Imperial Japanese forces occupied Manila after General Douglas MacArthur declared it an open city to spare it from destruction.

British forces surrender Singapore to Japan, a defeat Winston Churchill called the 'worst disaster' in British military history.

North Korean state history records Kim Jong-il as born on Mount Paektu, a sacred site, though Soviet records show his actual birth in Siberia the year before.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs Executive Order 9066, authorizing the forced removal and internment of over 110,000 Japanese Americans.

The brutal forced march of American and Filipino prisoners of war to Japanese prison camps came to its final, deadly stretch, having killed thousands along the way.

American and Filipino forces on the Bataan Peninsula surrendered to Japanese troops, the largest surrender in U.S. military history.

Sixteen U.S. Army bombers launched from an aircraft carrier struck Tokyo and other Japanese cities, the first American attack on Japan's home islands in World War II.

Japanese aircraft attacked American forces on Midway Atoll, opening the pivotal Pacific battle that would cripple Japan's carrier fleet.

American carrier aircraft sank three Japanese fleet carriers off Midway Atoll in minutes, a reversal that broke Japan's naval dominance in the Pacific.

U.S. Navy dive bombers sank four Japanese aircraft carriers at the Battle of Midway, a turning point that broke Imperial Japan's naval dominance in the Pacific.

The Japanese carrier Hiryu sank, the last of four fleet carriers lost at Midway, crippling Japan's naval air power for the rest of the war.

The Battle of Midway ended as US forces sank a fourth Japanese carrier, crippling Japan's navy and turning the tide of the Pacific War.

Japan's Admiral Yamamoto called off the invasion of Midway Atoll after losing four aircraft carriers, a turning point in the Pacific War.

As the smoke cleared over the Pacific, U.S. Navy assessments on June 10 confirmed four Japanese carriers sunk at Midway, a turning point against Imperial Japan.

Nazi forces razed the Czech village of Lidice, executing 173 men and deporting women and children in reprisal for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich.

On her 13th birthday, Anne Frank received a red-checkered diary in Amsterdam, beginning a chronicle that would become one of history's most read books.

Allied convoy PQ 17, carrying vital war supplies to the Soviet Union, departed Hvalfjord, Iceland, sailing into what would become one of the war's worst maritime disasters.

11,000 U.S. Marines landed on Guadalcanal, opening the first major American offensive of the Pacific War.

Nazi forces intensified reprisal killings across occupied Ukraine as the eastern campaign ground into its second summer of mass atrocities.

Allied forces launched a disastrous amphibious raid on the German-held French port, losing over 3,600 men in a single day.

German Luftwaffe bombers intensified raids on Stalingrad as the Wehrmacht pushed toward the Volga, beginning months of brutal urban combat.

The Soviet 588th Night Bomber Regiment, an all-female unit flying flimsy wood-and-canvas biplanes, conducted daring nighttime raids the Germans nicknamed the 'Night Witches.'

Allied forces launched Operation Torch, landing over 100,000 American and British troops across French North Africa in the first major Anglo-American offensive of World War II.

American and Japanese warships clashed fiercely off Guadalcanal, with U.S. battleships sinking the Japanese battleship Kirishima in a decisive nighttime engagement.

Jimi Hendrix was born in Seattle, Washington, the guitarist who would redefine the electric guitar's sonic possibilities within a quarter century.