Ephemeris, 15 June

It happened one 15 June

1215 : The seal of the king is placed on the Magna Carta On 15 June 1215, the English barons in revolt against the English king John Lackland, forced the king to affix his seal to the Magna Carta, a document recognizing the rights of feudal lords and limiting the arbitrariness of royal power (creation of habeas corpus by example forbidding arbitrary imprisonment). The king refused the application once he was free to act and the civil war continued until his death. The Magna Carta was phased in and became a precedent (English law is based on the rule of precedent) at the end of the 13th century.
1904 : Tragedy on the East River On 15 June 1904, on the East River in New York, a fire broke out on a steamboat, the General Slocum, carrying 1360 people, mostly children and their teachers to the annual picnic of their school. Instead of heading to a dock, the captain directed his boat to a small island on the rocks of which it crashed. The lifeboats were unusable and the life jackets did not float but instead sank people who wore them to the bottom. People who did not die drowned or burned are trampled because of panic. 1031 people were killed.
1920 : Lynching in Minnesota On June 15, 1920, a crowd of 5000 people broke into the city jail in Duluth, Minnesota, seized 3 Black suspects in a case of rape of a white girl and lynched them in the street. The suspects were arrested with three other colleagues while working for a circus, following a complaint from two teenagers from the city for assault and rape the night before. The newspapers reported the incident and rumor had spread in the town that the girl had been killed. In fact, the doctor who had examined the girl found no signs of assault or rape. Leaders of the lynching were not prosecuted.
2009 : Repression of a peaceful demonstration in Iran On June 15, 2009, a peaceful protest of 1.5 to 3 million people protesting against the results of the presidential election in Iran was repressed by government forces. Dozens of people were killed and hundreds more were arrested. On the night of June 14 to 15, five students had been killed in a forceful intervention of Basij at Tehran University.

Quote of the day : 15 June

Raymond Devos
From the moment you laugh at the things, they are not dangerous anymore.

Birthdays : 15 June

Nicolas Poussin, French painter (1594)
Edvard Grieg, Norwegian composer (1843)
David Rose, American composer (1910)
Youri Andropov, Soviet politician (1914)
Thomas Huckle Weller, American virologist (1915)
John Fenn , American chemist, Nobel Prize (1917)
Alberto Sordi, Italian actor and director (1920)
Ezer Weizman, 7th President of Israel (1924)
Ibn-e-Insha, Pakistani poet and humorist (1927)
Hugo Pratt, Italian comic book creator (Corto Maltese) (1927)
Mario Cuomo, 52nd Governor of the state of New York (1932)
Guy Bedos, French humorist (1934)
Claude Brasseur, French actor (1936)
Johnny Hallyday, French singer (1943)
Brigitte Fossey, French actress (1946)
James Belushi, American actor (1954)
Julie Hagerty, American actress (1955)
Michèle Laroque, French actress and humorist (1960)
Helen Hunt, American actress (1963)
Courteney Cox, American actress (1964)
Cédric Pioline, French tennis player (1969)
Ice Cube, American actor and rapper (1969)
Julia Fischer, German violinist (1983)
Aurélie Vaneck, French actress (1983)

They left us one 15 June

Wendell Meredith Stanley, American biochemist, Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1971)
Victor French, American actor (1989)
Ella Fitzgerald, American jazz singer (1996)
Choi Hong Hi, South Korean martial artist, founder of taekwondo (2002)
Hume Cronyn, Canadian actor (2003)
Suzanne Flon, French actress (2005)
Raymond Devos, Belgian-French humorist (2006)
Stan Winston, American visual effects supervisor (2008)