June 11




1346 - Charles IV of Luxembourg was elected Holy Roman Emperor in Germany.

1488 - James III of Scotland was murdered after his defeat at the Battle of Sauchieburn, Stirling. He was succeeded by his son James IV.

1509 - King Henry VIII married his first of six wives, Catherine of Aragon.

1770 - Captain James Cook discovered the Great Barrier Reef off of Australia when he ran aground.

1776 - In America, the Continental Congress formed a committee to draft a Declaration of Independence from Britain.

1793 - Robert Haeterick was issued the first patent for a stove.

1798 - Napoleon Bonaparte took the island of Malta.

1847 - Sir John Franklin died in Canada while attempting to discover the Northwest Passage. Franklin was an English naval officer and an Arctic explorer.

1880 - Jeanette Rankin was born. She became the first woman elected to the U.S. Congress.

1889 - The Washington Business High School opened in Washington, DC. It was the first school devoted to business in the U.S.

1895 - Charles E. Duryea received the first U.S. patent granted to an American inventor for a gasoline-driven automobile.

1903 - King Alexander and Queen Draga of Serbia were murdered in a coup by members of the Serbian army.

1910 - Jacques-Yves Cousteau was born. He was the French underwater explorer that invented the Aqua-Lung diving apparatus.

1912 - Silas Christoferson became the first pilot to take off from the roof of a hotel.

1915 - British troops took Cameroon in Africa.

1919 - Sir Barton became the first horse to capture the Triple Crown when he won the Belmont Stakes in New York City.

1927 - Charles A. Lindberg was presented the first Distinguished Flying Cross.

1930 - William Beebe dove to a record-setting depth of 1,426 feet off the coast of Bermuda. He used a diving chamber called a bathysphere.

1934 - The Disarmament Conference in Geneva ended in failure.

1936 - The Presbyterian Church of America was formed in Philadelphia, PA.

1937 - Soviet leader Josef Stalin began a purge of Red Army generals.

1940 - The Italian Air Force bombed the British fortress at Malta in the Mediterranean.

1942 - The U.S. and the Soviet Union signed a lend lease agreement to aid the Soviets in their effort in World War II.

1943 - During World War II, the Italian island of Pantelleria surrendered after a heavy air bombardment.

1947 - The U.S. government announced an end to sugar rationing.

1950 - Ben Hogan returned to tournament play after a near fatal car accident. He won the U.S. Open.

1955 - In France, 80 people were killed and more than 100 were injured when three cars crashed on the Le Mans racetrack. The cars had ploughed into the spectator's grandstand.

1963 - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was arrested in Florida for trying to integrate restaurants.

1963 - Buddhist monk Quang Duc immolated himself on a Saigon street to protest the government of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem.

1963 - Alabama Gov. George Wallace allowed two black students to enroll at the University of Alabama.

1967 - Israel and Syria accepted a U.N. cease-fire.

1972 - Hank Aaron tied the National League record for 14 grand-slam home runs in a career.

1973 - After a ruling by the Justice Department of the State of Pennsylvania, women were licensed to box or wrestle.

1977 - In the Netherlands, a 19-day hostage situation came to an end when Dutch marines stormed a train and a school being held by South Moluccan extremist. Two hostages and the six terrorists were killed.

1981 - The first major league baseball player's strike began. It would last for two months.

1981 - In Iran, more than 1,000 people were killed in an earthquake that measured 6.8 on the Richter ScaleRichter Scale. The town of Golbaf in the Kermin province was destroyed.

1982 - Steven Spielberg's movie "E.T." opened.

1985 - Karen Ann Quinlan died at age 31. Quinlan was a comatose patient whose case prompted a historic right-to-die court decision.

1987 - Margaret Thatcher became the first British prime minister in 160 years to win a third consecutive term of office.

1990 - The U.S. Supreme Court struck down a law that would prohibit the desecration of the American Flag.

1991 - Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines erupted. The eruption of ash and gas could be seen for more than 60 miles.

1993 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that people who commit "hate crimes" could be sentenced to extra punishment. The court also ruled in favor of religious groups saying that they indeed had a constitutional right to sacrifice animals during worship services.

1993 - Steven Spielberg's movie "Jurassic Park" opened.

1994 - A car bomb blew up in Guadalajara, Mexico killing five people. The bombing was believed to be drug related.

1998 - Mitsubishi of America agreed to pay $34 million to end the largest sexual harassment case filed by the U.S. government. The federal lawsuit claimed that hundreds of women at a plant in Normal, IL, had endured groping and crude jokes from male workers.

1998 - Pakistan announced moratorium on nuclear testing and offered to talk with India over disputed Kashmir.

2001 - Timothy McVeigh was executed by the U.S. federal government for his role in the bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City.