ON THIS DAY

1215 King John averts a civil war by stamping the royal seal on the Magna Carta at Runnymede, England. It guarantees a list of citizens’ rights.

1389 The Battle of Kosovo, between the armies of Serbian prince Lazar and the Ottoman sultan Murad I, concludes with an Ottoman victory.

1520 Pope Leo excommunicates Martin Luther by the bull ”Exsurge Domine’’.

1752 Scientist Benjamin Franklin launches a kite with a key attached in a thunderstorm in Philadelphia to prove lightning is a form of electricity.

1846 The US and Britain sign the Oregon Treaty, establishing the border between Canada and the US at latitude 49N.

1896 Tsunamis kill more than 27,000 people on Japan’s Honshu Island. The waves are generated by an undersea earthquake.

1916 In London, Australian prime minister Billy Hughes arranges to buy 15 merchant ships to begin a Commonwealth shipping line.

1996 Ella Fitzgerald (right), America’s “first lady of song’’, dies aged 79.

1996 The IRA explodes a bomb in a Manchester shopping centre, injuring more than 220 people, including a pregnant woman and a baby. The bombers are never found.