This day in history

One week after launching a massive invasion of the USSR, Nazi divisions make staggering advances on Leningrad, Moscow and Kiev. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin had ignored warnings that Adolf Hitler would betray the 1939 Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact, and in the first months of their invasion the Germans seized over 500,000 square miles of Soviet territory.

However, the tenacity of the Red Army and the severity of the Russian winter had yet to be experienced by the Germans, and they would eventually prove insurmountable.
 

America passes sanctions against China in response to the Tiananmen Square massacre. 

Maria Estela Isabel Martinez de Peron is sworn in as interim leader of Argentina.

The U.S. Supreme Court rules that capital punishment, as it is currently employed on the state and federal level, is unconstitutional.

Opening of the BBC Television Centre in London.

Charles I of England defeats a Parliamentarian army at the Battle of Cropredy Bridge in England.

The original Globe Theatre in London burns down after a cannon is fired during a performance of a Shakespearean play and sets fire to the straw roof.