mostly Polish residents of the village of Glitiškės. TWA Flight 277 en route from Stephenville, Newfoundland to Washington, D.C. crashed on Fort Mountain, Maine. All seven on board were killed. British Minister of Production Oliver Lyttelton departed from the prepared text of a speech to the American Chamber of Commerce in London and stated, "Japan was provoked into attacking the Americans at Pearl Harbor. It is a travesty on history to ever say that America was forced into the war. Everyone knows where American sympathies were. It is incorrect to say that America was ever truly neutral even before America came into the war on an all-out fighting basis." These remarks were instantly controversial; U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull released a statement that same day calling Lyttelton's comment "entirely in error as to the facts and fails to state the true attitude of the United States both during the earlier stages of military preparation for world conquest by Germany and Japan and during the later aggressions by those two countries. This government from the beginning to the end was actuated by the single policy of self-defense against the rapidly increasing danger to this nation." A V-2 rocket become the first man-made object in space during a test launch (MW 18014). June 21, 1944 (Wednesday) The British Eighth Army reached the German defensive Trasimene Line in Italy. The British destroyer Fury struck a mine off Sword Beach, Normandy and was declared a total loss. Oliver Lyttelton rose in the House of Commons to give an "explanation" for his remarks of the previous day. "I was trying, in a parenthesis, to make clear the gratitude which this country feels for the help given to us in the war against Germany, before Japan attacked the United States," Lyttelton said. "The words I used, however, when read textually, and apart from the whole tenor of my speech, seemed to mean that the help given us against Germany provoked Japan to attack. This is manifestly untrue. I want to make it quite clear that I do not complain of being misreported, and any misunderstanding is entirely my own fault. I ask the House to believe, however, that the fault was one of expression and not of intention. I hope this apology will undo any harm that the original words may have caused here or in the United States." Born: Ray Davies, rock guitarist, vocalist