Historical Events in 2021

Events 1 - 200 of 875

• Jan 1 African Continental Free Trade Area, signed by 54 countries comes into effect, largely symbolically with full implementation expected to take years [1]
• Jan 1 Cuba's "day zero" unifies its two currencies by withdrawing the Cuban convertible peso (CUC), alongside steep increases in prices and salaries, effectively devaluing the remaining Cuban Peso for the first time since 1959 [1]

• Jan 3 Welshman Gerwyn Price wins his first PDC World Darts Championship; beats Gary Anderson of Scotland, 7-3 at the Alexandra Palace in London

• Jan 4 First Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines given to the general public with 82-year-old Brian Pinker in the UK first to be jabbed [1]

• Jan 4 South Korea, already the country with world's lowest birth rate, records more deaths than births for the first time [1]
• Jan 5 86th Heisman Trophy Award: DeVonta Smith, Alabama (WR)
• Jan 5 Daily new cases of COVID-19 top 60,000 in the UK as data reveals one in fifty in England had COVID-19 within the last week
• Jan 5 In Georgia Senate run-off elections Raphael Warnock (D) defeats Kelly Loeffler (R) and Jon Ossoff (D) defeats David Perdue (R) to give Democrats control of the US Senate
• Jan 5 Six Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, sign an agreement to ease the blockage with Qatar, in place since 2017
• Jan 6 More than 50 pro-democracy activists rounded up and arrested in Hong Kong

• Jan 6 Supporters of US President Donald Trump storm the Capitol in Washington during congressional certification of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris's win, resulting in five deaths and prompting evacuation of lawmakers and Vice President Mike Pence
• Jan 7 Arizona called the COVID-19 "hotspot of the world" by local health officials as state suffers an average of 118.3 new cases per 100,000 people

• Jan 7 WHO warns Europe needs to do more to "flatten the steep vertical line" of COVID-19 cases and control the spread of the new variant, with 230 million already living under lockdown

• Jan 8 Storm Filomena hits Spain with 50cm (20 inches) of snow falling on Madrid, resulting in four deaths and leaving thousands stranded
• Jan 8 Twitter bans US President Donald Trump permanently "due to the risk of further incitement of violence"

• Jan 9 China places two cities, Shijiazhuang and Xingtai, under lockdown after over 130 cases of COVID-19 reported

• Jan 9 Sriwijaya Air Flight 182 crashes in the Java Sea just after take off from Jakarta, Indonesia, killing all 62 on board
• Jan 10 America records more than 3,000 deaths a day for the first time reaching 3,249, passing 375,000 deaths in total a day later
• Jan 11 Ireland becomes the country with the world's highest COVID-19 infection rate after a dramatic surge results in seven-day rolling average of 1,394 cases per million
• Jan 11 The king of Malaysia, Al-Sultan Abdullah declares a state of emergency over COVID-19 till 1 August, suspending parliament and giving the government new powers
• Jan 11 US House Democrats introduce one article of impeachment against President Donald Trump for "incitement of insurrection" for encouraging his supporters to riot at the Capitol
• Jan 12 India's Supreme Court puts on hold three controversial new farm laws that ignited weeks of protests by farmers in Delhi
• Jan 13 Deadliest air raid by Israel on Syria since 2018, when 10 soldiers and 47 allied fighters killed in attacks on military positions [1]
• Jan 13 Irish PM Minister Micheál Martin issues apology for treatment of unmarried mothers and babies in church-run institutions 1920-1990s after report 9,000 children had died [1]
• Jan 13 President Donald Trump is impeached by the US House of Representatives voting 232-197, for “incitement of insurrection”, first time in history a US President is impeached twice
• Jan 13 World's oldest known cave painting of an animal - a pig, 45,000 years old, discovered in Leang Tedongnge cave, island of Sulawesi, Indonesia [1]
• Jan 14 Brazilian governor of Amazonas state Wilson Lima says their COVID-19 surge is now as bad as April 2020, with hospitals running out of oxygen and patients ventilated manually
• Jan 14 Former Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder charged and pleads not guilty to two counts of willful neglect of duty over the Flint water scandal that killed 12 people

• Jan 14 US Secret Service takes control of Joe Biden's inauguration as 20,000 troops authorized to guard Washington D.C., more than those stationed in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Somalia
• Jan 15 6.2-magnitude earthquake on Indonesia's island of Sulawesi kills at least 42 with hundreds injured

• Jan 16 10 Nepali climbers become the first to reach the summit of K2 in winter on the China-Pakistan border

