17 juni

A messenger stabbed Edward in his chamber with a poisoned dagger. Edward killed him and recovered slowly; the story that his wife Eleanor sucked out the poison was told much later.

Fought mostly on Breed’s Hill. The British took it on the third assault, when the Americans ran out of powder, at a cost of 1,054 killed and wounded by General Gage’s own return, against about 450 Americans.

A motet of 46 bars, K. 618, for Anton Stoll, the choirmaster at Baden, where Constanze was taking the waters and Stoll had found her lodgings.

Two leiter-wagons, each drawn by eight horses, bring Slovaks with great square boxes with rope handles into the courtyard, and Harker finds his door fastened on the outside. The Slovaks look up and point at his window, the “hetman” of the Szgany says something and they laugh, and then they turn…

His first ashram, at Kochrab in 1915, nearly failed when he admitted an untouchable family and its donors walked away; 13,000 rupees left by a mill owner who would not give his name, later known to be Ambalal Sarabhai, saved it. On the banks of the Sabarmati it grew into a community of spinners…

Ruttledge’s second, still larger party was beaten by a monsoon that reached the mountain in late May. For the first time a Sherpa, Rinzing, led the ropes up to the North Col. Shipton and Wyn-Harris were nearly killed by an avalanche on the slope where seven men had died in 1922.

A strike by building workers on Stalinallee against higher work quotas grew into a rising across East Germany, with about a million people out in more than 700 towns. Soviet tanks put it down; at least 55 people were killed.

Assent this day. Daughters, widows and mothers inherited equally with sons from a man who died without a will, and what a woman owned became hers outright. But in the joint family, sons were born with a share of ancestral property and daughters were not.

Australia’s quarantine laws kept foreign horses out, so the riding events of the Melbourne Games were held five months early on the other side of the world, the only time an Olympics has been split between two countries.

Pelé was injured in the second match, and Garrincha carried Brazil instead. Sent off in the semi-final, he was cleared to play the final.

Chile kept the tournament after the 1960 Valdivia earthquake, the strongest ever recorded; its organiser Carlos Dittborn argued that because Chile had nothing, it had to do everything. Chile 2–0 Italy became the Battle of Santiago, with the police on the pitch. Its referee, Ken Aston, later…

1–1 after 90 minutes, then five goals in extra time. Franz Beckenbauer played on with a dislocated shoulder strapped to his side. A plaque at the Azteca remembers the match.

Parliament had already scrapped the Separate Amenities Act, and on 5 June the Land Acts and the Group Areas Act. With race classification gone, the legal pillars of apartheid had fallen, but black South Africans still had no vote. In July the United States lifted its sanctions.

At night armed men from the nearby KwaMadala hostel, Inkatha supporters, went through the township and killed 45 people, the number the Truth and Reconciliation Commission gives. The ANC accused the police of complicity and broke off talks, which resumed only in September.

At night armed men from the nearby KwaMadala hostel, Inkatha supporters, went through the township and killed 45 people, the number the Truth and Reconciliation Commission gives. The ANC accused the police of complicity and walked out of the talks.

A World Cup in a country with no professional league; FIFA made the US promise to found one. 3.59 million people watched the 52 matches, a record for any World Cup until 2026. Diego Maradona was sent home after a failed drug test.