26 Khordad 1385

Events

• 632 (1394 years ago) Yazdegerd III ascends the throne as king (shah) of the Persian Empire. He becomes the last ruler of the Sasanian dynasty (modern Iran).
• 1858 (168 years ago) Abraham Lincoln delivers his House Divided speech in Springfield, Illinois.
• 1940 (86 years ago) The Soviet Union occupies Lithuania, which will eventually become the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR).
• 1961 (65 years ago) While on tour with the Kirov Ballet in Paris, Rudolf Nureyev defects from the Soviet Union.
• 1981 (45 years ago) US President Ronald Reagan awards the Congressional Gold Medal to Ken Taylor, Canada's former ambassador to Iran, for helping six Americans escape from Iran during the hostage crisis of 1979–81; he is the first foreign citizen bestowed the honor.
• 1997 (29 years ago) Fifty people are killed in the Daïat Labguer (M'sila) massacre in Algeria.
• 2010 (16 years ago) Bhutan becomes the first country to institute a total ban on tobacco.
• 2015 (11 years ago) American businessman Donald Trump announces his campaign to run for President of the United States in the upcoming election.

Births

• 1723 (303 years ago) Adam Smith, Scottish philosopher and economist (died 1790)
• 1829 (197 years ago) Geronimo, Apache military leader (died 1909)
• 1858 (168 years ago) Gustaf V, King of Sweden (died 1950)
• 1882 (144 years ago) Mohammad Mosaddegh, Iranian educator and politician, 60th Prime Minister of Iran (died 1967)
• 1902 (124 years ago) Barbara McClintock, American geneticist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1992)
• 1929 (97 years ago) Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, Emir of Kuwait (died 2020)
• 1967 (59 years ago) Jürgen Klopp, German footballer and manager
• 1971 (55 years ago) Tupac Shakur, American rapper and producer (died 1996)

Deaths

• 1722 (304 years ago) John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, English general and politician, Lord Lieutenant of Oxfordshire (born 1650)
• 1944 (82 years ago) Marc Bloch, French historian and academic (born 1886)
• 1958 (68 years ago) Imre Nagy, Hungarian politician, 3rd Prime Minister of Hungary (born 1895)
• 1977 (49 years ago) Wernher von Braun, German-American physicist and engineer (born 1912)
• 1979 (47 years ago) Nicholas Ray, American actor, director, and screenwriter (born 1911)
• 2016 (10 years ago) Jo Cox, English political activist and MP (born 1974)
• 2017 (9 years ago) Helmut Kohl, German politician, Chancellor of Germany (born 1930)
• 2026 Daveigh Chase, American actress (born 1990)

All 393 events, births and deaths of June 16