• Jan 16 India begin the vaccination of its 1.3 billion people for COVID-19
• Jan 17 Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny is arrested immediately on his return to Russia after recovering from nerve-agent poisoning [1]
• Jan 18 Brazil begins vaccinations for COVID-19 with the world's second-highest death toll at 209,000
• Jan 19 The US death toll from COVID-19 passes 400,000

• Jan 20 Dan Campbell is appointed head coach of the Detroit Lions
• Jan 20 Joe Biden is inaugurated as the 46th President of the United States of America and Kamala Harris as the 49th Vice President, the first female, black or south Asian Vice President. Amanda Gorman recites "The Hill We Climb"; previous office holder Donald Trump is first outgoing president to refuse to attend the inauguration of his successor since 1869 P
• Jan 20 US President Joe Biden signs 15 executive orders on his first day in office, including: US re-joining the WHO, affirming the Paris Climate Agreement, revoking the Keystone XL Pipeline, mandating masks on federal properties, and halting construction of the southern border wall [1]

• Jan 22 Lloyd Austin confirmed as defense secretary by the US Senate, and the first black head of the Pentagon

• Jan 26 Antony Blinken confirmed by US Senate as Secretary of State

• Jan 28 Mexico's COVID-19 death toll becomes the world's third highest, overtaking India's at 155,145 [1]
• Jan 28 Share trading app Robinhood, favored by Reddit, suspends trading of Gamestop amid huge surge in share price of the previously short listed stock by Wall Street
• Jan 29 "Proposal to Prevent the Feminisation of Male Adolescents" published by China's Education Ministry asks schools to use sports to cultivate masculinity [1]
• Jan 29 Johnson & Johnson's Janssen single-dose vaccine shown to be 66% effective in trials, with complete protection against hospitalization and death [1]
• Jan 29 Nigerian farmers win landmark case against Shell at Court of Appeal of the Hague - held accountable for oil spills and ordered to carry out a clean-up in Delta region [1]
• Jan 29 Novavax vaccine shows 89% efficacy in UK trials, including against UK variant [1]

• Feb 1 Wildfires ignite on the outskirts of Perth, Australia, forcing evacuations amid five-day COVID-19 lockdown
• Feb 1 Wisdom the albatross, the world's oldest known bird, hatches a chick at 70 at the Midway Atoll national wildlife refuge, North Pacific [1]
• Feb 2 Alejandro Mayorkas is the first Latino and immigrant to be confirmed as head of the US Department of Homeland Security

• Feb 2 Pete Buttigieg is the first openly gay person to be confirmed to a US cabinet post as transportation secretary
• Feb 2 Russia's Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine deemed 91.6% effective according to analysis published in "The Lancet" [1]
• Feb 2 Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny jailed for three and a half years in jail over alleged parole violations in Moscow
• Feb 2 US President Joe Biden signs executive orders to reunite immigrant families, setting up a new taskforce to address around 1000 remaining separated families [1]
• Feb 3 Engineers at MIT announce they have engineered spinach to send emails when detecting explosive materials in groundwater as part of plant nanobionic research [1]
• Feb 3 US and Russia extend their New START nuclear arms control treaty for five years, the last remaining nuclear arms deal between the two countries
• Feb 4 Denmark approves plans for world's first energy island in the North Sea to provide power to 3 million Europeans
• Feb 4 First successful face and double hand transplant announced performed on 22 year-old Joe DiMeo in New York
• Feb 4 International Criminal Court convicts Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army commander Dominic Ongwen of war crimes and crimes against humanity including forced pregnancy in legal first [1]
• Feb 4 US President Joe Biden announces an end to US support for the Saudi-led offensive in Yemen's civil war
• Feb 5 Ocean life is being drowned out by human noise, especially shipping, construction, sonar and seismic surveys according to new research [1]
• Feb 7 Himalayan glacier crashes into the Dhauliganga river, destroying a dam and causing a huge flood in Uttarakhand province, India, killing 26, leaving 150 missing
• Feb 7 Sarah Thomas becomes the first woman to referee a Super Bowl in Tampa Bay, Florida

• Feb 8 Martial law declared in Mandalay, Myanmar, amid continuing protests against the country's military coup
• Feb 8 South Africa halts rollout of Oxford AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine after research into the South African variant showed no protection against mild and moderate illness
• Feb 9 United Arab Emirates is the fifth entity to successfully orbit a probe around Mars, as probe Hope begins to study the planet's atmosphere.
• Feb 9 US Senate Impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump begins in Washington D.C.
• Feb 9 WHO team investigating origin of COVID-19 in Wuhan say it is "extremely unlikely" that it leaked from a local research lab [1]
• Feb 10 17,000 year old conch shell discovered to be oldest known wind instrument, after being reassessed by archaeologists, originally found in Marsoulas cave, Pyrenees [1]
• Feb 10 Astronomers confirm the planetoid named Farfarout as the most distant orbiting the Sun, almost four times more distant than Pluto [1]

