in an early win for the newly-formed Continental Army under Washington's command, following a successful siege of Boston, the Continental Army successfully drove the British Army out of Boston. British commander in chief William Howe responded by launching the New York and New Jersey campaign, which resulted in Howe's capture of New York City in November. Washington responded by clandestinely crossing the Delaware River and winning small but significant victories at Trenton and Princeton. In the summer of 1777, as Howe was poised to capture Philadelphia, the Continental Congress fled to Baltimore. In October 1777, a separate northern British force under the command of John Burgoyne was forced to surrender at Saratoga in an American victory that proved crucial in convincing France and Spain that an independent United States was a viable possibility. France signed a commercial agreement with the revolutionaries, followed by a Treaty of Alliance in February 1778. In 1779, the Sullivan Expedition undertook a scorched earth campaign against British-allied factions of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy (also Iroquois). Native American raids on the American frontier, however, continued to be a problem. Also, in 1779, Spain allied with France against Great Britain in the Treaty of Aranjuez, though Spain did not formally ally with the Americans. Howe's replacement Henry Clinton intended to take the war against the Americans into the Southern Colonies. Despite some initial success, British General Cornwallis was besieged by a Franco-American army in Yorktown, Virginia, in September and October 1781. The French navy cut off Cornwallis's escape and he was forced to surrender in October. The British wars with France and Spain continued for another two years, but fighting largely ceased in North America. In the Treaty of Paris, signed on September 3, 1783, Great Britain acknowledged the sovereignty and independence of the United States, bringing the American Revolutionary War to an end. The Treaties of Versailles resolved Great Britain's conflicts with France and Spain, and forced Great Britain to cede Tobago, Senegal, and small territories in India to France, and Menorca, West Florida, and East Florida to Spain.

The Irish Rebellion of 1798 (Irish: Éirí Amach 1798; Ulster Scots: "The Turn Out"/"The Hurries") was a popular insurrection against the British Crown in what was then the separate, but subordinate, Kingdom of Ireland. The main organising force was the Society of United Irishmen. First formed in Belfast by Presbyterians opposed to the landed Anglican establishment, the Society, despairing of reform, sought to secure a republic through a revolutionary union with the country's Catholic majority. The grievances of a rack-rented tenantry, and of market-town traders, journeymen and weavers drove recruitment. While assistance was being sought from the French Republic and from democratic militants in Britain, martial-law seizures and arrests forced the conspirators into the open. Beginning in late May 1798, there were a series of uncoordinated risings: in the counties of Carlow and Wexford in the southeast where the rebels met with some success; in the north around Belfast in counties Antrim and Down; and closer to the capital, Dublin, in counties Meath and Kildare. In late August, after the rebels had been reduced to pockets of guerrilla resistance, the French landed an expeditionary force in the west, in County Mayo. Unable to effect a conjunction with a significant rebel force, they surrendered on 9 September. In the last open-field engagement of the rebellion, the local men they had rallied on their arrival were routed at Killala on 23 September. On 12 October, a second French expedition was defeated in a naval action off the coast of County Donegal leading to the capture of the United Irish leader Wolfe Tone. In the wake of the rebellion, Acts of Union 1800 abolished the Irish legislature and brought Ireland under the crown of a United Kingdom through the Parliament at Westminster. The centenary of the rebellion in 1898 saw its legacy disputed by nationalists who wished to restore a legislature in Dublin, by republicans who invoked the name of Tone in the cause of complete separation and independence, and by unionists opposed to all measures of Irish self-government. Renewed in a bicentenary year that coincided with the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, the debate over the interpretation and significance of 1798 continues.

The War of 1812 was a conflict initiated by the United States against the United Kingdom and its allies fought mainly in North America and at sea during the wider Napoleonic Wars. The United States declared war on Britain on 18 June 1812. Although peace terms were agreed upon in the December 1814 Treaty of Ghent, the war did not officially end until the peace treaty was ratified by the United States Senate on 17 February 1815.

