June 20 Birthday
On June 20, 1837, King William IV died and his eighteen-year-old niece Victoria became Queen of the United Kingdom. She had been raised under the "Kensington System," a strict regimen designed by her mother and her mother's advisor Sir John Conroy to make her dependent. She immediately threw off the system, demanded her own room, and banned Conroy from her presence. She reigned for sixty-three years, the longest of any British monarch until Elizabeth II. She proposed to Prince Albert in 1839 — a queen could propose, a commoner could not. She had nine children, all of whom married into European royalty, earning her the nickname "Grandmother of Europe." The US-Soviet hotline was established on June 20, 1963, following the Cuban Missile Crisis, when communication between Washington and Moscow had taken hours. The hotline was not a telephone — it was a teletype connection. The famous "red telephone" is a myth; the connection used teletype machines and encrypted messages. The first message sent was "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog's back 1234567890" — a test message that used every letter and number. People born on June 20 fall under the zodiac sign of Gemini. The birthstone is Pearl and the birth flower is Rose. Historical events on June 20 include 1837: Queen Victoria ascends to the British throne at age eighteen, 1963: US and Soviet Union sign agreement to establish direct hotline ("red phone"), 1893: Lizzie Borden found not guilty of axe murders of her father and stepmother. Famous people born on June 20 include Errol Flynn (1909), Lionel Richie (1949), Nicole Kidman (1967).