June 2

In the early hours of June 22, 2022, a magnitude 6.0 earthquake struck southeastern Afghanistan, with devastating impacts on the rural provinces of Paktika and Khost. Thousands of homes collapsed, over a thousand lives were lost, and the disaster compounded an already dire humanitarian crisis in a region ill-equipped to respond. The aftermath revealed both the fragility and resilience of Afghan communities struggling through loss, displacement, and ongoing uncertainty.

In the early hours of June 24, 2021, a large section of the Champlain Towers South condominium in Surfside, Florida, collapsed without warning. The disaster killed 98 people, making it one of the deadliest building collapses in U.S. history. The tragedy exposed deep issues of building safety, deferred repairs, and regulatory oversight, leading to sweeping changes in inspection practices and ongoing investigations into the causes of the collapse.

On June 26, 1941, three unidentified aircraft dropped bombs on the Hungarian-administered city of Kassa (today Košice), striking parts of the central city and injuring and killing civilians. The attack — for which responsibility remains disputed — was used by Hungary’s government as the immediate pretext to declare war on the Soviet Union the next day, binding Hungary formally to the Eastern Front campaign and altering its wartime course.