0455 – Rome was sacked by the Vandal army.
1487 – The War of the Roses ended with the Battle of Stoke.
1567 – Mary, Queen of Scots, was imprisoned in Lochleven Castle in Scotland.
1815 – Napoleon defeated the Prussians at the Battle of Ligny, Netherlands.
1858 – In a speech in Springfield, IL, U.S. Senate candidate Abraham Lincoln said the slavery issue had to be resolved. He declared, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
1897 – The U.S. government signed a treaty of annexation with Hawaii.
1922 – Henry Berliner accomplished the first helicopter flight at College Park, MD.
1925 – France accepted a German proposal for a security pact.
1932 – The ban on Nazi storm troopers was lifted by the von Papen government in Germany.
1940 – Marshal Henri-Philippe Petain became the prime minister of the Vichy government of occupied France.
1941 – U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the closure of all German consulates in theUnited States. The deadline was set as July 10.
1952 – “Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl” was published in the United States.
1955 – The U.S. House of Representatives voted to extend Selective Service until 1959.
1955 – Pope Pius XII excommunicated Argentine President Juan Peron. The ban was lifted eight years later.
1955 – Argentine naval officers launched an attack on President Juan Peron’s headquarters. The revolt was suppressed by the army.
1961 – Rudolf Nureyev defected from the Soviet Union while in Paris, traveling with the Leningrad Kirov Ballet.
1963 – 26-year-old Valentina Tereshkova went into orbit aboard the Vostok 6 spacecraft for three days. She was the first female space traveler.
1972 – Ulrike Meinhof was captured by West German police in Hanover. She was co-founder of the Baader-Meinhof terrorist group and the Red Army Faction (Rote Armee Fraktion).
1975 – The Simonstown agreement on naval cooperation between Britain and South Africa ended. The agreement was formally ended by mutual agreement after 169 years.
1983 – Yuri Andropov was elected chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. The position was the equivalent of president.
1984 – Wilson Ferreira Aldunate was arrested upon his return from an eleven year exile. Aldunate had been a popular Uruguayan opposition leader.
1992 – U.S. President George H.W. Bush welcomed Russian President Boris Yeltsin to a meeting in Washington, DC. The two agreed in principle to reduce strategic weapon arsenals by about two-thirds by the year 2003.
1996 – Russian voters had their first independent presidential election. Boris Yeltsin was the winner after a run-off.