This day in history

With Paris fallen to Germany, Marshal Henri Pétain, the new French leader, announces his intention to sign an armistice with the Nazis. Signed on 22 June, the armistice authorized the occupation of more than half of France by Germany.

In July, Pétain took office as chief of state at Vichy, a city in unoccupied France. Under Pétain, and later Pierre Laval, the Vichy government collaborated fully with the Nazis, arresting Jews and French resistance fighters and shipping them off to Nazi concentration camps.

After the Normandy invasion in 1944, Pétain and Laval were forced to flee to German protection in the east. Both were eventually captured, found guilty of high treason and sentenced to death. Laval was executed in 1945 but provincial French leader Charles de Gaulle commuted Pétain’s sentence to life imprisonment. Pétain died on the Île d'Yeu off France in 1951.
 

In South Africa, the repeal of the Population Registration Act of 1950 effectively ends the Government’s policy of Apartheid.
 

In England, an IRA bomb explodes at the Houses of Parliament, injuring 11 people.
 

Five men are arrested for breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington D.C., America.