1487Henry VII wins the last battle of the Wars of the Roses
Henry Tudor had taken the English crown at Bosworth in 1485, but the Yorkist cause was not finished. Its leaders found an unlikely figurehead in Lambert Simnel, a boy of about ten from Oxford who was passed off as Edward, Earl of Warwick, the nephew of Edward IV. Backed by Edward IV’s sister Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy, and by John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, a genuine Yorkist claimant, the boy was proclaimed king in Ireland. In June 1487 his supporters landed in Lancashire with Irish troops and about 2,000 German mercenaries under Martin Schwarz.
They marched south and took up a strong position on high ground near the village of East Stoke in Nottinghamshire. On the morning of 16 June 1487 the royal army, its vanguard led by the Earl of Oxford, attacked. The fighting lasted some hours and Henry’s victory was complete: Lincoln and Schwarz were killed along with many of their men, and Simnel was captured. Henry spared the boy, judging him a puppet, and put him to work in the royal kitchens. Stoke Field was the last pitched battle between the rival houses, and it secured the Tudor dynasty.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Britannica: Battle of Stoke ↗
1373England and Portugal sign the world’s oldest alliance
In the 1370s the Hundred Years’ War between England and France had spread into the Iberian peninsula, where the two sides backed rival claimants to the throne of Castile. Portugal, wary of its powerful Castilian neighbour, looked to England for support, and England wanted a friend on the far side of Castile.
On 16 June 1373, in London, envoys agreed a treaty between Edward III of England and King Ferdinand and Queen Eleanor of Portugal, pledging the two kingdoms to peace, friendship and alliance. It was renewed in the Treaty of Windsor of 1386 and sealed by the marriage of John of Gaunt’s daughter Philippa to King John I of Portugal. Reaffirmed many times since, and invoked by Britain during the Second World War to use bases in the Azores, it is the oldest alliance in the world still in force. An original copy is kept at The National Archives in Kew.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: GOV.UK: UK and Portugal celebrate the world’s longest diplomatic alliance ↗
1897A treaty is signed to annex Hawaii to the United States
In 1893 a group of American-born businessmen, backed by US marines, overthrew Queen Liliʻuokalani and set up a provisional government that soon became the Republic of Hawaii. Its leaders wanted the islands joined to the United States, but President Grover Cleveland refused. His successor, William McKinley, took a different view.
On 16 June 1897 McKinley and three representatives of the Republic of Hawaii, Lorrin Thurston, Francis Hatch and William Kinney, signed a treaty of annexation, which went to the Senate for ratification. Native Hawaiians organised against it: the groups Hui Aloha ʻĀina and Hui Kālaiʻāina gathered more than 21,000 signatures on petitions opposing annexation, which were taken to Washington. The treaty never won the two-thirds majority it needed. But in 1898, during the war with Spain, Congress annexed Hawaii by a joint resolution instead, and McKinley signed it on 7 July.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: US National Archives: The 1897 Petition Against the Annexation of Hawaii ↗
1924Sun Yat-sen opens the Whampoa Military Academy
In the early 1920s China was divided among rival warlords, and Sun Yat-sen’s Nationalist Party held only a base around Canton (Guangzhou) in the south. Sun concluded that the revolution needed an army of its own, loyal to the party rather than to any general. With money, weapons and advisers from the Soviet Union, and in alliance with the young Chinese Communist Party, he set up an officers’ school on Changzhou Island at Whampoa (Huangpu), downriver from Canton.
The academy opened on 16 June 1924, with Chiang Kai-shek as its first commandant. At the opening ceremony Sun gave an address whose words later became the national anthem of the Republic of China. Whampoa trained cadets in politics as well as soldiering, and its graduates led the Northern Expedition that reunified much of China under the Nationalists in 1926 to 1928. Former Whampoa men later commanded on both sides of China’s civil war. The academy moved with the Nationalist government to Taiwan, where it continues as the Republic of China Military Academy in Kaohsiung.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Republic of China Military Academy: Academy history ↗
1976The schoolchildren of Soweto march against apartheid education
Under apartheid, black South African children were taught in a separate and deliberately inferior system of ‘Bantu education’. In 1974 the government ordered that Afrikaans, which many black South Africans saw as the language of their oppressors, be used alongside English to teach key subjects in black secondary schools. Pupils and teachers objected, and in Soweto, the vast township outside Johannesburg, students began to organise.
On the morning of 16 June 1976 more than 20,000 pupils set out on a peaceful march towards Orlando Stadium. Police blocked their way and opened fire. Among the first to die was 12-year-old Hector Pieterson; a photograph by Sam Nzima of the dying boy being carried by a fellow student was published around the world. Protests spread across the country over the following months, and hundreds of people, many of them young, were killed. The uprising drew a new generation into the struggle against apartheid, and since 1994 16 June has been a public holiday in South Africa, Youth Day.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: South African History Online: Hector Pieterson ↗