• Feb 11 California's COVID-19 death toll overtakes New York's, reaching 45,496 amid first sign of falling infection numbers (Johns Hopkins)
• Feb 11 UK Kent COVID-19 strain set "to sweep the world" and become the dominant strain globally according to UK scientist Sharon Peacock after strain detected in over 50 countries (later named Alpha)
• Feb 11 US President Joe Biden rescinds the national emergency order used by Donald Trump to fund the border wall with Mexico
• Feb 11 World's second oldest person, French nun Sister André, celebrates her 117th birthday after surviving COVID-19 in Toulon
• Feb 12 Tokyo Olympics Chief Yoshiro Mori resigns after his comments that talkative women made meetings “drag on too long”
• Feb 13 Archaeologists announce discovery of oldest known beer factory in Abydos, Egypt, from early Dynastic period 3150 B.C.- 2613 B.C
• Feb 13 Former US President Donald Trump acquitted in second Senate impeachment trial on charge of incitement of insurrection after senators vote 57 to 43 in favor of conviction, less than the two thirds majority required for impeachment

• Feb 14 63rd Daytona 500: Michael McDowell navigates through fiery, final-lap pileup to claim his first career NASCAR Cup Series win in his 14th season; race delayed by rain for 6 hours after huge Lap 14 crash
• Feb 14 At least 60 people killed and hundreds missing after a boat capsizes on the Congo River carrying 700 people in western Democratic Republic of the Congo
• Feb 14 Guinea declares an Ebola epidemic after three deaths, its first deaths since 2016
• Feb 15 Major winter storm in the US stretches from Texas to Maine, over 3 million without power in Texas, goes on to kill 210 people
• Feb 15 Nigerian Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala becomes the first woman and first African to lead the World Trade Organization
• Feb 15 UK is the first European country to require travellers from COVID-19 'hotspots' to isolate in quarantine hotels, following other countries such as Australia, NZ and Singapore
• Feb 16 Athens and parts of Greece covered in unusual heavy snowfall
• Feb 16 US Winter storm continues with Dallas recording its lowest temperature in 70 years minus-2 degrees Fahrenheit
• Feb 17 South Africa, Africa's worst-affected country begins COVID-19 vaccinations with the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine in Cape Town

• Feb 18 Facebook blocks users in Australia from accessing news sites in response to proposed new laws for tech companies to pay to show news content
• Feb 18 NASA's Perseverance rover successfully lands at Jezero Crater, Mars, on mission to find microfossils [1]
• Feb 18 Nearly seven million people required to boil their water in Texas as unusually harsh winter storm in the state continues
• Feb 19 In a softening of 4-year WADA ban on Russia from all international sport, Russia to compete under acronym "ROC" after name of the Russian Olympic Committee
• Feb 20 Bloodiest day of protests in Myanmar since its coup after security forces open fire, killing two people with 40 wounded in Mandalay
• Feb 20 Englishwoman Jasmine Harrison (21) becomes the youngest woman to row across an ocean arriving in Antigua as part of the Atlantic Challenge after 70 days, 3 hours, 48 minutes
• Feb 20 Joel Embiid records a double-double with a then-career high 50 points and 17 rebounds in an NBA game against the Chicago Bulls
• Feb 20 US President Joe Biden declares a major disaster in Texas as state struggles to cope with aftermath of a crippling winter storm
• Feb 21 First democratic transfer of power in Niger, the world's poorest country, as former interior minister Mohamed Bazoum wins Presidential election [1]

• Feb 21 WHO pleads with Tanzania to start reporting COVID-19 cases amid fears of a hidden epidemic in the country
• Feb 22 Influential French dance duo Daft Punk announce their split after 28 years
• Feb 22 US death toll from COVID-19 passes 500,000, higher than US deaths in World War I, World War II, and the Vietnam War combined. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris hold a candle-lighting ceremony outside the White House and say "we must not grow numb to the sorrow".

