The Manawatu Herald. Thursday, June 12TH., 1913. NOTABLE JUNE ANNIVERSARIES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 1108, 12 June 1913, Page 2

The Manawatu Herald. Thursday, June 12TH., 1913. NOTABLE JUNE ANNIVERSARIES.

The June Review of Reviews gives a brief account of some of the most notable anniversaries of the month. Five of the most epoch-making battles in the history of the British Empire took place in the month of June. The battle of Bunker’s Hill, June 17, 1775, was the first serious engagement in the war which resulted in the loss of the United States to the Empire. Bannockburn, June 24, 1314, freed Scotland from the domination of England. Naseby, June 14, 1645, gave the government of the Empire into the hands of the people for ever; Waterloo, June 18, 1815, was the final blow to the great Napoleonic era ; and Plassey, June 23, 1757, added the vast Indian Peninsula to the British Crown. On June 1, 1794, —the glorious first of June —Lord Howe, commanding the British Squadron, met the French fleet off Brest, and totally destroyed it. This was the first naval battle of the Napoleonic Wars. The Great Reform Bill was passed in 1832, on June 7, from which day the true representation of the people of England in Parliament may be said to date. George Stephenson —the father of the locomotive—was born near Newcastle on June 9, 1781. Sir John Franklin died in the frozen north on June 11, 1847. With him perished bis entire Arctic expedition, but it was ten years before their bodies were found. At Rusnymede, an island in the Thames —now the property of the advertising manager of the Times —King John signed, on June 15, 1215, what is known as the Magna Charta, the great document of English Freedom, the basis still of much of our present day justice.