What Happened on June 12

Historical Events

1523 – Frisian rebel leader Jancko Douwama arrested
1902 – Horn and Hardart opens 1st “automat” (self-service restaurant) in the US on Chestnut Street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
1948 – George Lessner, Russell Maloney and Miriam Battista’s musical adaptation of Washington Irving’s “Sleepy Hollow” closes at St James Theater, NYC, after 12 performances
1967 – USSR launches Venera 4 for parachute landing on Venus
1994 – Moshood Abiola declares himself lawful President of Nigeria
2009 – Protests in Iran following the presidential election.

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Famous Birthdays

1890 – Egon Schiele, Austrian painter and graphic artist, born in Tulln an der Donau, Austro-Hungarian Empire (d. 1918)
1936 – Bill Zeliff, American politician, U.S. House of Representatives from New Hampshire (1991-97), born in East Orange, New Jersey
1942 – Bert Sakmann, German cell physiologist (Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 1991), born in Stuttgart, Germany
1957 – Timothy Busfield, American actor (30 Something; The West Wing), born in East Lansing, Michigan
1959 – John Linnell, American musician (They Might Be Giants – Constantinople), born in NYC, New York
1967 – Icíar Bollaín, Spanish actress, director and screenwriter, born in Madrid

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Famous Deaths

1936 – Karl Kraus, Austrian satirical writer, dies at 62
1947 – Jazeps Medins, Latvian composer, dies at 70
1972 – Saul David Alinsky, American community activist (co-founder of Industrial Areas Foundation), and radical writer (John L. Lewis: An Unauthorized Biography), dies at 63
1994 – Nicole Brown Simpson, German-American ex-wife of O.J. Simpson, murdered at 35
2008 – Derek Tapscott, Welsh footballer (b. 1932)
2015 – Monica Lewis, American jazz singer and film actress (Box Office, Affair with a Stranger), dies at 93

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