Today’s Motto: ‘What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality’.

This is Your Day-TODAY: Take a Determined Step Forward and Make History!

On this day, June 20………….

712 – Arabs Muhammad of Bin Quasim (Kasim), captured Sindh, defeating and killing Hindu King Dahir at Rawar.

1756 – A group of British soldiers were imprisoned by some rebels in a suffocating cell that gained notoriety as the “Black Hole of Calcutta.” Most of them died. This included John Zephaniah Holwell, who as a surgeon was one of the first Europeans to study Indian antiquities.

1791 – King Louis XVI caught trying to escape in French Revolution.

1840 – Samuel F.B. Morse received a patent for telegraphy signals. (The International Morse Code, a method of transmitting text information as a series of on-off tones, lights, or clicks that can be directly understood by a skilled listener or observer without special equipment, is named after him).

1858 – Gwalior fort was captured by British troops and the first Indian Sepoy Mutiny officially came to an end.

1873 – Young Men Christian Association of India was established in Calcutta.

1895 – 1st female PhD from an American University, earned by Caroline Willard Baldwin (in science) at Cornell University.

1899 – Black American inventor Wesley Johnson was issued a patent for a “Velocipede”. Although conventional in appearance in a side view, the innovation claimed was to use two wheels separated by four to six inches in the front fork, and two wheels in similar fashion at the back. The patent claimed this gives better stability and safety, especially for those first learning to balance and ride a bicycle, the timid, elderly or the invalid. Further, it said, corners could be turned on slippery ground with better stability.

1921 – At the Imperial Conference in London, V.S. Srinivasa Sastri puts forward a case for the granting of full citizenship rights to Indians in South Africa and other British colonies.

1926 – A wireless phone for autos was demonstrated in Berlin, Germany, by Herr Schaetzle.

1967 – Boxer Muhammad Ali convicted of refusing induction into armed services.

1994- Anti-Pakistan slogans rent the air in Jammu & Kashmir against the killing of Quazi Nissar Ahmed, Mirwaiz of South Kashmir, and a famous religious Kashmiri leader

who was gunned down by Pak-aided terrorists.

1996 – Govt. of India declares at the Geneva conference on ‘Global Ban On Nuclear Testing’ that it won’t sign the CTBT. The CTBT essentially bans all nuclear explosions in all environments, be it for military or civilian purposes. The treaty was signed by 71 countries, except India. (The history of the CTBT goes back to March 1st 1954 when America tested a 15-megaton hydrogen bomb in Namu Atoll, an island in the Pacific Ocean. By exceeding the estimated outcome and causing a large fallout beyond that of the restricted testing area, this test increased the fallout of dangerous radioactive materials. Official calculations confirmed that 28 American and 236 residents of the neighboring Marshall Islands had been contaminated by radioactive emissions).

2002 – An agreement was signed to establish a seawater desalination and heating plant – using atomic reactors – at the coastal city of Yingkou, China. It is designed to address severe water shortages in China.

2016 – China’s super computer tally overtakes the US; Chinese 93 petaflop Sunway TaihuLight is world’s No 1.

2019 – Chinese President Xi Jinping meets Kim Jong-un in Pyongyang, the first Chinese president to visit North Korea in 14 years.

2019 – Iran shoots down a US drone over the Straits of Hormuz escalating tension between the two countries.

2020 Highest-ever temperature recorded in the Arctic circle, 38C (100F) in Verkhoyansk, Siberia.

Born….

1869 – Laxmanrao Kirloskar, great industrialist, social reformer, patriot and founder of Kirloskar Industry.

1952 – Vikram Seth, poet (image credits-Webdunia)

RIP….

1987 – Dr. Salim Ali, internationally renowned expert of birds.

1997 – Basu Bhattacharya, film-maker.

2007 – Anita Guha, actor (video credit- Shemaroo)

Titbits….

1909 – 1st balloon honeymoon (Roger Burham & Eleanor Waring).

You may have known….

Denmark is the only other country to celebrate American Independence Day.

                                                                                                                                           (Compiled by Lt. Gen. (R) Raj Kadyan}