June 21, 1942

1942Clive Brooke, Baron Brooke of Alverthorpe, English businessman and politician^[†]

Clive Brooke, Baron Brooke of Alverthorpe is a British trade unionist, and Labour Member of the House of Lords.

1942Norbert Brunner, Swiss Catholic bishop^[†]

Norbert Brunner is a Swiss prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Sion in Switzerland from 1995 to 2014. He was the elected President of the Swiss Bishops Conference for the term 2010–2012.

1942Paul Chernoff, American mathematician and poet (died 2017)^[†]

Paul Robert Chernoff was an American mathematician, specializing in functional analysis and the mathematical foundations of quantum mechanics. He is known for Chernoff's Theorem, a mathematical result in the Feynman path integral formulation of quantum mechanics. He was also the author of limericks.

1942Marjorie Margolies, American journalist and politician^[†]

Marjorie Margolies is a fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Fels Institute of Government and an adjunct faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania. She is a former journalist and a Democratic politician. From 1993 to 1995, she was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, representing Pennsylvania's 13th congressional district.

1942Henry S. Taylor, American author and poet (died 2024)^[†]

Henry Splawn Taylor was an American poet, academic, and translator. The author of more than 15 books of poems, translation, and nonfiction, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1986.

1942Flaviano Vicentini, Italian cyclist (died 2002)^[†]

Flaviano Vicentini was an Italian road race cyclist who was active between 1963 and 1971. After becoming the world champion in 1963 as amateur, he turned professional. He then won the Grand Prix de Cannes in 1966 and the Giro del Lazio in 1969. In 1968 and 1969 he also won one stage at the Volta a Catalunya.

1942Togo D. West Jr., American soldier, lawyer, and politician, 3rd United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs (died 2018)^[†]

Togo Dennis West Jr. was an American attorney and public official. A Democrat, he served as the third secretary of veterans affairs during the Bill Clinton administration from 1998 until his resignation in 2000. He was the second African American to be Secretary of Veterans Affairs.

1942World War II: Tobruk falls to Italian and German forces; 33,000 Allied troops are taken prisoner.^[†]

The Axis capture of Tobruk, also known as the Fall of Tobruk and the Second Battle of Tobruk was part of the Western Desert campaign in Libya during the Second World War. The battle was fought by the Panzerarmee Afrika, a German–Italian military force in North Africa which included the Afrika Korps, against the British Eighth Army which comprised contingents from Britain, India, South Africa and other Allied nations.

1942World War II: A Japanese submarine surfaces near the Columbia River in Oregon, firing 17 shells at Fort Stevens in one of only a handful of attacks by Japan against the United States mainland.^[†]

The Bombardment of Fort Stevens occurred in June 1942, in the American Theater and the Pacific Theater of World War II. The Imperial Japanese submarine I-25 fired on Fort Stevens, which defended the Oregon side of the Columbia River's Pacific entrance.