Human Saga

On June 29

On June 29, the Human Saga records one pivotal event: Apple releases the iPhone, launching the smartphone era (2007).

On this day

29 June 2007Apple releases the iPhone, launching the smartphone eraScience, technology & invention

Unveiled by Steve Jobs on 9 January 2007 and released in the United States on 29 June 2007, Apple's iPhone combined a music player, mobile phone and internet device in a single product controlled almost entirely by a finger-driven…

Also this week in history (Jun 26 – Jul 2)

28 June – 4 August 1914Assassination of Franz Ferdinand and the outbreak of World War IMilitary & conflict

On 28 June 1914 Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife Sophie were shot dead in Sarajevo by Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb member of the Young Bosnia movement.

28 June 1919 (in force 10 January 1920)Treaty of Versailles and the founding of the League of NationsPolitics & governance

Signed in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles on 28 June 1919 — five years to the day after the Sarajevo assassination — the Treaty of Versailles formally ended the state of war between Germany and most of the Allied powers.

26 June 1945 (in force 24 October 1945)Founding of the United NationsPolitics & governance

At the United Nations Conference on International Organization in San Francisco (25 April – 26 June 1945), delegates of fifty nations drafted and signed the Charter of the United Nations on 26 June 1945.

On 1 July 1867 the British North America Act came into force, uniting three British colonies—the Province of Canada (divided into Ontario and Quebec), Nova Scotia and New Brunswick—into a single federation styled the Dominion of Canada.

The United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, held at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, from 1 to 22 July 1944, brought together 730 delegates from 44 Allied nations to design the post-war international monetary order.

2 July 1964U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964 signed into lawPolitics & governance

On 2 July 1964 President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, landmark legislation that outlawed discrimination on the basis of race, colour, religion, sex or national origin.

1 July 1997The handover of Hong Kong to ChinaPolitics & governance

At midnight on 1 July 1997 the United Kingdom transferred sovereignty over Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China, ending 156 years of British colonial rule that dated to the cession of Hong Kong Island after the First Opium War in…

Began 2 July 1997The Asian financial crisisEconomy & trade

On 2 July 1997 Thailand, depleted of the foreign reserves needed to defend its currency peg, was forced to float the baht, triggering a regional financial crisis that spread rapidly across East and Southeast Asia.

On 26 June 2015 the United States Supreme Court ruled 5–4 in Obergefell v. Hodges that the Fourteenth Amendment requires every state to license marriages between same-sex couples and to recognise such marriages performed elsewhere.

2 July 2025Dalai Lama confirms succession, defying BeijingCulture, arts & philosophy

On 2 July 2025, days before his 90th birthday, the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, declared that the centuries-old institution of the Dalai Lama would continue after his death and that the sole authority to identify his reincarnation…

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