June 21

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.

The Słonim Ghetto was the site of the rapid persecution, ghettoization, mass shootings, and final liquidation of the Jewish community of Słonim (then in the Byelorussian SSR) following the German invasion that began on June 22, 1941. Over the late summer and autumn of 1941 and through 1942, Einsatzgruppen, Ordnungspolizei units, and local auxiliaries carried out organized roundups and mass executions—most notably a series of large shootings in mid‑November 1941—that destroyed the large prewar Jewish presence in Słonim and the surrounding district. Estimates of victims vary by whether they count town residents alone or include the wider county; scholarly and memorial figures commonly range from several thousand into the low tens of thousands.

On the evening of June 13, 1997, smoke from an electrical fault spread through the Uphaar Cinema in Green Park, New Delhi, as a packed audience watched the film Border. Locked and obstructed exits turned hallways into traps; 59 people died—mostly from smoke inhalation—and scores were injured. The disaster triggered years of litigation, tightened scrutiny of fire-safety enforcement, and a long struggle by victims' families for accountability.