June 7
- 1099 – The First Crusade: The Siege of Jerusalem begins.
- 1420 – Troops of the Republic of Venice capture Udine, ending the independence of the Patriarchal State of Friuli.
- 1494 – Spain and Portugal sign the Treaty of Tordesillas which divides the New World between the two countries.
- 1628 – The Petition of Right, a major English constitutional document, is granted the Royal Assent by Charles I and becomes law.
- 1654 – Louis XIV is crowned King of France.
- 1692 – Port Royal, Jamaica, is hit by a catastrophic earthquake; in just three minutes, 1,600 people are killed and 3,000 are seriously injured.
- 1776 – Richard Henry Lee presents the "Lee Resolution" to the Continental Congress. The motion is seconded by John Adams and leads to the United States Declaration of Independence.
- 1800 – David Thompson reaches the mouth of the Saskatchewan River in Manitoba.
- 1810 – The newspaper Gazeta de Buenos Ayres is first published in Argentina.
- 1832 – Asian cholera reaches Quebec, brought by Irish immigrants, and kills about 6,000 people in Lower Canada.
- 1862 – The United States and United Kingdom agree to suppress the slave trade.
- 1863 – During the French intervention in Mexico, Mexico City is captured by French troops.
- 1866 – 1,800 Fenian raiders are repelled back to the United States after they loot and plunder around Saint-Armand and Frelighsburg, Quebec.
- 1880 – War of the Pacific: The Battle of Arica, assault and capture of Morro de Arica (Arica Cape), that ended the Campaña del Desierto (Desert Campaign).
- 1892 – Benjamin Harrison becomes the first President of the United States to attend a baseball game.
- 1892 – Homer Plessy is arrested for refusing to leave his seat in the "whites-only" car of a train; he would lose the resulting court case, Plessy v. Ferguson.
- 1893 – Mohandas Gandhi's first act of civil disobedience.
- 1899 – American Temperance crusader Carrie Nation begins her campaign of vandalizing alcohol-serving establishments by destroying the inventory in a saloon in Kiowa, Kansas.
- 1905 – Norway's parliament dissolves its union with Sweden, a vote that is confirmed by a national plebiscite on August 13 of that year.
- 1906 – Cunard Line's RMS Lusitania is launched at the John Brown Shipyard, Glasgow (Clydebank), Scotland.
- 1909 – Mary Pickford makes her screen debut at the age of 16.
- 1917 – World War I: Battle of Messines – Allied ammonal mines underneath German trenches at Messines Ridge are detonated, killing 10,000 German troops.
- 1919 – Sette giugno: Riot in Malta; four are killed.
- 1929 – The Lateran Treaty is ratified, bringing Vatican City into existence.
- 1936 – The Steel Workers Organizing Committee, a trade union, is founded in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Philip Murray is elected its first president.
- 1938 – The Douglas DC-4E makes its first test flight.
- 1940 – King Haakon VII of Norway, Crown Prince Olav and the Norwegian government leave Tromsø and go into exile in London.
- 1942 – World War II: The Battle of Midway ends.
- 1942 – World War II: Japanese soldiers occupy the American islands of Attu and Kiska, in the Aleutian Islands off Alaska.
- 1944 – World War II: The steamer Danae carrying 350 Cretan Jews and 250 Cretan partisans is sunk without survivors off the shore of Santorini.
- 1944 – World War II: Battle of Normandy – At Abbey Ardennes members of the SS Division Hitlerjugend massacre 23 Canadian prisoners of war.
- 1945 – King Haakon VII of Norway returns with his family to Oslo after five years in exile.
- 1948 – Edvard Beneš resigns as President of Czechoslovakia rather than signing a constitution making his nation a Communist state.
- 1955 – Lux Radio Theater signs off the air permanently. The show launched in New York in 1934, and featured radio adaptations of Broadway shows and popular films.
- 1965 – The Supreme Court of the United States hands down its decision in Griswold v. Connecticut, effectively legalizing the use of contraception by married couples.