A bicycle, also called a pedal cycle, bike, push-bike or cycle, is a human-powered or motor-assisted, pedal-driven, single-track vehicle, with two wheels attached to a frame, one behind the other. A bicycle rider is called a cyclist or bicyclist.

The invasion of Algiers was a large-scale military operation by which the Kingdom of France, ruled by King Charles X, invaded and conquered the Regency of Algiers. A diplomatic incident in 1827, the so-called 'Fan Affair', served as a pretext to initiate a blockade against the port of Algiers. After three years of standstill and a more severe incident in which a French ship carrying an ambassador to the dey with a proposal for negotiations was fired upon, the French determined that more forceful action was required. Charles X also sought to divert attention from turbulent French domestic affairs which culminated with his deposition during the later stages of the invasion in the July Revolution.

The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), which was formed in 1861 by states that had seceded from the Union to preserve slavery in the United States. The South saw slavery 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. Decades of controversy over slavery came to a head when Abraham Lincoln, a Republican who opposed slavery's expansion, won the 1860 presidential election. Seven slave states in the South responded to Lincoln's victory by seceding from the United States and forming the Confederate States of America. The Confederacy seized US forts and other federal assets in the South. The war began on April 12, 1861, when the Confederacy bombarded Fort Sumter in South Carolina. A wave of enthusiasm for war swept over the North and South, as military recruitment soared. Four more Southern states seceded after the war began and, led by its president, Jefferson Davis, the Confederacy comprised eleven states, containing a third of the US population. Four years of intense combat, mostly in the South, ensued. During 1861–1862 in the western theater, the Union made permanent gains, though in the eastern theater the conflict was inconclusive. The abolition of slavery became a Union war goal on January 1, 1863, when Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared all slaves in rebel states to be free, applying to more than 3.5 million of the 4 million enslaved people in the country. To the west, the Union first destroyed the Confederacy's river navy by the summer of 1862, then much of its western armies, and seized New Orleans. The successful 1863 Union siege of Vicksburg split the Confederacy in two at the Mississippi River, while Confederate general Robert E. Lee's incursion north failed at the Battle of Gettysburg. General Ulysses S. Grant's western successes led Lincoln to promote him to command of all Union armies in 1864. Inflicting an ever-tightening naval blockade of Confederate ports, the Union marshaled resources and manpower to attack the Confederacy from all directions. This led to the fall of Atlanta in 1864 to Union general William Tecumseh Sherman, followed by his March to the Sea, which culminated in his taking Savannah. The last significant battles raged around the ten-month siege of Petersburg, gateway to the Confederate capital of Richmond. The Confederates abandoned Richmond, and on April 9, 1865, Lee surrendered to Grant following the Battle of Appomattox Court House, setting in motion the end of the war. Lincoln lived to see this victory but was shot by an assassin on April 14, dying the next day. By the end of the war, much of the South's infrastructure had been destroyed. The Confederacy collapsed, the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery, and four million enslaved black people were freed. The war-torn nation then entered the Reconstruction era in an attempt to rebuild the country, bring the former Confederate states back into the United States, and grant civil rights to freed slaves. The war is one of the most extensively studied and written about episodes in the history of the United States. It remains the subject of cultural and historiographical debate. Of continuing interest is the myth of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy. The war was among the first to use industrial warfare. Railroads, the electrical telegraph, steamships, the ironclad warship, and mass-produced weapons were widely used. The war left an estimated 700,000 soldiers dead, along with an undetermined number of civilian deaths, making it the deadliest in American history. The technology and brutality of the Civil War foreshadowed the coming world wars.

The Philippine Declaration of Independence (Tagalog: Pagpapahayag ng Kasarinlan ng Pilipinas; Spanish: Declaración de Independencia de Filipinas) was proclaimed by Filipino revolutionary forces general Emilio Aguinaldo on June 12, 1898, in Cavite el Viejo (present-day Kawit, Cavite), Philippines. It asserted the sovereignty and independence of the Philippine islands from the 300 years of colonial rule by Spain.

