1. In 1801, the District of Columbia officially became the capital of the United States. Prior to this, the government had been operating out of Philadelphia.

2. On June 12, 1963, civil rights leader Medgar Evers was assassinated in Jackson, Mississippi. Evers had been working to desegregate schools and expand voting rights for African Americans in the South.

3. The Washington Wizards (formerly the Bullets) won their first NBA championship on June 12, 1978. Led by star player Wes Unseld, the team defeated the Seattle Supersonics in seven games.

4. In 1987, President Ronald Reagan gave a speech in Berlin in which he famously demanded that Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev "tear down this wall," referring to the Berlin Wall that had divided East and West Germany since 1961.

5. On June 12, 2016, a mass shooting took place at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, leaving 49 people dead and 53 injured. The attack, which was carried out by a lone gunman who pledged allegiance to ISIS, was the deadliest mass shooting by a single individual in U.S. history at the time.