The first line of the Paris Métro opened, whisking Parisians beneath the city just in time for the World's Fair, with Art Nouveau entrances designed by Hector Guimard.

Roosevelt and Churchill closed the Casablanca Conference, announcing their demand for the Axis powers' unconditional surrender and setting Allied strategy for 1943.

The Boston Symphony Orchestra held its inaugural concert at the newly completed Symphony Hall, now regarded as one of the finest concert venues acoustically in the world.

A multinational relief force under British Vice-Admiral Edward Seymour set out from Tianjin toward Beijing to rescue besieged foreign legations from Boxer rebels.

The Qing Dynasty's Empress Dowager Cixi declared war on all foreign powers in China, formally backing the anti-imperialist Boxer uprising.

Summer solstice sunrise has drawn druids, pagans, and revelers to Stonehenge for centuries, a tradition still celebrated every June 21 in England.

During the Boxer Rebellion, international relief forces intensified operations to break the siege of foreign legations, with fierce fighting around Tianjin.

Amid the Boxer Rebellion's siege of foreign legations in Beijing, Qing officials and the Eight-Nation Alliance edged toward a wider confrontation reshaping East Asia's balance of power.

Britain formally annexes the Transvaal Republic during the Second Boer War, absorbing the Boer state despite continued guerrilla resistance in the field.

News reports confirmed the catastrophic scale of the Galveston Hurricane, the deadliest natural disaster in United States history, killing an estimated 6,000 to 12,000 people.

Weeks after relieving the siege of foreign legations in Beijing, the eight-nation alliance consolidated control over the Chinese capital.

Eastman Kodak began selling the Brownie box camera for one dollar, putting photography into the hands of ordinary people for the first time.

Following the suppression of the Boxer Rebellion, the eight allied powers occupying Beijing continued negotiating harsh indemnity terms that would burden China for decades.

Max Planck presented his radiation law to the German Physical Society, introducing the quantum hypothesis that would upend classical physics.