Events on June 26 67
Year 221
Roman emperor Elagabalus adopts his cousin Alexander Severus as his heir and receives the title of Caesar.
Year 363
Roman emperor Julian is killed during the retreat from the Sasanian Empire. General Jovian is proclaimed Emperor by the troops on the battlefield.
Year 699
En no Ozuno, a Japanese mystic and apothecary who will later be regarded as the founder of a folk religion Shugendō, is banished to Izu Ōshima.
Year 1295
Przemysł II crowned king of Poland, following Ducal period. The white eagle is added to the Polish coat of arms.
Year 1409
Western Schism: The Roman Catholic Church is led into a double schism as Petros Philargos is crowned Pope Alexander V after the Council of Pisa, joining Pope Gregory XII in Rome and Pope Benedict XII in Avignon.
Year 1460
Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, and Edward, Earl of March, land in England with a rebel army and march on London.
Year 1541
Francisco Pizarro is assassinated in Lima by the son of his former companion and later antagonist, Diego de Almagro the younger. Almagro is later caught and executed.
Year 1718
Alexei Petrovich, Tsarevich of Russia, Peter the Great's son, mysteriously dies after being sentenced to death by his father for plotting against him.
Year 1740
A combined force of Spanish, free blacks and allied Indians defeat a British garrison at the Siege of Fort Mose near St. Augustine during the War of Jenkins' Ear.
Year 1794
French Revolutionary Wars: Battle of Fleurus marked the first successful military use of aircraft.
Year 1843
Treaty of Nanking comes into effect, Hong Kong Island is ceded to the British "in perpetuity".
Year 1870
The Christian holiday of Christmas is declared a federal holiday in the United States.
Year 1889
Bangui is founded by Albert Dolisie and Alfred Uzac in what was then the upper reaches of the French Congo.
Year 1917
The American Expeditionary Forces begin to arrive in France. They will first enter combat four months later.
Year 1918
Allied Forces under John J. Pershing and James Harbord defeat Imperial German Forces under Wilhelm, German Crown Prince in the Battle of Belleau Wood.
Year 1934
United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Federal Credit Union Act, which establishes credit unions.
Year 1940
World War II: Under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the Soviet Union presents an ultimatum to Romania requiring it to cede Bessarabia and the northern part of Bukovina.
Year 1941
World War II: Soviet planes bomb Kassa, Hungary (now Košice, Slovakia), giving Hungary the impetus to declare war the next day.
Year 1944
World War II: San Marino, a neutral state, is mistakenly bombed by the RAF based on faulty information, leading to 35 civilian deaths.
Year 1944
The Battle of Osuchy in Osuchy, Poland, one of the largest battles between Nazi Germany and Polish resistance forces, ends with the defeat of the latter.
Year 1948
William Shockley files the original patent for the grown-junction transistor, the first bipolar junction transistor.
Year 1948
Shirley Jackson's short story The Lottery is published in The New Yorker magazine.
Year 1952
The Pan-Malayan Labour Party is founded in Malaya, as a union of statewide labour parties.
Year 1953
Lavrentiy Beria, head of MVD, is arrested by Nikita Khrushchev and other members of the Politburo.
Year 1955
The South African Congress Alliance adopts the Freedom Charter at the Congress of the People in Kliptown.
Year 1959
Swedish boxer Ingemar Johansson becomes world champion of heavy weight boxing, by defeating American Floyd Patterson on technical knockout after two minutes and three seconds in the third round at Yankee Stadium.
Year 1960
The former British Protectorate of British Somaliland gains its independence as Somaliland.
Year 1963
U.S. President John F. Kennedy gave his "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech, underlining the support of the United States for democratic West Germany shortly after Soviet-supported East Germany erected the Berlin Wall.
Year 1974
The Universal Product Code is scanned for the first time to sell a package of Wrigley's chewing gum at the Marsh Supermarket in Troy, Ohio.
Year 1975
Two FBI agents and a member of the American Indian Movement are killed in a shootout on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota; Leonard Peltier is later convicted of the murders in a controversial trial.
Year 1977
Elvis Presley held his final concert in Indianapolis, Indiana at Market Square Arena
Year 1978
Air Canada Flight 189, flying to Toronto, overruns the runway and crashes into the Etobicoke Creek ravine. Two of the 107 passengers on board perish.
Year 1995
Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani deposes his father Khalifa bin Hamad Al Thani, the Emir of Qatar, in a bloodless coup d'état.
Year 1997
The U.S. Supreme Court rules that the Communications Decency Act violates the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Year 2003
The U.S. Supreme Court rules in Lawrence v. Texas that gender-based sodomy laws are unconstitutional.
Year 2006
Mari Alkatiri, the first Prime Minister of East Timor, resigns after weeks of political unrest.
Year 2007
Pope Benedict XVI reinstates the traditional laws of papal election in which a successful candidate must receive two-thirds of the votes.
Year 2008
A suicide bomber dressed as an Iraqi policeman detonates an explosive vest, killing 25 people.
Year 2012
The Waldo Canyon fire descends into the Mountain Shadows neighborhood in Colorado Springs burning 347 homes in a matter of hours and killing two people.
Year 2013
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled, 5-4, that Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional and in violation of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Year 2015
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled, 5-4, that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marriage under the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Year 2015
Five different terrorist attacks in France, Tunisia, Somalia, Kuwait, and Syria occurred on what was dubbed Bloody Friday by international media. Upwards of 750 people were either killed or injured in these uncoordinated attacks.