June 12
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.
HMS Margaretta, commanded by Capt. James Moore, enters Machias Harbor to commandeer a load of lumber for the British Army at Boston. Jeremiah OBrien leads the crew of the American sloop, Unity, and engages the British. After an hour-long bloody struggle, the Americans defeat the British. This action is the first naval engagement of the American Revolution.
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 – Overland Campaign: Battle of Cold Harbor: Ulysses S. Grant gives the Confederate forces under Robert E. Lee a victory when he pulls his Union troops from their position at Cold Harbor, Virginia and moves south.
1942 – Anne Frank receives a diary for her thirteenth birthday.
1944 – Operation Overlord: American paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division secure the town of Carentan, Normandy, France.
1987 – At the Brandenburg Gate, U.S. President Ronald Reagan publicly challenges Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall.
1994 – Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman are murdered outside Simpson’s home in Los Angeles.
1999 – Kosovo War: Operation Joint Guardian begins when a NATO-led United Nations peacekeeping force (KFor) enters the province of Kosovo in Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
Note is later taken of ‘Bill Clinton’s Rules of Engagement‘ as applied to the Serbs in 1999, wherein he decided that the political leaders, bureaucratic support structure, media infrastructure and intellectual underpinnings of his enemies’ war effort were legitimate targets of war.
2016 – Forty-nine civilians are killed and 58 others injured in an attack on a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida; the [moslem] gunman, Omar Mateen, is killed in a gunfight with police.