12 June

June 12 : World Day Against Child Labour
The International Labour Organization (ILO) launched the World Day Against Child Labour in 2002 to focus attention on the global extent of child labour and the action and efforts needed to eliminate it. Each year on 12 June, the World Day brings together governments, employers and workers organizations, civil society, as well as millions of people from around the world to highlight the plight of child labourers and what can be done to help them.

The ILO’s adoption of Convention No. 182 in 1999 consolidated the global consensus on child labour elimination. Millions of child labourers have benefited from the Convention, but much remains to be done. The latest figures estimated that 215 million children are trapped in child labour, and 115 million of these children are in hazardous work. The ILO’s member states have set the target for eliminating the Worst Forms of Child Labour by 2016. To achieve this goal requires a major scaling up of effort and commitment.

A future without child labour is at last within reach. Significant progress is being made worldwide in combating child labour. The new global estimates of trends reinforce this message of hope. However, a strong and sustained global movement is needed to provide the extra push towards eliminating the scourge of child labour. This is no time for complacency.

Events

1381 – Peasants' Revolt: in England, rebels arrive at Blackheath.
1418 – An insurrection delivers Paris to the Burgundians.
1429 – Hundred Years' War: Joan of Arc leads the French army in their capture of the city and the English commander, William de la Pole, 1st Duke of Suffolk in the second day of the Battle of Jargeau.
1560 – Battle of Okehazama: Oda Nobunaga defeats Imagawa Yoshimoto.
1653 – First Anglo-Dutch War: the Battle of the Gabbard begins and lasts until June 13.
1665 – England installs a municipal government in New York City (the former Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam).
1758 – French and Indian War: Siege of Louisbourg – James Wolfe's attack at Louisbourg, Nova Scotia commences.
1775 – American Revolution: British general Thomas Gage declares martial law in Massachusetts. The British offer a pardon to all colonists who lay down their arms. There would be only two exceptions to the amnesty: Samuel Adams and John Hancock, if captured, were to be hanged.
1776 – The Virginia Declaration of Rights is adopted.
1798 – Irish Rebellion of 1798: Battle of Ballynahinch.
1860 – The State Bank of the Russian Empire is established.
1864 – American Civil War, Overland Campaign: Battle of Cold Harbor – Ulysses S. Grant gives the Confederate forces under Robert E. Lee a victory when he pulls his Union troops from their positions at Cold Harbor, Virginia and moves south.
1889 – 78 are killed in the Armagh rail disaster near Armagh in what is now Northern Ireland.
1898 – Philippine Declaration of Independence: General Emilio Aguinaldo declares the Philippines' independence from Spain.
1899 – New Richmond Tornado: the eighth deadliest tornado in U.S. history kills 117 people and injures around 200.
1922 – At Windsor Castle, King George V receives the colours of the six Irish regiments that are to be disbanded – the Royal Irish Regiment, the Connaught Rangers, the South Irish Horse, the Prince of Wales's Leinster Regiment, the Royal Munster Fusiliers and the Royal Dublin Fusiliers.
1939 – Shooting begins on Paramount Pictures' Dr. Cyclops, the first horror film photographed in three-strip Technicolor.
1939 – The Baseball Hall of Fame opens in Cooperstown, New York.
1940 – World War II: 13,000 British and French troops surrender to Major General Erwin Rommel at Saint-Valery-en-Caux.
1942 – Holocaust: Anne Frank receives a diary for her thirteenth birthday.
1943 – Holocaust: Germany liquidates the Jewish Ghetto in Berezhany, western Ukraine. 1,180 Jews are led to the city's old Jewish graveyard and shot.
1954 – Pope Pius XII canonises Dominic Savio, who was 14 years old at the time of his death, as a saint, making him the youngest non-martyr saint in the Roman Catholic Church.
1963 – Civil rights leader Medgar Evers is murdered in front of his home in Jackson, Mississippi by Ku Klux Klan member Byron De La Beckwith.
1964 – Anti-apartheid activist and ANC leader Nelson Mandela is sentenced to life in prison for sabotage in South Africa.
1967 – The United States Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia declares all U.S. state laws which prohibit interracial marriage to be unconstitutional.
1967 – Venera program: Venera 4 is launched (it will become the first space probe to enter another planet's atmosphere and successfully return data).
1978 – David Berkowitz, the "Son of Sam" killer in New York City, is sentenced to 365 years in prison for six killings.
1979 – Bryan Allen wins the second Kremer prize for a man powered flight across the English Channel in the Gossamer Albatross.
1987 – The Central African Republic's former Emperor Jean-Bédel Bokassa is sentenced to death for crimes he had committed during his 13-year rule.
1987 – Cold War: At the Brandenburg Gate U.S. President Ronald Reagan publicly challenges Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall.
1990 – Russia Day – the parliament of the Russian Federation formally declares its sovereignty.
1991 – Russians elect Boris Yeltsin as the president of the republic.
1991 – 1991 Kokkadichcholai massacre: the Sri Lankan Army massacres 152 minority Tamil civilians in the village Kokkadichcholai near the eastern province town of Batticaloa, Sri Lanka.
1993 – An election takes place in Nigeria which and is later annulled by the military Government led by Ibrahim Babangida.
1994 – Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman are murdered outside her home in Los Angeles, California. O.J. Simpson is later acquitted of the killings, but is held liable in wrongful death civil suit.
1994 – The Boeing 777, the world's largest twinjet, makes its first flight.
1996 – In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a panel of federal judges blocks a law against indecency on the internet.
1997 – Queen Elizabeth II reopens the Globe Theatre in London.
1999 – Kosovo War: Operation Joint Guardian begins when a NATO-led United Nations peacekeeping force (KFor) enters the province of Kosovo in Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
2000 – Sandro Rosa do Nascimento takes hostages while robbing Bus #174 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; the highly-publicized standoff becomes a media circus and ends with the death of do Nascimento and a hostage.
2001 – Robert Edward Dyer is sentenced to 16 years' imprisonment for attempting to extort money from a British supermarket chain through a letter bomb campaign.
2009 – A disputed presidential election in Iran leads to wide ranging protests in Iran and around the world.

Holidays and observances

Chaco Armistice Day (Paraguay)
Christian Feast Day:
Basilides, Cyrinus, Nabor and Nazarius
Eskil
John of Sahagún
Onuphrius
Pope Leo III
Ternan
June 12 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
Dia dos Namorados (Brazil)
Independence Day, celebrates the independence of the Philippines from Spain in 1898.
June 12 Commemoration (Lagos State)
Loving Day (United States)
Russia Day (Russia)
World Day Against Child Labour (International)