June 14
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1942
The day Anne Frank started her diary
On this day in 1942, two days after turning 13, Anne Frank wrote her first full entry in the diary she received for her birthday. Frank could not have known that her words would outlive the Nazi regime that sought to erase her, but her diary stands today as one of the most widely read and extensively documented personal accounts of World War II.
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Featured Event
© Jim West—Universal Images Group/Getty Images
Gordie Howe Bridge milestone
The final steel girders supporting the bridge deck of the Gordie Howe International Bridge were officially joined. Although the bridge still required many more months of work before it could be opened, this milestone marked the moment when the bridge connected Windsor, Ontario, and Detroit, Michigan.
Featured Biography
Featured Biography
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Born this day in 1969 was German tennis star Steffi Graf, who dominated women’s tennis in the late 1980s and the ’90s, winning singles titles at each Grand Slam event multiple times—including seven at Wimbledon.
Famous Birthdays
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2025
The first “No Kings” protests were held in multiple American cities to protest the policies and actions of U.S. Pres. Donald Trump during his second term. With an estimated attendance of 4 to 6 million people, they were among the largest single-day protests in the history of the United States.
Stephen Dunn/Getty Images
2009
American basketball coach Phil Jackson won a record-setting 10th NBA championship, as the Los Angeles Lakers defeated the Orlando Magic. [Read our list of the 10 greatest basketball players of all time.]
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
1982
The surrender of the large Argentine garrison at Port Stanley to the British military concluded the Falkland Islands War, which was fought for the control of the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas) and its dependencies—territory long disputed by the warring nations. [Take our history of war quiz.]
Novosti Press Agency
1963
The manned Soviet spacecraft Vostok 5 was launched, and two days later Vostok 6 was sent into orbit carrying cosmonaut Valentina V. Tereshkova, the first woman to travel in space. [Test your knowledge of space exploration.]
Courtesy of Yad Vashem/United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, www.ushmm.org
1940
The first transport of Polish political prisoners arrived at Auschwitz, which became Nazi Germany’s largest concentration, extermination, and slave-labor camp, where more than one million people died. [Watch an overview of the Auschwitz concentration camp.]
UPI/Bettmann Archive
1938
U.S. Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), the first federal law to regulate wages and hours nationwide. [Learn more about the people, places, and events that shaped the 1930s.]
Lee Lockwood/Black Star
1928
Che Guevara—a theoretician and tactician of guerrilla warfare, a prominent communist figure in the Cuban Revolution (1956–59), and a guerrilla leader in South America—was born. [How much do you know about Latin American history?]
Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (reproduction no. LC-USZ62-11212)
1811
American author Harriet Beecher Stowe—whose novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin fueled antislavery sentiment and was cited among the causes of the Civil War—was born in Litchfield, Connecticut. [Take our quiz of famous novels.]
Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1961.9.15
1800
Napoleon and his troops defeated the Austrians in the Battle of Marengo, securing his military and civilian authority in Paris. [Test your knowledge of French history.]
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
1777
The Continental Congress approved the Stars and Stripes as the first national flag of the United States. [Take our quiz about the United States.]
© Photos.com/Jupiterimages
1658
The French and English defeated Spanish forces near Dunkirk (then in the Spanish Netherlands) in the Battle of the Dunes. [Sort fact from fiction in our quiz about European history.]
© Matthew Corrigan/Shutterstock.com
1645
The parliamentary New Model Army led by Oliver Cromwell defeated the royalists under Prince Rupert in the Battle of Naseby. [Sort fact from fiction in our quiz about notable Englishmen.]