June 20th Through History

Explanation: The Tennis Court Oath was sworn in the tennis court hall at Versailles, after the deputies had been locked out of their usual meeting room. They pledged not to disband until they had given France a constitution. This act of defiance is regarded as one of the founding acts of the French Revolution.

Explanation: Arrested at Varennes-en-Argonne, Louis XVI was recognized by postmaster Jean-Baptiste Drouet thanks to his portrait on assignats. This fiasco of the flight to Varennes accelerated the fall of the monarchy and led to the king's execution in January 1793.

Explanation: Alexandre Yersin, a Franco-Swiss physician working for the Pasteur Institute, discovered the plague bacillus in Hong Kong during an epidemic. The bacillus was named Yersinia pestis in his honor. Yersin spent much of his life in Vietnam and also helped introduce the rubber tree to Indochina.

Explanation: Jaws is often considered the first blockbuster in film history. It marked the start of a new era of massive, coordinated theatrical releases. The film is based on Peter Benchley's novel and featured a great white shark terrorizing a seaside resort.

Explanation: Morse's electric telegraph, paired with the famous Morse code, allowed for the first time the near-instant transmission of messages over long distances. The first official message was sent in 1844 between Washington and Baltimore: "What hath God wrought?"

Explanation: After German reunification in 1990, the Bundestag voted on June 20, 1991 to move the capital from Bonn to Berlin. The actual transfer took several years and was not fully completed until 1999. Bonn nevertheless remained an important administrative center, home to several federal ministries.

Explanation: Jean Moulin was the main unifier of the French resistance movements under the authority of General de Gaulle. Arrested by the Gestapo at Caluire in June 1943, he died from the torture inflicted by Klaus Barbie. His ashes were transferred to the Panthéon in 1964, during a ceremony immortalized by André Malraux's speech.

Explanation: The Battle of the Catalaunian Plains, also called the Battle of Châlons, is often presented as one of the most important battles of Late Antiquity. The Roman general Aetius, allied with the Visigoths, managed to halt Attila's advance into Gaul. Attila withdrew but continued to threaten the Western Roman Empire until his death in 453.

Explanation: The Republican calendar, in use from 1793 to 1805, assigned to each day the name of a plant, animal, or tool. The 2nd of Messidor corresponded to the day of the oat, a cereal that has been fundamental to human and animal diets for thousands of years. This calendar sought to break with the Gregorian calendar, seen as too closely tied to the Catholic Church.

Explanation: The Wikimedia Foundation, founded by Jimmy Wales, is the nonprofit organization that hosts Wikipedia and other sister projects such as Wikidata, Wiktionary, and Wikimedia Commons. It is funded by public donations and ranks among the most visited sites in the world. Its headquarters are based in San Francisco, California.