What happened on 6 June?

17 events from the Ever-When timeline, ranked by how much they mattered.

1. 1644 Qing dynasty Last imperial dynasty of China; Manchu rulers.
2. 1944 D-Day (Operation Overlord) Allied amphibious invasion of Normandy: American, British and Canadian forces land on five beaches with airborne and naval support from many Allied nations, opening the Normandy ca
3. 1644 Manchu conquest of China Qing forces take Beijing and proclaim their rule over China; the conquest of the south and Ming loyalist resistance continue for decades. Qing rule lasts until 1912.
4. 1944 Battle of Normandy Twelve weeks from the beaches to the Seine: two million Allied soldiers ashore, the bocage bought hedgerow by hedgerow, and a German army group destroyed in the west — at the cost
5. 1674 Maratha Empire Shivaji founds the Maratha state and resists Mughal expansion; under his successors the Marathas come to dominate much of India.
6. 1674 Shivaji crowned at Raigad Shivaji is crowned chhatrapati of the Maratha kingdom, formally establishing his realm after years of conflict with the Mughals.
7. 1944 The landing at Omaha Beach The plan fails in the first minute: the bombardment misses, the amphibious tanks founder, and the first waves are machine-gunned on an open shingle beneath intact bluffs. That the
8. 1944 The airborne night before D-Day In the first minutes of 6 June, gliders skid to a stop yards from Pegasus Bridge and 18,000 British and American paratroopers scatter across the dark Norman countryside — seizing b
9. 1599 Born: Diego Velázquez Spanish court painter to Philip IV; author of Las Meninas.
10. 1990 Judge rules 2 Live Crew's As Nasty as They Wanna Be obscene The first album declared legally obscene in the US; band members are arrested days later.
11. 1606 Born: Pierre Corneille One of the three great 17th-century French dramatists; wrote Le Cid and Cinna.
12. 1808 Napoleon puts his brother on Spain's throne Napoleon lures the Spanish royal family across the border, forces both king and heir to abdicate, and crowns his brother Joseph — and an empire of three centuries loses its head ov
13. 1523 Gustav Vasa elected King of Sweden The rebel who, legend says, fled Christian II on skis breaks Sweden out of the Kalmar Union for good; his election day is still Sweden's national day.
14. 1944 Juno Beach landing The 3rd Canadian Division fights through Courseulles and pushes deeper inland on D-Day than any other Allied force.
15. 1873 Zanzibar slave market closed Under a British ultimatum the Sultan closes East Africa's great slave market; an Anglican cathedral rises on the site, its altar said to stand over the whipping post.
16. 1654 Abdication of Queen Christina Gustavus Adolphus's brilliant daughter — Descartes' last patron — gives up the Swedish throne, converts to Catholicism and rides to Rome, scandalising Protestant Europe.
17. 1832 Bentham's Auto-Icon As his will directs, Bentham's skeleton is dressed in his clothes and displayed in a cabinet — still on view at University College London.