1215King John seals Magna Carta at Runnymede
By 1215 King John of England had lost most of his lands in France, quarrelled with the Pope and squeezed his barons with heavy taxes and arbitrary fines. A group of them rose in rebellion and seized London. On 10 June the king met the rebel leaders in the meadow at Runnymede, beside the Thames near Windsor, to talk terms, with Archbishop Stephen Langton helping to shape the draft.
On 15 June 1215 John set his seal to the charter, and four days later the barons renewed their allegiance. Its 63 clauses dealt with feudal dues, the rights of the Church and the City of London, and promised that no free man would be imprisoned or stripped of his rights except by the lawful judgement of his peers or the law of the land. The peace did not last: the Pope annulled the charter within weeks and civil war followed. But it was reissued after John’s death, and in later centuries it became a symbol of the idea that even a king is subject to the law.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: The National Archives: Magna Carta agreed, 1215 ↗
1389Serbs and Ottomans meet on the plain of Kosovo
In the later 14th century the Ottoman Turks were pushing steadily into the Balkans. In 1389 Sultan Murad I led a great army against Prince Lazar Hrebeljanović of Serbia, who had gathered Serbian nobles and allies to stop him. The two armies met at Kosovo Polje, the Field of Blackbirds, on 15 June 1389 by the calendar then in use, which is 28 June in the modern one.
It was one of the largest battles of the late Middle Ages, and both leaders died in it. Murad was killed by a Serbian noble, remembered in legend as Miloš Obilić, who is said to have pretended to defect to the Ottoman camp; Lazar was killed in the fighting or executed after being captured. The Ottomans held the field, and within a few years Serbia had become their vassal. The battle became the heart of Serbian national memory and epic poetry, and it is still commemorated each year on 28 June, St Vitus’s Day.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Britannica: Battle of Kosovo (1389) ↗
1813Bolívar declares a war to the death in Venezuela
Venezuela’s first republic had collapsed in 1812, and Simón Bolívar had fled to New Granada, in what is now Colombia. In May 1813 he crossed back into Venezuela at the head of a small army, beginning what became known as the Admirable Campaign, and marched through the Andes towards Caracas.
At the town of Trujillo, on 15 June 1813, he issued his Decree of War to the Death. Pointing to the cruelty of the royalist forces, it announced that Spaniards who did not actively support independence would be put to death, while Americans would be spared. Bolívar went on to win a string of battles and entered Caracas on 6 August 1813, where he was hailed as the Liberator. The decree turned the struggle into a war of terrible reprisals on both sides, and it has divided opinion about Bolívar ever since.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: North Carolina State University (R. Slatta): Bolívar declares War to the Death, 1813 ↗
1919Alcock and Brown fly the Atlantic without stopping
In 1913 the London Daily Mail offered a prize of £10,000 for the first non-stop flight across the Atlantic. The First World War put the challenge on hold, but in 1919 several teams gathered in Newfoundland to try. Among them were the pilot John Alcock and the navigator Arthur Whitten Brown, both veterans of the war, with a Vickers Vimy, a converted twin-engined bomber.
They took off from St John’s on 14 June 1919 and flew through fog, cloud and snow, often unable to see the sea or the stars. After about 16 hours in the air they crossed the Irish coast and, on 15 June, put down in what looked like a green field near Clifden in County Galway. It was a bog, and the aircraft tipped on to its nose, but neither man was badly hurt. Both were knighted, and their Vimy is now in the Science Museum in London.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Britannica: First nonstop transatlantic flight of 1919 ↗
1991Mount Pinatubo erupts in the Philippines
Mount Pinatubo, on the island of Luzon, had been quiet for about 500 years, and few people living around it knew it was a volcano. In the spring of 1991 it began to stir with earthquakes and steam blasts. Scientists from the Philippine volcanology institute and the US Geological Survey watched it closely, warned of a major eruption and helped to move tens of thousands of people out of the danger zone.
The climactic eruption began in the early afternoon of 15 June 1991 and lasted about nine hours, while a typhoon passed over the island. It threw out more than 5 cubic kilometres of material and sent an ash column some 35 kilometres high, making it the second-largest eruption of the 20th century. Rain-soaked ash collapsed roofs and mudflows buried valleys for years afterwards, and several hundred people died, but the evacuations saved many thousands of lives. The sulphur it put into the stratosphere cooled the whole planet slightly for more than a year.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: US Geological Survey: The cataclysmic 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo ↗
