313 – The decisions of the Edict of Milan, signed by Constantine the Great and co-emperor Valerius Licinius, granting religious freedom throughout the Roman Empire, are published in Nicomedia.
1325 – Ibn Battuta begins his travels, leaving his home in Tangiers to travel to Mecca (gone 24 years).
1381 – In England, the Peasants' Revolt, led by Wat Tyler, comes to a head, as rebels set fire to the Savoy Palace.
1514 – Henry Grace à Dieu, at over 1,000 tons the largest warship in the world at this time, built at the new Woolwich Dockyard in England, is dedicated.
1525 – Martin Luther marries Katharina von Bora, against the celibacy rule decreed by the Roman Catholic Church for priests and nuns.
1625 – King Charles I of England marries Catholic princess Henrietta Maria of France and Navarre, at Canterbury.
1740 – Georgia provincial governor James Oglethorpe begins an unsuccessful attempt to take Spanish Florida during the Siege of St. Augustine.
1774 – Rhode Island becomes the first of Britain's North American colonies to ban the importation of slaves.
1777 – American Revolutionary War: Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette lands near Charleston, South Carolina, in order to help the Continental Congress to train its army.
1805 – Lewis and Clark Expedition: Scouting ahead of the expedition, Meriwether Lewis and four companions sight the Great Falls of the Missouri River.
1855 – Twentieth opera of Giuseppe Verdi, Les vêpres siciliennes ("The Sicilian Vespers"), is premiered in Paris.
1881 – The USS Jeannette is crushed in an Arctic Ocean ice pack.
1886 – A fire devastates much of Vancouver, British Columbia.
1893 – Grover Cleveland notices a rough spot in his mouth and on July 1 undergoes secret, successful surgery to remove a large, cancerous portion of his jaw; the operation was not revealed to the public until 1917, nine years after the president's death.
1895 – Émile Levassor wins the world's first real automobile race. Levassor completed the 732-mile course, from Paris to Bordeaux and back, in just under 49 hours, at a then-impressive speed of about .