History of the Day for:
June 12
- 1776: Virginia's colonial legislature became the first to adopt a Bill of Rights.
- 1838: The Iowa Territory was formed.
- 1880: Baseball's first perfect game was recorded by John Lee Richmond of Worchester, Mass.
- 1898: The Philippines declared independence from Spain.
- 1929: Anne Frank, Holocaust diarist, was born. She died of typhus at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945.
- 1937: The Soviet Union executed eight army leaders as a purge under Josef Stalin continued.
- 1939: The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum was dedicated in Cooperstown, N.Y.
- 1948: Golfer Ben Hogan won his first U.S. Open.
- 1963: Civil rights leader Medgar Evers was fatally shot in front of his home in Jackson, Miss.; "Cleopatra," starring Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and Rex Harrison, premiered in New York.
- 1967: The Supreme Court said laws prohibiting interracial marriage were unconstitutional.
- 1978: David Berkowitz was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison for each of the six "Son of Sam" killings.
- 1997: The Treasury Department unveiled a new $50 bill meant to discourage counterfeiting; major-league baseball began inter-league play.
- 1997: Queen Elizabeth II reopens the Globe Theatre in London.
- 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.
- 2000: Sandro Rosa do Nascimento takes hostages while robbing Bus #174 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; the highly-publicized standoff becomes a media circus and ends with the death of do Nascimento and a hostage.
- 2004: A 1.3 kilogram chondrite type meteorite strikes a house in Ellerslie, New Zealand causing serious damage but no injuries.