1942 - Tobruk in Libya fell to the German army during World War II.
1963 - Cardinal Giovanni Montini was elected to become Pope Paul VI, after the death of John XXIII.
1964 - The House of Representatives passed the American Civil Rights Act, with the approval of the Senate.
1990 - Hungary officially reopened the stock exchange after 42 years of closure by the communist party, making the Budapest Stock Exchange the first Western-style stock exchange in any of the Warsaw Pact countries.
2001 - The famous American guitarist John Lee Hooker died in San Francisco at the age of 83.
2001 - A hotel in Moscow attempted to bake the world's longest cake.
2002 - "Abu Sabaya," the most infamous leader of the Abu Sayyaf rebel group, was killed; he was a key figure in the abduction of two American citizens in 2001.
2004 - The "WhiteKnight" launch aircraft, with "SpaceShipOne" attached, began a historic flight for the world's first privately funded spaceplane outside the earth's atmosphere at Mojave Airport in California.
2007 - A Canadian army medic signed a mural at the patrol base in Afghanistan, starting a series of handprints in a record now known as "the Healing Hands of Spirwan Gar."
2008 - The summer solstice at Stonehenge.
2009 - The Queen of Denmark handed over the self-governance law to Greenland.
