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Events

216 B.C. - The Romans are defeated at the Battle of Cannae by Hannibal.

1610 - Henry Hudson sails into what it is now known as Hudson Bay, thinking he had made it through the Northwest Passage and reached the Pacific Ocean.

1776 - Delegates to the Continental Congress begin signing the United States Declaration of Independence.

1790 - The first US Census is conducted.

1798 - Second Coalition: The Battle of the Nile between French and British navies ends with a British victory.

1869 - Japan's samurai, farmer, artisan, merchant class system is abolished as part of the Meiji Restoration reforms. (Traditional Japanese date: June 25, 1869).

1870 - Tower Subway, the world's first underground tube railway, opens in London.

1903 - Fall of the Ottoman Empire: Unsuccessful uprising of the Bulgarians against Ottoman Turkey, also known as the Ilinden uprising.

1916 - World War I: Austrian sabotage causes the sinking of the Italian battleship Leonardo da Vinci in Taranto.

1918 - Japan announces that it is deploying troops to Siberia in the aftermath of World War I.

1934 - Gleichschaltung: Adolf Hitler becomes Führer of Germany.

1943 - PT-109, with future president of the United States Lieutenant John F. Kennedy commanding, sinks.

1945 - World War II: Potsdam Conference, in which the Allied Powers discuss the future of defeated Germany, concludes.

 
 

1964 - North Vietnam allegedly fires on a US destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin Incident.

1967 - The second Blackwall Tunnel opens in Greenwich, London.

1980 - A bomb explodes at the railway station in Bologna, Italy, killing 85 people and wounding more than 200.

1985 - A Delta Air Lines Lockheed L-1011 TriStar crashes at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport in Texas, killing 137.

1990 - Iraq invades Kuwait, eventually leading to the Gulf War.

2004 - Monday demonstrations against social cutbacks began in Germany

2005 - Air France Flight 358 skids off the runway at Toronto Pearson International Airport outside Toronto, Canada, destroying the plane but resulting in no loss of life.

 
 

 

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