- 1967 – Israeli forces enter Jerusalem during the Six-Day War.
- 1971 – The United States Supreme Court overturns the conviction of Paul Cohen for disturbing the peace, setting the precedent that vulgar writing is protected under the First Amendment.
- 1971 – The Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms Division of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service raids the home of Ken Ballew for illegal possession of hand grenades, which all turn out to be inert or dummies.
- 1975 – Sony introduces the Betamax videocassette recorder for sale to the public.
- 1975 – The inaugural Cricket World Cup begins in England.
- 1977 – 500 million people watch on television as the high day of Silver Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II begins.
- 1981 – The Israeli Air Force destroys Iraq's Osiraq nuclear reactor during Operation Opera. The facility could have been used to make nuclear weapons.
- 1982 – Priscilla Presley opens Graceland to the public; the bathroom where Elvis Presley died five years earlier is kept off-limits.
- 1989 – Surinam Airways Flight 764 crashes on approach to Paramaribo-Zanderij International Airport in Suriname due to pilot error, killing 176 of 187 aboard.
- 1991 – Mount Pinatubo explodes generating an ash column 7 kilometres (4.3 mi) high.
- 1995 – The long range Boeing 777 enters service with United Airlines.
- 1998 – James Byrd, Jr. of Texas is killed when white supremacists drag him behind a pickup truck along an asphalt pavement.
- 2000 – The United Nations defines the Blue Line as the border between Israel and Lebanon.
- 2006 – Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, is killed in an airstrike by the United States Air Force.
June 6
- 1513 – Italian Wars: Battle of Novara. Swiss troops defeat the French under Louis de la Tremoille, forcing the French to abandon Milan. Duke Massimiliano Sforza is restored.
- 1523 – Gustav Vasa is elected King of Sweden, marking the end of the Kalmar Union.
- 1644 – The Qing Dynasty Manchu forces led by the Shunzhi Emperor capture Beijing during the collapse of the Ming Dynasty. The Manchus would rule China until 1912 when the Republic of China is established.
- 1654 – Charles X succeeds his abdicated cousin Queen Christina to the Swedish throne.
- 1674 – Shivaji, founder of the Maratha empire is crowned.
- 1683 – The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England, opens as the world's first university museum.
- 1752 – A devastating fire destroys one-third of Moscow, including 18,000 homes.
- 1808 – Napoleon's brother, Joseph Bonaparte is crowned King of Spain.
- 1809 – Sweden promulgates a new Constitution, which restores political power to the Riksdag of the Estates after 20 years of Enlightened absolutism.
- 1813 – War of 1812: Battle of Stoney Creek – A British force of 700 under John Vincent defeats an American force two times its size under William Winder and John Chandler.
- 1832 – The June Rebellion of Paris is put down by the National Guard.
- 1833 – U.S. President Andrew Jackson becomes the first President to ride on a train.
- 1844 – The Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) is founded in London.
- 1857 – Sophia of Nassau marries the future King Oscar II of Sweden-Norway.
- 1859 – Australia: Queensland is established as a separate colony from New South Wales (Queensland Day).
- 1862 – American Civil War: Battle of Memphis – Union forces capture Memphis, Tennessee, from the Confederates.
- 1882 – More than 100,000 inhabitants of Bombay are killed as a cyclone in the Arabian Sea pushes huge waves into the harbour.
- 1882 – The Shewan forces of Menelik II of Ethiopia defeat the Gojjame army in the Battle of Embabo. The Shewans capture Negus Tekle Haymanot of Gojjam, and their victory leads to a Shewan hegemony over the territories south of the Abay River.
- 1889 – The Great Seattle fire destroys the entirety of downtown Seattle, Washington.
- 1892 – Chicago El begins operation
- 1894 – Governor Davis H. Waite orders the Colorado state militia to protect and support the miners engaged in the Cripple Creek miners' strike.
- 1909 – French troops capture Abéché (in modern-day Chad) and install a puppet sultan in the Ouaddai Empire.
