1155 – Frederick I Barbarossa was crowned emperor of Rome.
1429 – French forces defeated the English at the battle of Patay. The English had been retreating after the siege of Orleans.
1621 – The first duel in America took place in the Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts.
1667 – The Dutch fleet sailed up the Thames toward London.
1778 – Britain evacuated Philadelphia during the U.S. Revolutionary War.
1812 – The War of 1812 began as the U.S. declared war against Great Britain. The conflict began over trade restrictions.
1815 – At the Battle of Waterloo Napoleon was defeated by an international army under the Duke of Wellington. Napoleon abdicated on June 22.
1817 – London’s Waterloo Bridge opened. The bridge, designed by John Rennie, was built over the River Thames.
1861 – The first American fly-casting tournament was held in Utica, NY.
1915 – During World War I, the second battle of Artois ended.
1918 – Allied forces on the Western Front began their largest counter-attack against the German army. (World War I)
1928 – Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean as she completed a flight from Newfoundland to Wales.
1951 – General Vo Nguyen Giap ended his Red River Campaign against the French in Indochina.
1953 – Egypt was proclaimed to be a republic with General Neguib as its first president.
1979 – In Vienna, U.S. President Jimmy Carter and Leonid Brezhnev signed the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) 2.
1983 – Dr. Sally Ride became the first American woman in space aboard the space shuttle Challenger.
2000 – In Algiers, Algeria, the foreign ministers of Ethiopia and Eritrea signed a preliminary cease-fire accord and agreed to work toward a permanent settlement of their two-year border war.
2009 – NASA launched the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter/LCROSS probes to the Moon. It was the first American lunar mission since Lunar Prospector in 1998.
2009 – Greenland assumed control over its law enforcement, judicial affairs, and natural resources from the Kingdom of Denmark. Greenlandic became the official language.