POPnews - June 23rd

[The above image is a detail taken from a three panel mural by William Hole, located in Edinburgh's Scottish National Portrait Gallery; it's just one of countless depictions of the Battle of Bannockburn which permeate Scottish life and inform the country's nationalism, the most recent of which is Mel Gibson's factually inaccurate but emotionally resonant 1995 film Braveheart, whose final scene depicts the battle in all its gory glory.]
1305 - The Treaty of Athis-sur-Orge was signed by France's King Philip IV and Robert III, Count of Flanders following the Battle of Mons-en-Pévèle.

1314 - During the First War of Scottish Independence the first day of the Battle of Bannockburn pitted England's Edward II against Robert the Bruce.

1565 - Turgut Reis, Dragut of the Ottoman Navy, died during the Siege of Malta.

1661 - A marriage contract between England's King Charles II and Portugese princess Catherine of Braganza was completed.

1757 - At the Battle of Plassey 3,000 British troops under Robert Clive defeated a 50,000 strong Indian army led by Siraj Ud Daulah.

1758 - During the Seven Years' War Anglo-German forces under Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick defeated the French troops of Le Comte de Clermont at the Battle of Krefeld.

1760 - During the Seven Years' War General von Laudon's Austrians defeated the Prussian forces of General Fouqué at the Battle of Landeshut.

1810 - John Jacob Astor formed the Pacific Fur Company.

1860 - Operations began at the Government Printing Office, which the US Congress had established in March of that year.

1865 - More than two months after the end of the American Civil War, General Stand Watie became the last Confederate commander in the field to surrender to Union forces, which he did at Fort Towson in the Oklahoma Territory.

1894 - The International Olympic Committee was founded at the Sorbonne in Paris upon the initiative of Baron Pierre de Coubertin.

1919 - During the Estonian Liberation War the German Freikorps were defeated at the Battle of Cesis; the day is still celebrated as Victory Day in Estonia.

1931 - Wiley Post and Harold Gatty took off from New York City's Roosevelt Field in an attempt to circumnavigate the world in a single-engine plane.

1941 - The Lithuanian Activist Front declared the country's independence from the Soviet Union; it lasted only briefly, as the Nazis occupied Lithuania a few weeks later.

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

1967 - During the Cold War US President Lyndon B. Johnson met with Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin in Glassboro, New Jersey for the three-day Glassboro Summit Conference.

1969 - Warren E. Burger was sworn in as chief justice of the US Supreme Court by retiring chief Earl Warren.

1983 - Pope John Paul II met with Polish labour leader Lech Wałęsa, marking one of the rare times the hypocritical pontiff ventured into politics without committing hate crimes against gays and lesbians.

1985 - Thanks to the efforts of one Inderjit Singh Reyat, a terrorist bomb aboard Air India Flight 182 exploded, bringing the aircraft down off the coast of Ireland, killing all 329 aboard.
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