- 1912 – The eruption of Novarupta in Alaska begins. It is the second largest volcanic eruption of the 20th century.
- 1918 – World War I: Battle of Belleau Wood – The U.S. Marine Corps suffers its worst single day's casualties while attempting to recapture the wood at Chateau-Thierry.
- 1919 – The Republic of Prekmurje ends.
- 1921 – The Southwark Bridge in London, is opened for traffic by King George V and Queen Mary.
- 1932 – The Revenue Act of 1932 is enacted, creating the first gas tax in the United States, at a rate of 1 cent per US gallon (1/4 ¢/L) sold.
- 1933 – The first drive-in theater opens, in Camden, New Jersey, United States.
- 1934 – New Deal: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Securities Act of 1933 into law, establishing the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
- 1939 – Judge Joseph Force Crater, known as the "Missingest Man in New York", is declared legally dead.
- 1942 – World War II: Battle of Midway. U.S. Navy dive bombers sink the Japanese cruiser Mikuma and four Japanese carriers.
- 1944 – World War II: Battle of Normandy begins. D-Day, code named Operation Overlord, commences with the landing of 155,000 Allied troops on the beaches of Normandy in France. The allied soldiers quickly break through the Atlantic Wall and push inland in the largest amphibious military operation in history.
- 1964 – Under a temporary order, the rocket launches at Cuxhaven, Germany, are terminated, though they never resume.
- 1971 – Soyuz program: Soyuz 11 launches.
- 1971 – A midair collision between a Hughes Airwest Douglas DC-9 jetliner and a United States Marine Corps McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II jet fighter near Duarte, California claims 50 lives.
- 1971 – Vietnam War: The Battle of Long Khanh between Australian and Vietnamese communist forces begins.
- 1974 – A new Instrument of Government is promulgated making Sweden a parliamentary monarchy.
- 1981 – Bihar train disaster A passenger train travelling between Mansi and Saharsa, India, jumps the tracks at a bridge crossing the Bagmati river. The government places the official death toll at 268 plus another 300 missing; however, it is generally believed that the actual figure is closer to 1,000 killed.
- 1982 – 1982 Lebanon War begins: Forces under Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon invade southern Lebanon in their "Operation Peace for the Galilee", eventually reaching as far north as the capital Beirut.
- 1984 – Tetris, one of the best-selling video games of all-time, is released.
- 1985 – The grave of "Wolfgang Gerhard" is exhumed in Embu, Brazil; the remains found are later proven to be those of Josef Mengele, Auschwitz's "Angel of Death". Mengele is thought to have drowned while swimming in February, 1979.
- 1993 – Mongolia holds its first direct presidential elections.
- 2002 – Eastern Mediterranean Event. A near-Earth asteroid estimated at 10 metres diameter explodes over the Mediterranean Sea between Greece and Libya. The resulting explosion is estimated to have a force of 26 kilotons, slightly more powerful than the Nagasaki atomic bomb.
- 2004 – Tamil is established as a Classical language by the President of India, Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam in a joint sitting of the two houses of the Indian Parliament.
- 2005 – The United States Supreme Court upholds a federal law banning cannabis, including medical marijuana, in Gonzales v. Raich.
June 5
- 70 – Titus and his Roman legions breach the middle wall of Jerusalem in the Siege of Jerusalem.
- 1257 – Kraków, Poland receives city rights.
- 1798 – The Battle of New Ross: The attempt to spread United Irish Rebellion into Munster is defeated.
- 1817 – The first Great Lakes steamer, the Frontenac, is launched.
- 1829 – HMS Pickle captures the armed slave ship Voladora off the coast of Cuba.
- 1832 – The June Rebellion breaks out in Paris in an attempt to overthrow the monarchy of Louis-Philippe.
- 1837 – Houston, Texas is incorporated by the Republic of Texas.
- 1849 – Denmark becomes a constitutional monarchy by the signing of a new constitution.
