What Happened on June 12th in History
30 historical events on this date
Shooting begins on Paramount Pictures' Dr. Cyclops, the first horror film photographed in three-strip Technicolor.
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...
World War II: Thirteen thousand British and French troops surrender to General Erwin Rommel at Saint-Valery-en-Caux.
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. Tanks and aircraft played major...
Anne Frank receives a diary for her thirteenth birthday.
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...
The Holocaust: Germany liquidates the Jewish Ghetto in BrzeĆŒany, Poland (now Berezhany, Ukraine). Around 1,180 Jews are led to the city's old Jewish graveyard and shot.
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...
World War II: Battle of Carentan: American paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division secure the town of Carentan, Normandy, France.
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...
An Air France Douglas DC-4 crashes near Bahrain International Airport, killing 46 people.
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...
Pope Pius XII canonises Dominic Savio, who was 14 years old at the time of his death, as a saint, making him at the time the youngest unmartyred saint in the Roman Catholic Church. In 2017, Francisco and Jacinta Marto, aged ten and nine at the time of their deaths, are declared as saints.
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.
NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers is murdered in front of his home in Jackson, Mississippi, by Ku Klux Klan member Byron De La Beckwith during the civil rights movement.
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...
The film Cleopatra, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, is released in US theaters. It was the most expensive film made at the time.
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...
Anti-apartheid activist and ANC leader Nelson Mandela is sentenced to life in prison for sabotage in South Africa.
Apartheid was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa from 1948 to the early 1990s. It was characterised by an authoritarian political...
The United States Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia declares all U.S. state laws that prohibit interracial marriage to be unconstitutional.
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 of Uttar Pradesh v. Raj Narain: Judge Jagmohanlal Sinha rules against Indira Gandhi in a case on her election to the Indian Parliament, and that she should be banned from holding any public office, triggering a political crisis.
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...
Bryan Allen wins the second Kremer prize for a man-powered flight across the English Channel in the Gossamer Albatross.
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...
The first of the Indiana Jones film franchise, Raiders of the Lost Ark, is released in theaters.
Indiana Jones is an American media franchise consisting of five films and a prequel television series, along with games, comics, and tie-in novels. The franchise centers on the adventures of Dr....
A nuclear disarmament rally and concert is held in New York City.
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...
The Central African Republic's former emperor Jean-BĂ©del Bokassa is sentenced to death for crimes he had committed during his 13-year rule.
The Central African Republic (CAR) is a landlocked country located in Central Africa. It is bordered by Chad to the north, Sudan to the northeast, South Sudan to the east, the Democratic Republic of...
Cold War: At the Brandenburg Gate, U.S. President Ronald Reagan publicly challenges Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall.
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...
Austral LĂneas AĂ©reas Flight 046, a McDonnell Douglas MD-81, crashes short of the runway at Libertador General JosĂ© de San MartĂn Airport, killing all 22 people on board.
Austral LĂneas AĂ©reas Flight 046 was an Argentine scheduled domestic flight from Buenos Aires to Posadas, via Resistencia, that undershot the runway at Libertador General JosĂ© de San MartĂn Airport...
Russia Day: The parliament of the Russian Federation formally declares its sovereignty.
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...
In modern Russia's first democratic election, Boris Yeltsin is elected as the President of Russia.
Presidential elections were held in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) on 12 June 1991. This was the first ever Russian presidential election. The election was held roughly...
Kokkadichcholai massacre: The Sri Lankan Army massacres 152 minority Tamil civilians in the village of Kokkadichcholai near the Eastern Province town of Batticaloa.
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...
An election takes place in Nigeria and is won by Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola. Its results are later annulled by the military government of Ibrahim Babangida.
Presidential elections were held in Nigeria on 12 June 1993. The elections were the first held since the 1983 military coup d'Ă©tat which ended the Second Nigerian Republic. They were the culmination...
Kosovo War: Operation Joint Guardian begins when a NATO-led United Nations peacekeeping force, Kosovo Force (KFor), enters the province of Kosovo in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
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...
A disputed presidential election in Iran leads to wide-ranging local and international protests.
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,...
Between 1,095 and 1,700 Shia Iraqi people are killed in an attack by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant on Camp Speicher in Tikrit, Iraq. It is the second deadliest act of terrorism in history, only behind 9/11.
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. Iraqi...
Forty-nine civilians are killed and 58 others injured in an attack on a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, United States; the gunman, Omar Mateen, is killed in a gunfight with police.
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",...
United States President Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un of North Korea hold the first meeting between leaders of their two countries in Singapore.
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...
Kassym-Jomart Tokayev is inaugurated as the second president of Kazakhstan.
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...
A fire in a residential building in Mangaf, Kuwait City kills at least 50 people.
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...
Air India Flight 171, a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, crashes shortly after takeoff into the B. J. Medical College, Ahmedabad, India, killing 241 out of 242 onboard as well as 19 on the ground. This marked the first fatal crash and hull loss of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.
Air India Flight 171 was a scheduled international passenger flight from Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India, to London Gatwick Airport in Crawley, West...