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) ($11,610,000 in 2025). 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 Reichstag is a historic legislative government building on Platz der Republik in Berlin that is the seat of the Bundestag parliament. It is also the meeting place of the Federal Convention, which elects the president of Germany.

The massacre of Phocaea (Greek: Η Σφαγή της Φώκαιας, romanized: I Sfagí tis Fókaias; Turkish: Foça Katliamı) 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.

Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky, nicknamed the Red Napoleon, was a Soviet general who was prominent between 1918 and 1937 as a military officer and theoretician. He was later executed during the Moscow trials of 1936–1938.

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.

Paramount Pictures Corporation, commonly known as Paramount Pictures or simply Paramount, is an American film production and distribution company and the flagship namesake subsidiary of Paramount Skydance. Founded on May 8, 1912, it is the sixth-oldest global film studio and the second-oldest in the United States behind Universal Pictures, and it is one of the Big Five studios located within the city limits of Los Angeles.

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 (or a metonym) for the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. The museum also established and manages the process for honorees into the Hall of Fame. The Hall of Fame was established in 1939 by Stephen Carlton Clark, heir to the Singer Sewing Machine fortune. Clark sought to bring tourists to the village greatly decimated by the Great Depression, which reduced the local tourist trade, and Prohibition, which devastated the local hops industry. Clark constructed the Hall of Fame's building, which was dedicated on June 12, 1939. (His granddaughter, Jane Forbes Clark, is the current chairman of the board of directors.) The mythology that future Civil War hero Abner Doubleday invented baseball in Cooperstown in the 1830s was instrumental in the placement and early marketing of the Hall. An expanded library and research facility opened in 1994. In 2002, the Hall launched Baseball as America, a traveling exhibit that toured ten American museums over six years. The Hall of Fame has since also sponsored educational programming on the Internet to bring the Hall of Fame to schoolchildren who might not visit. The Hall and Museum completed a series of renovations in spring 2005. The Hall of Fame also presents an annual exhibit at FanFest at the Major League Baseball All-Star Game.

World War II, or the Second World War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries participated, with many engaging in total war on an unprecedented scale. World War II was the deadliest conflict in history, causing the deaths of 60 to 75 million people, a majority of whom were civilians. Millions died as a result of massacres, starvation, disease, and genocides including the Holocaust. After the Allied victory, Germany, Austria, Japan, and Korea were occupied, and German and Japanese leaders were tried for war crimes.

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 a secret annex in Amsterdam from 1942 until their arrest in 1944.

The Holocaust, known in Hebrew as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered around six million Jews across German-occupied Europe, approximately two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population. The murders were committed primarily through mass shootings across Eastern Europe and poison gas chambers in extermination camps, chiefly Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, Chełmno and Majdanek death camps in occupied Poland. Concurrent Nazi persecutions killed millions of other non-Jewish civilians and prisoners of war (POWs); the term Holocaust is sometimes used to include the murder and persecution of non-Jewish groups, such as the Romani and Soviet POWs.

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.

Two Air France Douglas DC-4 aircraft crashed two days apart in June 1950 within a few miles of each other and under similar circumstances. These two accidents, on 12 and 14 June, occurred while the aircraft were operating the same route from Saigon to Paris. Both aircraft had stopped at Karachi Airport and crashed into the sea on approach to Bahrain. A total of 86 passengers and crew were killed: 46 on June 12 and 40 on June 14. There were a total of 19 survivors: 6 on June 12 and 13 on June 14.

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. Pius reigned as pope during a highly consequential 19 years that included the Second World War, the Holocaust and the beginning of the Cold War.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is an American civil rights organization formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E. B. Du Bois, Mary White Ovington, Moorfield Storey, Ida B. Wells, Lillian Wald, Emil G. Hirsch and Henry Moskowitz. Over the years, leaders of the organization have included Thurgood Marshall and Roy Wilkins. The NAACP is the largest and oldest civil rights group in America.

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 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.

