2004Lance Armstrong makes history, winning his 6th consecutive Tour de France.
2000An Air France Concorde supersonic passenger jet crashes just after takeoff from Paris killing all 109 aboard and 5 on the ground.
1999Lance Armstrong wins first Tour de France.
1998The United States Navy commissions the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman and puts her into service.
1997K.R. Narayanan is sworn-in as India's 10th president and the first member of the Dalits caste to hold this office.
1994Israel and Jordan sign the Washington Declaration which formally ends the state of war that has existed between the nations since 1948.
1990Comedian Roseanne Barr grabs her crotch and spits on the ground when performing the U.S. national anthem at a San Diego Padres game.
1989Rock/Hip-hop trio The Beastie Boys release the classic Paul's Boutique.
1984Salyut 7 Cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya becomes the first woman to perform a space walk.
1978The first so-called test-tube baby, Louise Brown, is born.
1977A supposed thunderbird is reported attacking a boy named Marlon Lowe.
1976The first performance of the Philip Glass opera Einstein on the Beach
1973Soviet Mars 5 space probe launched.
1969Vietnam War: US President Richard Nixon declares the Nixon Doctrine stating that the United States now expects its Asian allies to take care of their own military defense. This was the start of the "Vietnamization" of the war.
1965Newport Folk Festival: Bob Dylan goes electric.
1958The African Regroupment Party (PRA) holds its first congress in Cotonou.
195645 miles south of Nantucket Island, the Italian ocean liner SS Andrea Doria sinks after colliding with the SS Stockholm in heavy fog, killing 51.
1952Puerto Rico becomes a self-governing commonwealth of the United States.
1946Nuclear testing: In the first underwater test of the atomic bomb, the surplus USS Saratoga is sunk near Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean when the United States detonates the "Baker Day" device.
1946At Club 500 in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis stage their first show as a comedy team.
1944World War II: Operation Spring
1943World War II: Benito Mussolini is forced out of office by his own Italian Grand Council and is replaced by Pietro Badoglio.
1934Nazis assassinate Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss in a failed coup attempt.
1920Telecommunications: first transatlantic two-way radio broadcast.
1917Sir Thomas Whyte introduces the first income tax in Canada as a "temporary" measure (lowest bracket is 4% and highest is 25%).
1909Louis Bleriot makes the first flight across the English Channel in a heavier-than-air machine (Calais to Dover in 37 minutes).
1908Ajinomoto is born. Kikunae Ikeda of the Tokyo Imperial University discovers that a key ingredient in Konbu soup stock is monosodium glutamate (MSG) and patents a process for manufacturing it.
1907Korea becomes a protectorate of Japan.
1898The United States invasion of Puerto Rico begins with U.S. troops landing at Guánica Bay.
1897Writer Jack London sails to join the Klondike Gold Rush where he will write his first successful stories.
1894The First Sino-Japanese War begins when the Japanese fire upon a Chinese warship.
1869The Japanese daimyō begin returning their land holdings to the emperor as part of the Meiji Restoration reforms. (Traditional Japanese Date: June 17, 1869)
1868Wyoming becomes a United States territory.
1866The U.S. Congress passes legislation authorizing the rank of General of the Army (now called "5-star general") Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant becomes the first to have this rank.
1861American Civil War: The Crittenden-Johnson Resolution is passed by the U.S. Congress stating that the war is being fought to preserve the Union and not to end slavery.
1853Joaquin Murietta, famous Californio bandit known as "Robin Hood of El Dorado", is killed.
1814War of 1812: Battle of Lundy's Lane
1799At Aboukir in Egypt, Napoleon I of France defeats 10,000 Ottomans under Mustafa Pasha.
1797Horatio Nelson loses more than 300 men and his right arm during the failed conquest attempt of Tenerife Island (Spain).
1759French and Indian War: In Canada, British forces capture Fort Niagara from French, who subsequently abandon Fort Rouillé.
1758French and Indian War: The island battery at Fortress Louisbourg in Nova Scotia is silenced and all French warships are destroyed or taken.
1722Three Years War begins along Maine and Massachusetts border.
1593Henry IV of France publicly converts from Protestantism to Roman Catholicism.
1567Don Diego de Losada founds the city of Santiago de Leon de Caracas, modern-day Caracas, the capital city of Venezuela.
1547Henry II (France) crowned
1261The city of Constantinople is recaptured by Nicaean forces under the command of Michael VIII Palaeologus, thus re-establishing the Byzantine Empire. The Byzantines also succeed in capturing Thessalonica and the rest of the Latin Empire.