Daily Calendar for June 20th, 2021

The Old Farmer's Almanac daily calendar gives you quick reference for the significant events on any day throughout the year.

Father's Day

Like Mother's Day, Father's Day has a modern origin. The idea came to Mrs. John Dodd as she sat listening to a Mother's Day sermon in 1909. Her father, William Smart, had raised his children alone on his Washington farm after his wife died giving birth to their sixth child. Mrs. Dodd proposed to the Spokane Ministerial Association and the YMCA that they celebrate a "father's day" on June 5, her father's birthday. The idea received strong support, but the good ministers of Spokane asked that the day be changed to give them extra time to prepare sermons on the unexplored subject of fathers. The first Father's Day was observed on June 19, 1910, in Spokane, Washington, and soon other towns had their own celebrations. In spite of widespread support, Father's Day did not become a permanent national holiday until 1972, when President Richard Nixon signed a law declaring that it be celebrated annually on the third Sunday in June.

Every Year

• West Virginia Day

• World Refugee Day

1780s

• 1782: Congress adopted the Great Seal of the United States

1830s

• 1837: Queen Victoria gained the British throne

1840s

• 1840: A patent for the telegraph was granted to Samuel Morse

1860s

• 1863: West Virginia was admitted to the Union as the 35th state

1880s

• 1887: Queen Victoria’s 2-day Golden Jubilee celebration began

1900s

• Born 1909: Errol Flynn (actor)

1920s

• Born 1928: Martin Landau (actor)

1940s

• Born 1942: Brian Wilson (singer)

• Born 1945: Anne Murray (singer)

• 1945: First "Baby Bonus" checks were sent to Canadian families

• Born 1946: Bob Vila (handyman)

• Died 1947: Bugsy Siegel (gangster)

• 1948: The microgroove, long-playing, Vinylite record, called the LP, was formally introduced at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City by CBS (Columbia Records)

• Born 1949: Lionel Richie (singer)

1950s

• 1950: Fred H. Howard received a patent for a hybrid tea rose with "clear rose red color which does not fade or turn blue"

• Born 1952: John Goodman (actor)

1960s

• 1963: The U.S. and the Soviet Union signed an agreement in Geneva to establish a so-called "hot line" emergency communication system, linking Washington and Moscow

• Born 1967: Nicole Kidman (actress)

• 1967: New National Library of Canada building officially opened in Ottawa, Ontario

1970s

• Born 1971: Josh Lucas (actor)

• 1977: The first oil from Alaska's frozen north slope began flowing into the trans-Alaska pipeline system (TAPS)

1980s

• Born 1988: Shefali Chowdhury (actress; plays Parvati Patil in the Harry Potter movies)

2000s

• 2004: In Russia, Sir Paul McCartney performed his 3,000th gig

• Died 2005: Jack Kilby (the man who pioneered the development of the microchip and helped to create the first hand-held calculator)

• 2007: A minor earthquake (magnitude 1.0) shook the New Hampshire seacoast