The State of Uttar Pradesh v. Raj Narain was an election case heard by the Allahabad High Court in 1975 that found the Prime Minister of India Indira Gandhi guilty of electoral malpractices. The election petition was filed by Raj Narain, a candidate from the Rae Bareli constituency, who alleged misuse of public finances by a political party for the re-election of the Prime Minister of India. In a landmark verdict, Justice Jagmohanlal Sinha of the court held Indira Gandhi guilty under Section 123(7) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, for obtaining assistance from gazetted officers in furtherance of her election prospects. The court declared Gandhi's election "null and void" and disqualified her from holding any elected office for six years from the date of the judgment. The decision led to an ensuing legal battle and political crisis leading to the imposition of a state of emergency by Gandhi in 1975.

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 being 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 technology, finance and commerce, culture, 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 Central African Republic (CAR) is a landlocked country in Central Africa. It is bordered by Chad to the north, Sudan to the northeast, South Sudan to the east, the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the south, the Republic of the Congo to the southwest, and Cameroon to the west. The CAR covers a land area of about 620,000 square kilometres (240,000 sq mi). As of 2024, it has a population of 5,357,744, consisting of about 80 ethnic groups. Having been a French colony under the name Ubangi-Shari, Sango is its national language and was also its co-official language alongside French. Its capital and largest city is Bangui, which sits on the country's southern border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

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.

Austral Líneas Aéreas Flight 046 was an Argentine scheduled domestic flight from Buenos Aires to Posadas, via Resistencia, that undershot the runway at Libertador General José de San Martín Airport in Posadas on June 12, 1988, in conditions of poor visibility. All 22 of the occupants of flight 046 were killed in the crash.

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.

Presidential elections were held in Nigeria on 12 June 1993. The elections were the first held since the 1983 military coup d'état which ended the Second Nigerian Republic. They were the culmination of a transition from military to civilian rule spearheaded by incumbent president Ibrahim Babangida. However, the results were annulled by the military government, citing electoral irregularities, when unofficial returns indicated a substantial victory for Moshood Abiola of the Social Democratic Party over his opponent, Bashir Tofa of the National Republican Convention.

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.

Presidential elections were held in Iran on 12 June 2009, with incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad running against three challengers. The next morning the Islamic Republic News Agency, Iran's news agency, announced that with two-thirds of the votes counted, Ahmadinejad had won the election with 62% of the votes cast, and that Mir-Hossein Mousavi had received 34% of the votes cast. There were large irregularities in the results and people were surprised by them, which resulted in protests of millions of Iranians, across every Iranian city and around the world and the emergence of the opposition Iranian Green Movement.

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. The Iraqi Shias are an ethnoreligious group of Iraq that constitute the majority of the population. Their historical stronghold has been Lower Mesopotamia, historically known as Babylonia.

On June 12, 2016, 29-year-old Omar Mateen shot and killed 49 people and wounded 58 in a mass shooting at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, United States. Pulse was hosting a "Latin Night", and most of the victims were of Latino descent.

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 fourth-largest total area and third-largest population, exceeding 341 million.

Kassym-Jomart Kemeluly Tokayev is a Kazakh politician and diplomat who has served as the second president of Kazakhstan since 2019. He previously served as Prime Minister from 1999 to 2002 and as Chairman of the Senate from 2007 to 2011 and again from 2013 to 2019. Tokayev also held the position of Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva from 2011 to 2013.

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.

Air India Flight 171 was a scheduled international passenger flight from Ahmedabad Airport, Gujarat, India, to London Gatwick Airport in Crawley, West Sussex, England. On 12 June 2025, at 13:39 IST, the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner operating the flight crashed 32 seconds after takeoff into the student hostels of the Byramjee Jeejeebhoy Medical College, 1.7 kilometres from the runway. Of the 12 crew members and 230 passengers on board, only one passenger survived. On the ground, 19 people were killed, and 67 others were seriously injured.

Elon Reeve Musk is a businessman, industrialist, and former public official who is the chief executive officer (CEO) and largest shareholder of Tesla and SpaceX. Musk has been the wealthiest person in the world since 2025, and briefly became the only trillionaire in June 2026; as of September 2026, Forbes estimates his net worth to be US$964 billion.