What happened on June 23 ?

1305 - Flemish-French peace treaty signed at Athis-sur-Orge.

1314 - Start of the Battle of Bannockburn south of Stirling, Edward II of England & Robert I of Scotland met in battle. Scotland won and Edward fled the field and Scotland.

1532 - Henry VIII & François I sign secret treaty against Emperor Charles V.

1611 - The mutinous crew of Henry Hudson's fourth voyage sets Henry, his son and seven loyal crew members adrift in an open boat in the Atlantic Ocean; they are never heard from again.

1661 - Marriage contract between Charles II of England & Catharina of Portugal.

1683 - William Penn signs friendship treaty with Lenni Lenape Indians in Pennsylvania.

1713 - French residents of Acadia given one year to declare allegiance to Britain or leave Nova Scotia Canada. [1]

1757 - Battle of Plassey - 3000 British troops under Robert Clive defeat a 50,000 strong Indian army under Siraj Ud Daulah at Plassey.

1758 - Seven Years' War: Battle of Krefeld - British forces defeat French troops at Krefeld in Germany.

1760 - Seven Years' War: Battle of Landshut - Austria beats Prussia.

1794 - Empress Catherine II grants Jews permission to settle in Kiev.

1810 - John Jacob Astor forms the Pacific Fur Company.

1812 - War of 1812: Great Britain had revoked the restrictions on American commerce, thus eliminating one of the chief reasons for going to war.

1858 - Six-year-old Edgardo Mortara is seized by Papal authorities.

1860 - The US Congress establishes the Government Printing Office.

1865 - American Civil War: At Fort Towson in Oklahoma Territory Confederate General Stand Watie surrenders the last significant rebel army.

1887 - The Rocky Mountains Park Act becomes law in Canada, creating that nation's first national park, Banff National Park. [2]

1888 - Frederick Douglass is the first African-American nominated for US president.

1894 - International Olympic Committee is founded at the Sorbonne, Paris, at the initiative of Baron Pierre de Coubertin.

1919 - Defeat of German forces at Cesis in northern Latvia during Estonian Liberation War, now celebrated annually as Estonian Victory Day.

1931 - Wiley Post and Harold Gatty take off from Roosevelt Field, Long Island in an attempt to accomplish the first round-the-world flight in a single-engine plane. [3]

1938 - The Civil Aeronautics Act is signed into law, forming the Civil Aeronautics Authority in the United States.

1938 - Marineland opens near St. Augustine, Florida.

1940 - World War II: German leader Adolf Hitler surveys newly defeated Paris in now occupied France.

1941 - Lithuanian Activist Front initiates Lithuanian 1941 independence from the Soviet Union; it lasted only briefly as the Nazis occupied Lithuania a few weeks later.

1944 - Thomas Mann becomes a US citizen.

1945 - The Imperial Japanese armed forces ended organized resistance to the U.S. armed forces in the Mabuni area on the southern tip of the main island of Okinawa.

1947 - The United States Senate follows the United States House of Representatives in overriding U.S. President Harry S. Truman's veto of the Taft-Hartley Act.

1955 - In the Strahov Stadium in Prague the 1st all-national Spartakiáda begins.

1956 - Gamal Abdel Nasser elected president of Egypt.

1958 - The Dutch Reformed Church accepts women ministers.

1959 - Convicted Manhattan Project spy Klaus Fuchs is released after only nine years in prison and allowed to emigrate to Dresden, East Germany (where he resumed a scientific career).

1959 - A fire in a resort hotel in Stalheim, Norway kills 34 people.

1967 - Cold War: U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson meets with Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin in Glassboro, New Jersey for the three-day Glassboro Summit Conference.

1968 - 74 are killed and 150 injured in a soccer stampede towards a closed exit in a Buenos Aires stadium.

1969 - Warren E. Burger is sworn in as chief justice of the United States Supreme Court by retiring chief Earl Warren.

1972 - Watergate Scandal: U.S. President Richard M. Nixon and White House chief of staff H. R. Haldeman are taped talking about using the Central Intelligence Agency to obstruct the Federal Bureau of Investigation's investigation into the Watergate break-ins.

1973 - A fire at a house in Hull, England, which kills a six year old boy is passed off as an accident; it later emerges as the first of 26 deaths by fire caused over the next seven years by arsonist Peter Dinsdale.

1985 - A bomb planted by terrorists in Air India Flight 182, a Boeing 747, blew-up 31,000 feet (9500 m) above the Atlantic Ocean, South of Ireland, killing all 329 aboard.

1990 - Moldavia declares independence.