- 1851 – Harriet Beecher Stowe's anti-slavery serial, Uncle Tom's Cabin or, Life Among the Lowly starts a ten-month run in the National Era abolitionist newspaper.
- 1862 – As the Treaty of Saigon is signed, ceding parts of southern Vietnam to France, the guerrilla leader Truong Dinh decides to defy Emperor Tu Duc of Vietnam and fight on against the Europeans.
- 1864 – American Civil War: Battle of Piedmont: Union forces under General David Hunter defeat a Confederate army at Piedmont, Virginia, taking nearly 1,000 prisoners.
- 1883 – The first regularly scheduled Orient Express departs Paris.
- 1888 – The Rio de la Plata Earthquake takes place.
- 1900 – Second Boer War: British soldiers take Pretoria.
- 1915 – Denmark amends its constitution to allow women's suffrage.
- 1916 – Louis Brandeis is sworn in as a Justice of the United States Supreme Court.
- 1917 – World War I: Conscription begins in the United States as "Army registration day".
- 1933 – The U.S. Congress abrogates the United States' use of the gold standard by enacting a joint resolution (48 Stat. 112) nullifying the right of creditors to demand payment in gold.
- 1941 – Four thousand Chongqing residents are asphyxiated in a bomb shelter during the Bombing of Chongqing.
- 1942 – World War II: United States declares war on Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania.
- 1944 – World War II: More than 1000 British bombers drop 5,000 tons of bombs on German gun batteries on the Normandy coast in preparation for D-Day.
- 1945 – The Allied Control Council, the military occupation governing body of Germany, formally takes power.
- 1946 – A fire in the LaSalle Hotel in Chicago, Illinois kills 61 people.
- 1947 – Marshall Plan: In a speech at Harvard University, United States Secretary of State George Marshall calls for economic aid to war-torn Europe.
- 1949 – Thailand elects Orapin Chaiyakan, the first Thai female member of Thailand's Parliament.
- 1956 – Elvis Presley introduces his new single, "Hound Dog", on The Milton Berle Show, scandalizing the audience with his suggestive hip movements.
- 1959 – The first government of the State of Singapore is sworn in.
- 1963 – British Secretary of State for War John Profumo resigns in a sex scandal known as the Profumo Affair.
- 1963 – Movement of 15 Khordad: Protest against arrest of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini by Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. In several cities, masses of angry demonstrators are confronted by tanks and paratroopers.
- 1964 – DSV Alvin is commissioned.
- 1967 – Six-Day War begins: The Israeli air force launches simultaneous pre-emptive attacks on the air forces of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria.
- 1968 – U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy is shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California by Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan. Kennedy dies the next day.
- 1969 – The International communist conference begins in Moscow.
- 1975 – The Suez Canal opens for the first time since the Six-Day War.
- 1975 – The United Kingdom holds its first country-wide referendum, on remaining in the European Economic Community (EEC).
- 1976 – Collapse of the Teton Dam in Idaho, United States.
- 1977 – A coup takes place in Seychelles.
- 1977 – The Apple II, one of the first personal computers, goes on sale.
- 1981 – The Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that five people in Los Angeles, California have a rare form of pneumonia seen only in patients with weakened immune systems, in what turns out to be the first recognized cases of AIDS.
- 1984 – Prime Minister of India Indira Gandhi orders an attack on the Golden Temple, the holiest site of the Sikh religion.
- 1989 – The Unknown Rebel halts the progress of a column of advancing tanks for over half an hour after the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.
- 1995 – The Bose-Einstein condensate is first created.
- 1998 – A strike begins at the General Motors parts factory in Flint, Michigan, that quickly spreads to five other assembly plants (the strike lasted seven weeks).
- 2001 – Tropical Storm Allison makes landfall on the upper-Texas coastline as a strong tropical storm and dumps large amounts of rain over Houston. The storm caused $5.5 billion in damages, making Allison the costliest tropical storm in U.S. history.
- 2003 – A severe heat wave across Pakistan and India reaches its peak, as temperatures exceed 50°C (122°F) in the region.
