June 14 in History

William III and II, also known as William of Orange, was the sovereign Prince of Orange from birth, Stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Guelders, and Overijssel in the Dutch Republic from 1672, and King of England, Ireland, and Scotland from 1689 until his death in 1702. He ruled England, Scotland, and Ireland with his wife, Queen Mary II, and their joint reign is known as that of William and Mary.

The Second Continental Congress (1775–1781) was the meeting of delegates from the Thirteen Colonies that united in support of the American Revolution and Revolutionary War, which established American independence from the British Empire. The Congress constituted a new federation that it first named the United Colonies of North America, and in 1776, renamed the United States of America. The Congress began convening in present-day Independence Hall in Philadelphia, on May 10, 1775, with representatives from 12 of the 13 colonies, following the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the first battles of the Revolutionary War, which were fought on April 19, 1775.

Napoleon Bonaparte, later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was Emperor of the French from 18 May 1804 until his first abdication in 1814, with a brief restoration during the Hundred Days in 1815. He rose to prominence as a general during the French Revolution and led a series of military campaigns across Europe and the Middle East during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. As a statesman, he implemented numerous legal and administrative reforms in France and Europe.

Badi VII was the last ruler of the Funj Sultanate.

French Algeria, also known as Colonial Algeria, was a colony and later an integral part of France. French rule lasted from the beginning of the French conquest in 1830 until the end of the Algerian War which resulted in Algeria gaining independence on 5 July 1962.

The California Republic, commonly known as the Bear Flag Republic, was a short-lived unrecognized breakaway state from Mexico, that existed from June 14, 1846 to July 9, 1846. It militarily controlled an area north of San Francisco, in and around what is now Sonoma County in California.

The siege of Port Hudson was the final engagement in the Union campaign to recapture the Mississippi River in the American Civil War. While Union General Ulysses Grant was besieging Vicksburg upriver, General Nathaniel Banks was ordered to capture the lower Mississippi Confederate stronghold of Port Hudson, Louisiana, then to go to Grant's aid. When his assault failed, Banks settled into a 48-day siege, the longest in US military history up to that point. A second attack also failed, and it was only after the fall of Vicksburg that the Confederate commander, General Franklin Gardner, surrendered the port. The Union gained control of the river and navigation from the Gulf of Mexico through the Deep South and to the river's upper reaches.

The White Rajahs of Sarawak were a hereditary monarchy of the Brooke family, who founded and ruled the Raj of Sarawak as a sovereign state, located on the northwest coast of the island of Borneo in Maritime Southeast Asia, from 1841 to 1946. Of British origin, the first ruler, James Brooke was granted the province of Kuching – which was known as Sarawak Asal – by the Sultanate of Brunei for helping fight piracy and insurgency among the indigenous peoples in 1841 and received independent kingdom status.

The Naval Laws were five separate laws passed by the German Empire, in 1898, 1900, 1906, 1908, and 1912. These acts, championed by Kaiser Wilhelm II and his State Secretary for the Navy, Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, committed Germany to building up a navy capable of competing with the Royal Navy of the United Kingdom.

John Alcock and Arthur Brown were British aviators who, in 1919, made the first non-stop transatlantic flight. They flew a modified First World War Vickers Vimy bomber from St. John's, Newfoundland, to Clifden, County Galway, Ireland. The Secretary of State for Air, Winston Churchill, presented them with the Daily Mail prize of £10,000 for the first crossing of the Atlantic Ocean by aeroplane in "less than 72 consecutive hours". The flight carried nearly 200 letters, the first transatlantic airmail. The two aviators were knighted by King George V at Windsor Castle a week later.

The Australian Eastern Mission (AEM) was a 1934 diplomatic tour of East and South-East Asia led by Australian deputy prime minister John Latham. The mission was the first such official tour sent by Australia outside of the British Empire and has been seen as a landmark in Australian foreign policy and engagement with Asia.

