TODAY in HISTORY

Today is Sunday, June 11, the 162nd day of 2017. There are 203 days left in the year.

786 A Hasanid Alid uprising in Mecca is crushed by the Abbasids at the Battle of Fakhkh. Idris ibn Abdallah flees to the Maghreb, where he founded the Idrisid dynasty.

1345 The megas doux Alexios Apokaukos, chief minister of the Byzantine Empire, is lynched by political prisoners.

1488 Battle of Sauchieburn: Fought between rebel Lords and James III of Scotland, resulting in the death of the King.

1784 Denmark adopts the characteristic Nordic Cross flag later taken up by all other Scandinavian countries.

1770 British explorer Captain James Cook runs aground on the Great Barrier Reef.

1776 The Congress appoints Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston to the Committee of Five to draft a declaration of independence.

1825 The first cornerstone is laid for Fort Hamilton in New York City.

1892 The Limelight Department, one of the world’s first film studios, is officially established in Melbourne, Australia.

1895 Paris–Bordeaux–Paris is sometimes called the first automobile race in history or the “first motor race”.

1917 Alexander assumes throne of Greece after Constantine I abdicates under pressure by allied armies occupying Athens.

1935 Edwin Armstrong gives the first public demonstration of FM broadcasting in the US in Alpine, New Jersey.

1937 The Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin executes eight Army leaders.

1944 USS Missouri, the last battleship built by the US Navy and future site of the signing of the Japanese Instrument of Surrender, is commissioned.

1955 Eighty-three spectators are killed and at least 100 are injured after an Austin-Healey and a Mercedes-Benz collide at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the worst ever accident in motorsports.

1962 Frank Morris, John Anglin and Clarence Anglin allegedly become the only prisoners to escape from the prison on Alcatraz island.

2002 Antonio Meucci is acknowledged as the first inventor of the telephone by the US Congress.

2004 Cassini–Huygens makes its closest flyby of the Saturn moon Phoebe.

2008 The Fermi Gammaray Space Telescope is launched into orbit.

2012 Over 80 people die in two earthquakes in Afghanistan; a village is buried.