- 2006 – Serbia declares independence from the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro.
June 4
- 1039 – Henry III becomes Holy Roman Emperor.
- 1411 – King Charles VI granted a monopoly for the ripening of Roquefort cheese to the people of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon as they had been doing for centuries.
- 1615 – Siege of Osaka: Forces under the shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu take Osaka Castle in Japan.
- 1760 – Great Upheaval: New England planters arrive to claim land in Nova Scotia, Canada taken from the Acadians.
- 1783 – The Montgolfier brothers publicly demonstrate their montgolfière (hot air balloon).
- 1792 – Captain George Vancouver claims Puget Sound for the Kingdom of Great Britain.
- 1794 – British troops capture Port-au-Prince in Haiti.
- 1802 – Grieving over the death of his wife, Marie Clotilde of France, King Charles Emmanuel IV of Sardinia abdicates his throne in favor of his brother, Victor Emmanuel.
- 1812 – Following Louisiana's admittance as a U.S. state, the Louisiana Territory is renamed the Missouri Territory.
- 1825 – French American Revolutionary War General Lafayette speaks at what would become Lafayette Square, Buffalo, during his visit to the United States.
- 1859 – Italian Independence wars: In the Battle of Magenta, the French army, under Louis-Napoleon, defeat the Austrian army.
- 1862 – American Civil War: Confederate troops evacuate Fort Pillow on the Mississippi River, leaving the way clear for Union troops to take Memphis, Tennessee.
- 1876 – An express train called the Transcontinental Express arrives in San Francisco, California, via the First Transcontinental Railroad only 83 hours and 39 minutes after leaving New York City.
- 1878 – Cyprus Convention: The Ottoman Empire cedes Cyprus to the United Kingdom but retains nominal title.
- 1896 – Henry Ford completes the Ford Quadricycle, his first gasoline-powered automobile, and gives it a successful test run.
- 1912 – Massachusetts becomes the first state of the United States to set a minimum wage.
- 1913 – Emily Davison, a suffragette, runs out in front of King George V's horse, Anmer, at the Epsom Derby. She is trampled, never regains consciousness and dies a few days later.
- 1916 – World War I: Russia opens the Brusilov Offensive with an artillery barrage of Austro-Hungarian lines in Galicia.
- 1917 – The first Pulitzer Prizes are awarded: Laura E. Richards, Maude H. Elliott, and Florence Hall receive the first Pulitzer for biography (for Julia Ward Howe). Jean Jules Jusserand receives the first Pulitzer for history for his work With Americans of Past and Present Days. Herbert B. Swope receives the first Pulitzer for journalism for his work for the New York World.
- 1919 – Women's rights: The U.S. Congress approves the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which guarantees suffrage to women, and sends it to the U.S. states for ratification.
- 1920 – Hungary loses 71% of its territory and 63% of its population when the Treaty of Trianon is signed in Paris.
- 1928 – President of the Republic of China Zhang Zuolin is assassinated by Japanese agents.
- 1939 – Holocaust: The MS St. Louis, a ship carrying 963 Jewish refugees, is denied permission to land in Florida, United States, after already being turned away from Cuba. Forced to return to Europe, more than 200 of its passengers later die in Nazi concentration camps.
- 1940 – World War II: The Dunkirk evacuation ends – British forces complete evacuation of 300,000 troops from Dunkirk in France. To rally the morale of the country, Winston Churchill delivers his famous "We shall fight on the beaches" speech.
- 1942 – World War II: The Battle of Midway begins. Japanese Admiral Chuichi Nagumo orders a strike on Midway Island by much of the Imperial Japanese navy.
- 1943 – A military coup in Argentina ousts Ramón Castillo.
- 1944 – World War II: A hunter-killer group of the United States Navy captures the German submarine U-505 – the first time a U.S. Navy vessel had captured an enemy vessel at sea since the 19th century.
- 1944 – World War II: Rome falls to the Allies, the first Axis capital to fall.
