What happened on 15 June?

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

1. 1910 Scott's Terra Nova expedition Robert Falcon Scott reaches the South Pole a month after Amundsen, then perishes with his team on the return.
2. 1215 Magna Carta King John seals the charter at Runnymede, limiting royal power; later reinterpreted as a foundation of the rule of law.
3. 1888 Reign of Kaiser Wilhelm II Dropped Bismarck, built a battle fleet, backed Austria in 1914 and abdicated into Dutch exile.
4. 1389 Battle of Kosovo Ottoman and Serbian armies destroy each other at Kosovo Polje; the battle becomes the central myth of Serbian nationhood.
5. 1953 Born: Xi Jinping Paramount leader of China since 2012; consolidates power beyond Deng-era norms.
6. 1381 Wat Tyler killed at Smithfield At the Smithfield parley the rebel captain — over-familiar with the king, demanding an England with no lordship but the king's — is cut down by the Lord Mayor. As thirty thousand b
7. 1826 Auspicious Incident Mahmud II violently abolishes the Janissary corps, clearing the way for the Tanzimat reforms and a Western-style Ottoman army.
8. 1917 United States Espionage Act 1917 Sweeping wartime law criminalising 'disloyal' speech.
9. 1964 Freedom Summer A thousand volunteers, many of them white northern students, pour into Mississippi to register Black voters in the most closed society in America. Three civil rights workers — Chan
10. 1843 Born: Edvard Grieg Norwegian Romantic composer and pianist; central figure in Scandinavian musical nationalism; best known for Peer Gynt and the Piano Concerto in A minor.
11. 1985 Studio Ghibli founded After the success of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Miyazaki, Isao Takahata and producer Toshio Suzuki found the animation studio in Tokyo.
12. 1914 Joyce's Dubliners Fifteen stories of paralysis and epiphany in Dublin, ending with 'The Dead' — published after nearly a decade of fights with nervous printers.