The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937, Pub. L. 75–238, 50 Stat. 551, enacted August 2, 1937, was a United States Act that placed a tax on the sale of cannabis. It was the first national regulation on cannabis in the US.

The Soviet Union issued an ultimatum to Lithuania before midnight of 14 June 1940. The Soviets, using a formal pretext, demanded that an unspecified number of Soviet soldiers be allowed to enter the Lithuanian territory and that a new pro-Soviet government be formed. The ultimatum and subsequent incorporation of Lithuania into the Soviet Union stemmed from the division of Eastern Europe into the German and Soviet spheres of influence agreed in the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939. Lithuania, along with Latvia and Estonia, fell into the Soviet sphere. According to the Soviet–Lithuanian Mutual Assistance Treaty of October 1939, Lithuania agreed to allow some 20,000 Soviets troops to be stationed at bases within Lithuania in exchange for receiving a portion of the Vilnius Region. Further Soviet actions to establish its dominance in its sphere of influence were delayed by the Winter War with Finland and resumed in spring 1940 when Germany was making rapid advances in western Europe. Despite the threat to the country's independence, Lithuanian authorities did little to plan for contingencies and were unprepared for the ultimatum.

The June deportation of 1941 was a mass deportation of tens of thousands of people during World War II from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, present-day western Belarus and western Ukraine, and present-day Moldova – territories which had been occupied by the Soviet Union in 1939–1940 – into the interior of the Soviet Union.

The Philippine Army (PA) is the main, oldest and largest branch of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), responsible for ground warfare. As of 2025, it had an estimated strength of 110,000 personnel. The service branch was established on December 21, 1935, as the Army of the Philippines.

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.

Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was the 34th president of the United States, serving from 1953 to 1961. A General of the Army, Eisenhower was the supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force. His successful leadership in Operation Torch (1942–1943) and Operation Overlord was pivotal to the Allied victory in World War II.

The Disneyland Monorail is an attraction and transportation line at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California, United States. It was the first daily operating monorail in the country.

The Roman Curia comprises the administrative institutions of the Holy See. It is sometimes incorrectly referred to as the Vatican Curia.

Japan Air Lines Flight 471 was a Japan Air Lines international flight from Don Mueang International Airport in Bangkok, Thailand, to Palam International Airport in New Delhi, India. On 14 June 1972 the Douglas DC-8-53 operating the flight, registered JA8012, crashed short of the New Delhi airport, killing 86 of the 89 occupants: 10 of 11 crew members, and 76 of 78 passengers. Four people on the ground were also killed.

The European Economic Community (EEC) was a regional organisation created by the Treaty of Rome of 1957, aiming to foster economic integration among its member states. It was subsequently renamed the European Community (EC) upon becoming integrated into the first pillar of the newly formed European Union (EU) in 1993. In the popular language, the singular European Community was sometimes inaccurately used in the wider sense of the plural European Communities, in spite of the latter designation covering all the three constituent entities of the first pillar. The EEC was also known as the European Common Market (ECM) in the English-speaking countries, and sometimes referred to as the European Community even before it was officially renamed as such in 1993. In 2009, the EC formally ceased to exist and its institutions were directly absorbed by the EU. This made the Union the formal successor institution of the Community.

The 1994 Vancouver Stanley Cup Riot occurred in Downtown Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, on the evening of June 14, 1994, and continued into the following morning. The riot followed Game 7 of the 1994 Stanley Cup Finals in which the Vancouver Canucks lost to the New York Rangers. It was Vancouver's first riot since 1972, when the Rolling Stones American Tour 1972 led to confrontations between the police and 2,000 outside the Pacific Coliseum.

On 14 June 2014, an Ilyushin Il-76 transport aircraft of the 25th Transport Aviation Brigade of the Ukrainian Air Force was shot down by forces of the Russia-backed separatists from Luhansk People's Republic while on approach to land at Luhansk International Airport, Ukraine, during the initial phase of the war in Donbas. The aircraft was carrying troops and equipment from an undisclosed location. All 49 people on board were killed.