- 1957 – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his famous Power of Nonviolence speech at the University of California, Berkeley.
- 1961 – In the Vienna summit, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev sparks the Berlin Crisis by threatening to sign a separate peace treaty with East Germany and ending American, British and French access to East Berlin.
- 1965 – Duane Earl Pope robbed the Farmers' State Bank of Big Springs, Nebraska, killing three people execution style and severely wounding a fourth. The crime landed Pope on the FBI Ten Most Wanted list.
- 1967 – Stockport Air Disaster: British Midland flight G-ALHG crashes in Hopes Carr, Stockport, killing 72 passengers and crew.
- 1970 – Tonga gains independence from the United Kingdom.
- 1973 – A patent for the ATM is granted to Donald Wetzel, Tom Barnes and George Chastain.
- 1974 – During Ten Cent Beer Night, inebriated Cleveland Indians fans start a riot, causing the game to be forfeited to the Texas Rangers.
- 1975 – Governor of California Jerry Brown signs the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act into law, the first law in the U.S. giving farmworkers collective bargaining rights.
- 1979 – Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings takes power in Ghana after a military coup in which General Fred Akuffo is overthrown.
- 1986 – Jonathan Pollard pleads guilty to espionage for selling top secret United States military intelligence to Israel.
- 1988 – Three cars on a train carrying hexogen to Kazakhstan explode in Arzamas, Gorky Oblast, USSR, killing 91 and injuring about 1,500.
- 1989 – Ali Khamenei is elected the new Supreme Leader of Islamic republic of Iran by the Assembly of Experts after the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
- 1989 – The Tiananmen Square protests are violently ended in Beijing by the People's Liberation Army.
- 1989 – Solidarity's victory in the first (somewhat) free parliamentary elections in post-war Poland sparks off a succession of peaceful anti-communist revolutions in Eastern Europe, leads to the creation of the so-called Contract Sejm and begins the Autumn of Nations.
- 1989 – Ufa train disaster: A natural gas explosion near Ufa, Russia, kills 575 as two trains passing each other throw sparks near a leaky pipeline.
- 1996 – The first flight of Ariane 5 explodes after roughly 20 seconds. It was a Cluster mission.
- 1998 – Terry Nichols is sentenced to life in prison for his role in the Oklahoma City bombing.
- 2001 – Gyanendra, the last King of Nepal, ascends to the throne after the massacre in the Royal Palace.
June 3
- 350 – Roman usurper Nepotianus, of the Constantinian dynasty, proclaims himself Roman Emperor, entering Rome at the head of a group of gladiators.
- 1140 – French scholar Peter Abelard is found guilty of heresy.
- 1326 – Treaty of Novgorod delineates borders between Russia and Norway in Finnmark.
- 1539 – Hernando de Soto claims Florida for Spain.
- 1608 – Samuel de Champlain completes his third voyage to New France at Tadoussac, Quebec.
- 1620 – Construction of the oldest stone church in French North America, Notre-Dame-des-Anges, begins in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada.
- 1621 – The Dutch West India Company receives a charter for New Netherlands.
- 1658 – Pope Alexander VII appoints François de Laval vicar apostolic in New France.
- 1665 – James Stuart, Duke of York (later to become King James II of England) defeats the Dutch fleet off the coast of Lowestoft.
- 1839 – In Humen, China, Lin Tse-hsü destroys 1.2 million kg of opium confiscated from British merchants, providing Britain with a casus belli to open hostilities, resulting in the First Opium War.
- 1861 – American Civil War: Battle of Philippi (also called the Philippi Races) – Union forces rout Confederate troops in Barbour County, Virginia, now West Virginia, in first land battle of the War.
- 1864 – American Civil War: Battle of Cold Harbor – Union forces attack Confederate troops in Hanover County, Virginia.
- 1866 – The Fenians are driven out of Fort Erie, Ontario, into the United States.
- 1885 – In the last military engagement fought on Canadian soil, Cree leader Big Bear escapes the North West Mounted Police.
