June 12

1240 – At the instigation of King Louis IX of France, an inter-faith debate, known as the Disputation of Paris, starts between a Christian monk and four rabbis.

1429 – On the second day of the Battle of Jargeau, Joan of Arc leads the French army in their capture of the city.

1775 – British General Thomas Gage declares martial law in Massachusetts. The British offer a pardon to all colonists who lay down their arms. There would be only two exceptions to the amnesty: Samuel Adams and John Hancock, if captured, were to be hanged.

1776 – The Virginia Declaration of Rights is adopted.
Section 13
That a well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defense of a free state; that standing armies, in time of peace, should be avoided as dangerous to liberty; and that in all cases the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.

1864 – Ulysses S. Grant gives Robert E. Lee a victory when he pulls his Union troops from their position at Cold Harbor, Virginia and moves south.

1898 – During the Spanish -American War, Philippine General Emilio Aguinaldo, recently returned from exile in Hong Kong, has Ambrosio Rianzares Bautista read the Philippines’ Declaration of Independence from Spain.

1899 – An F5 force  tornado strikes the city of New Richmond, Wisconsin, killing 117 people and injuring around 200 more.

1939 – The Baseball Hall of Fame opens in Cooperstown, New York.

1942 – Anne Frank receives a diary for her thirteenth birthday.

1944 – During the invasion of France, American paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division secure the town of Carentan, Normandy, France.

1963 – The film Cleopatra, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, is released in US theaters.  At the time, the most expensive film made.

1967 – In the case of Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court declares all U.S. state laws which prohibit interracial marriage to be unconstitutional.

1987 – At the Brandenburg Gate, U.S. President Ronald Reagan publicly challenges Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall.

1990 – After the fall of the Soviet Union, the parliament of the Russian Federation formally declares its sovereignty.

1991 – Russians elect Boris Yeltsin as the first democratically elected President of Russia.

1999 – Operation Joint Guardian begins when a NATO led United Nations peacekeeping force (KFOR) enters the province of Kosovo in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia under terms of a previous peace treaty.

1994 – Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman are murdered outside Simpson’s home in Los Angeles.

2016 – 49 people are are killed and 58 others injured in an attack on a nightclub catering to homosexuals in Orlando, Florida, by a moslem gunman who is killed in a gunfight with responding police.

2017 – American student Otto Warmbier returns home in a coma after spending 17 months in a North Korean prison and dies a week later.

2018 – President Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un of North Korea hold the first meeting between leaders of their countries in Singapore.