The crew of the Russian battleship Potemkin mutinied on the 27th June 1905, an uprising that was immortalized in Sergei Eisenstein’s 1925 silent film.

Potemkin entered service in early 1905 after her gun turrets were fitted, and therefore did not take part in the disastrous Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5. Instead, by the end of June she was off the coast of Ukraine completing maneuvers. It was here that rotten meat allegedly containing maggots was brought on board to feed the crew. Dissatisfied with the ship’s doctor’s opinion that it was fit for human consumption, the crew complained to the captain.

The ...

Sharon Buchanan, a cashier at the Marsh supermarket in Troy, Ohio, scanned the world’s first Universal Product Code (better known as a barcode) on a 10-pack of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit gum.

Bernard Silver and Norman Joseph Woodland had patented a bullseye shaped machine-readable code in 1949, but the UPC that was adopted by the Ad Hoc Committee of the Universal Product Identification Code was developed by a team of IBM engineers under George Laurer. The standard rectangular design measures approximately 1.5” x 0.9” and is made up of black bars and white spaces that represent a sequence of numbers unique ...

On the 25th June 1876, the Battle of Little Bighorn began when American Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer led federal troops against the combined forces of the Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho Plains Indians. Also known as ‘Custer’s Last Stand’, the battle was one of the most significant clashes of the Great Sioux War of 1876.

The Black Hills of South Dakota were sacred to the Plains Indians, and had been recognized as such in the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868. However, the discovery of gold there six years later led to a gold rush of white settlers in ...

Napoleon's Grande Armée began its failed invasion of Russia when it crossed the Neman River in what Russians refer to as the Patriotic War of 1812.

Russia had upset Napoleon by withdrawing from the Continental System, a French-led embargo against trade with Britain, in 1810. Meanwhile the Russian Tsar, Alexander I, was concerned by the formation of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw to the south. Napoleon consequently led his army across the Neman River in an attempt to secure Poland from the threat of a Russian invasion, and to force the Tsar to once again cease trading with Britain.

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The Battle of Bannockburn began on the 23rd June 1314, leading to one of the most important Scottish victories of the First War of Scottish Independence that was fought intermittently from 1296 until 1328. Robert the Bruce, who had seized the Scottish throne in 1306, defeated King Edward II of England and secured Scotland's de facto independence.

The battle was prompted by the Scots besieging the strategically important English-held Stirling Castle. The constable of the castle agreed to surrender unless he received assistance from the English army to break the siege by the 24th June. Faced with this imminent loss ...

MV Empire Windrush arrived at Tilbury Docks in London carrying 492 West Indian immigrants.

The ship, originally known as MV Monte Rosa, was a German cruise ship that had been used as a troop transporter during the Second World War. She was seized by Britain at the end of the war, when she was renamed.

In 1948 the British government passed the Nationality Act, which gave British citizenship to people who lived in Commonwealth countries and allowed them the right to settle in Britain. Britain desperately needed workers in the aftermath of the Second World War, so Commonwealth citizens were encouraged ...

On the 21st June 1919, Admiral Ludwig von Reuter ordered the scuttling of the German High Seas naval fleet in Scapa Flow, a large natural harbor in the Orkney Islands in Scotland. The ships had been confined there under the terms of the Armistice that ended fighting in the First World War.

America had suggested that the fleet be interned in a neutral country but, as neither Norway nor Sweden agreed, Britain volunteered instead. The majority of the 74 German ships were in Scapa Flow by the 27th November, where they were guarded by British Battle Cruiser Force. The fleet was ...

British prisoners of war were imprisoned in the ‘Black Hole of Calcutta’ after the Bengali army captured Fort William from the East India Company.

The East India Company had built Fort William to guard their trading base at Calcutta at a time when the provincial governors of the Mogul empire, known as nawabs, wielded significant power. The Nawab of Bengal, Siraj-ud-daula, was concerned that the Company had begun to strengthen the fort in response to French interests in the area. Fearing that a stronger fortress would undermine his own political power in the province, he ordered the work to stop. ...

On the 19th June 1978, the Garfield comic strip was first published. It has since grown to hold the Guinness World Record for the world's most widely syndicated comic strip, being printed in just under 2,600 newspapers around the world.

Garfield was created by Jim Davis, a cartoonist who began working for an advertising agency before developing his own comic strip. Having failed to gain a syndication deal with his first comic strip, Gnorm Gnat, about a group of insects, he turned to his experience of growing up on a farm with 25 cats to develop the Garfield strip.

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Germany and Russia signed the secret Reinsurance Treaty that ensured they would each remain neutral if the other went to war with a third European power.

Germany, Russia and Austria-Hungary had entered into a second Three Emperors’ Alliance in 1881. Like the one before it, the agreement was designed by the German Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, to isolate France from potential allies and avoid rivalry between his two neighbours over territory in the Balkans.

Continuing tensions between Austria-Hungary and Russia over this region led to the agreement’s collapse in 1887 and forced Bismarck to find another way to maintain French diplomatic ...