- 1888 – The poem "Casey at the Bat", by Ernest Lawrence Thayer, is published in the San Francisco Examiner.
- 1889 – The transcontinental Canadian Pacific Railway is completed.
- 1889 – The first long-distance electric power transmission line in the United States is completed, running 14 miles between a generator at Willamette Falls and downtown Portland, Oregon.
- 1916 – The National Defense Act is signed into law, increasing the size of the United States National Guard by 450,000 men.
- 1932 – Lou Gehrig and teammate Tony Lazzeri hit four home runs in one game, and hit for the natural cycle, respectively. These two feats are both less common than a perfect game, which has occurred twenty one times in one hundred and twenty years.
- 1935 – One thousand unemployed Canadian workers board freight cars in Vancouver, British Columbia, beginning a protest trek to Ottawa, Ontario.
- 1937 – The Duke of Windsor marries Wallis Simpson.
- 1940 – World War II: The Luftwaffe bombs Paris.
- 1940 – World War II: The Battle of Dunkirk ends with a German victory and with Allied forces in full retreat.
- 1941 – World War II: The Wehrmacht razes the Greek village of Kandanos to the ground, killing 180 of its inhabitants.
- 1943 – In Los Angeles, California, white U.S. Navy sailors and Marines clash with Latino youths in the Zoot Suit Riots.
- 1950 – First successful ascent of an Eight-thousander; Annapurna is summited by Maurice Herzog and Louis Lachenal
- 1962 – An Air France Boeing 707 charter, Chateau de Sully crashes after an aborted takeoff from Paris-Orly Airport, killing 130.
- 1963 – The Buddhist crisis: Soldiers of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam attack protesting Buddhists in Huế, South Vietnam, with liquid chemicals from tear gas grenades, causing 67 people to be hospitalised for blistering of the skin and respiratory ailments.
- 1963 – A Northwest Airlines DC-7 crashes in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of British Columbia, killing 101.
- 1965 – Launch of Gemini 4, the first multi-day space mission by a NASA crew. Crew-member Ed White performs the first American spacewalk.
- 1968 – Valerie Solanas, author of SCUM Manifesto, attempts to assassinate Andy Warhol by shooting him three times.
- 1969 – Melbourne-Evans collision: Off the coast of South Vietnam, the Australian aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne cuts the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Frank E. Evans in half.
- 1973 – A Soviet supersonic Tupolev Tu-144 crashes near Goussainville, France, killing 14, the first crash of a supersonic passenger aircraft.
- 1979 – A blowout at the Ixtoc I oil well in the southern Gulf of Mexico causes at least 3,000,000 barrels of oil to be spilled into the waters, the second-worst accidental oil spill ever recorded.
- 1980 – The 1980 Grand Island tornado outbreak. Seven tornadoes hit Grand Island, Nebraska takes five lives, 357 single-family homes, 33 mobile homes, 85 apartments, 49 businesses and $300 million in damages all told, according to National Weather Service and American Red Cross statistics on the deadly storm.
- 1982 – The Israeli ambassador to the United Kingdom, Shlomo Argov, is shot on a London street. He survives but is permanently paralysed.
- 1984 – Operation Blue Star, a military offensive, is launched by the Indian government at Harmandir Sahib, also known as the Golden Temple, the holiest shrine for the Sikhs, in Amritsar. The operation continues until June 6 with casualties, most of them civilians, in excess of 5,000.
- 1989 – The government of China sends troops to force protesters out of Tiananmen Square after seven weeks of occupation.
- 1991 – Mount Unzen erupts in Kyūshū, Japan, killing 43 people, all of them either researchers or journalists.
- 1992 – Aboriginal Land Rights are granted in Australia in Mabo v Queensland (1988), a case brought by Eddie Mabo.
- 1998 – Eschede train disaster: an ICE high speed train derails in Lower Saxony, Germany, causing 101 deaths.
- 2006 – The union of Serbia and Montenegro comes to an end with Montenegro's formal declaration of independence.
