June 12 is the 163rd day of the year (164th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar; 202 days remain until the end of the year.
910 – Battle of Augsburg: The Hungarians defeat the East Frankish army under King Louis the Child, using the famous feigned retreat tactic of the nomadic warriors 1381 – Peasants' Revolt: In England, rebels assemble at Blackheath, just outside London.
1429 – Hundred Years' War: On the second day of the Battle of Jargeau, Joan of Arc leads the French army in their capture of the city and the English commander, William de la Pole, First Duke of Suffolk 1643 – The Westminster Assembly is convened by the Parliament of England, without the assent of Charles I, in order to restructure the Church of England 1665 – Thomas Willett is appointed the first mayor of New York City 1775 – American War of Independence: 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.
1817 – The earliest form of bicycle, the dandy horse, is driven by Karl von Drais.
1864 – American Civil War, Overland Campaign: Battle of Cold Harbor: Ulysses S. Grant loses to the Confederate forces under Robert E. Lee when he pulls his Union troops from their position at Cold Harbor, Virginia and moves south.
1898 – Philippine Declaration of Independence: General Emilio Aguinaldo declares the Philippines' independence from Spain 1899 – New Richmond tornado: The ninth deadliest tornado in U.S. history kills 117 people and injures around 200.
1900 – The Reichstag approves new legislation continuing Germany's naval expansion program, providing for construction of 38 battleships over a 20-year period. Germany's fleet would be the largest in the world.
1914 – Massacre of Phocaea: Turkish irregulars slaughter 50 to 100 Greeks and expel thousands of others in an ethnic cleansing operation in the Ottoman Empire.
1939 – The Baseball Hall of Fame opens in Cooperstown, New York.
1940 – World War II: Thirteen thousand British and French troops surrender to Major General Erwin Rommel at Saint-Valery-en-Caux. 1942 – Anne Frank receives a diary for her thirteenth birthday.
1943 – The Holocaust: Germany liquidates the Jewish Ghetto in Brzeżany, Poland (now Berezhany, Ukraine). Around 1,180 Jews are led to the city's old Jewish graveyard and shot.
1944 – World War II: Operation Overlord: American paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division secure the town of Carentan, Normandy, France.
1954 – Pope Pius XII canonizes Dominic Savio, who was 14 years old at the time of his death, as a saint, making him at the time the youngest unmartyred saint in the Roman Catholic Church. In 2017, Francisco and Jacinta Marto, aged ten and nine at the time of their deaths, are declared as saints.
1963 – NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers is murdered in front of his home in Jackson, Mississippi by Ku Klux Klan member Byron De La Beckwith during the civil rights movement.
1963 – The film Cleopatra, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, is released in U.S. theaters. It was the most expensive film made at the time.
1964 – Anti-apartheid activist and ANC leader Nelson Mandela is sentenced to life in prison for sabotage in South Africa.
1967 – The United States Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia declares all U.S. state laws which prohibit interracial marriage to be unconstitutional.
1981 – The first of the Indiana Jones film franchise, Raiders of the Lost Ark, is released in theaters.
1987 – Cold War: At the Brandenburg Gate, U.S. President Ronald Reagan publicly challenges Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall.
1990 – Russia Day: The parliament of the Russian Federation formally declares its sovereignty.
1991 – In modern Russia's first democratic election, Boris Yeltsin is elected as the President of Russia.
1993 – An election takes place in Nigeria and is won by Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola. Its results are later annulled by the military government of Ibrahim Babangida.
1999 – Kosovo War: Operation Joint Guardian begins when a NATO-led United Nations peacekeeping force (KFor) enters the province of Kosovo in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
2009 – A disputed presidential election in Iran leads to wide-ranging local and international protests.
2014 – Between 1,095 and 1,700 Shia Iraqi people are killed in an attack by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant on Camp Speicher in Tikrit, Iraq. It is the second deadliest act of terrorism in history, only behind 9/11.
2018 – United States President Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un of North Korea held the first meeting between leaders of their two countries in Singapore