20th June

The events happened on 20th June are :



1789 : The Tennis Court Oath : In a dramatic act of defiance during the meeting of the French Estates-General (traditional assembly), the representatives of the nonprivileged classes (the Third Estate), thinking King Louis XVI was forcing them to disband and abandon their call for reforms, took an oath not to separate until a written constitution had been established for France. Locked out of their meeting hall at Versailles, on this day the deputies of the Third Estate congregated on a nearby tennis court, where the oath—which came to be known as the Tennis Court Oath—was taken. In the face of this solidarity, the king relented and on June 27 ordered the clergy and the nobility to join with the Third Estate in the National Assembly.



1992 : A new constitution went into effect in Paraguay, signaling the end of military rule established in the 1950s by Alfredo Stroessner.



1940 : A new government was announced in Latvia following the Soviet Red Army's invasion of the country.



1928 : African American jazz musician Eric Dolphy was born in Los Angeles.



1905 : American playwright and screenwriter Lillian Hellman was born in New Orleans, Louisiana.



1887 : German Dada artist and poet Kurt Schwitters was born in Hannover.



1567 : The Casket Letters—which directly implicated Mary, Queen of Scots, in a plot with James Hepburn, 4th earl of Bothwell, to murder Mary's husband, Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley—were discovered.



19th June | 21st June



Today in History Index



From 20th June to HOME PAGE