• Feb 23 COVID-19 antibodies survey in Nigeria suggests 4 million people have had the virus in Lagos state alone, more than officially recorded for whole of Africa [1]
• Feb 23 Discovery of oldest Australian rock art, a 17,300-year-old painting of a kangaroo in Kimberley region, Western Australia, published in "Nature Human Behaviour" [1]

• Feb 24 United Nations-backed COVAX initiative begins delivering vaccines to middle and low income countries with first AstraZeneca shipment to Ghana

• Feb 25 More than 200 prisoners escape and 25 people are killed at Croix-des-Bouquets prison near Port-au-Prince, Haiti

• Feb 26 Amnesty International Report says that Eritrean troops might have committed crimes against humanity, killing hundreds of civilians, in attack on Ethiopian city of Aksum 28-29 November [1]
• Feb 26 Toymaker Hasbro announces that the Mr Potato Head brand name will be changed to be gender-neutral [1]
• Feb 27 US authorizes its third COVID-19 vaccine from Johnson & Johnson, a one-shot vaccine
• Feb 28 Hong Kong charges 47 with "conspiracy to commit subversion" in harshest implementation of its new security laws imposed by China
• Feb 28 Myanmar security forces open fire on protests around the country, killing at least 18, in bloodiest day since the military coup [1]
• Mar 1 Former French President Nicholas Sarkozy is sentenced to three years for trying to bribe a judge

• Mar 2 Governors of Texas and Mississippi both announce they are lifting mask mandates and COVID-19 health measures despite CDC warnings of complacency

• Mar 3 38 people shot and killed by security forces in anti-coup protests in Myanmar
• Mar 3 Australian attorney general Christian Porter denies rape allegation involving 16-year-old girl in 1988
• Mar 3 Great apes at San Diego Zoo reported given experimental COVID-19 vaccine designed for animals after earlier outbreak among the gorillas (San Diego, California) [1]
• Mar 3 Sarah Everard is kidnapped, raped and murdered by a UK policeman after being arrested under false pretenses in London
• Mar 3 US President Joe Biden criticizes lifting of COVID-19 restrictions by Texas and Mississippi as "Neanderthal thinking"
• Mar 6 On his first visit to Iraq, Pope Francis meets with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in the Shiite cleric's home in Najaf

• Mar 6 US Senate passes $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill the American Rescue Plan
• Mar 7 Explosions at a military base in Bata, Equatorial Guinea, likely from faulty storage of dynamite, kills at least 98 and injures over 400 [1]

• Mar 8 US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says COVID-9 pandemic has had an "extremely unfair" effect on income and economic opportunities for women
• Mar 9 Brazil records its highest daily COVID-19 death toll to date of 1,972 deaths with 168,370 deaths overall
• Mar 9 China and Russia agree to build a research station on or around the Moon and collaborate on lunar missions, in move that could start another space race

• Mar 10 Video gaming platform Roblox goes public on the New York Stock Exchange, valued at $45 billion

• Mar 11 Digital art work "Everydays: The First 5,000 Days" a digital college by Beeple, with a non-fungible token, sells for record $69.3 million in online auction by Christie's [1]
• Mar 12 Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi imposes new COVID restrictions warning of a new wave as cases again exceed 25,000 a day
• Mar 12 Researchers say world has likely reached 'peak twin' with more twin births than ever before - 1.6 million twins born per year (1 in 42) [1]

• Mar 14 Myanmar opposition leader Mahn Win Khaing Than calls for a revolution "This is the darkest moment of the nation and the moment that the dawn is close," as protester death toll over 120
• Mar 14 UK police officer charged with the death of Sarah Everard, who disappeared walking home in south London, and whose death sparked debate about violence against women
• Mar 15 Armed attackers kill at least 58 people in the Tillabery region, southwest Niger, government declares three days of mourning
• Mar 15 AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine halted in Germany, France and Italy joining some other countries despite little evidence of unusual blood clotting
• Mar 15 Deb Haaland confirmed as US Secretary of the Interior by the Senate, 1st Native American to lead a cabinet agency
• Mar 15 Largest sandstorm in northern China in a decade engulfs Beijing turning air pollution levels hazardous
• Mar 15 Mass March 4 Justice rallies held across Australia to protest against violence and discrimination towards women
• Mar 15 Vatican issues judgement that priests cannot bless same-sex unions, that God “does not and cannot bless sin”

• Mar 16 French architects Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal win the Pritzker Prize for architecture
• Mar 16 Gunman shots and kills eight people at three different spas in Atlanta, Georgia
• Mar 16 Israeli researchers reveal re-discovery of 2,000 year-old Dead Sea Scrolls, 1st found in 60 years, left by Jews fleeing Romans in "Horror Cave", Israel

• Mar 18 US House Judiciary Committee hearing begins on rise of violence and discrimination against Asian-Americans with report saying 3,800 hate incidents recorded over 12 months [1]
• Mar 18 US President Joe Biden agrees Russian President Vladimir Putin is a "killer" in ABC News interview. Putin responds "It takes one to know one" a day later.
• Mar 18 US Senate confirms William Joseph Burns as new CIA Director
• Mar 19 Icelandic volcano Fagradalsfjall erupts for the first time in 800 years and after more than 50,000 earthquakes
• Mar 20 Miami Beach imposes a state of emergency and a curfew as large crowds descend on the area for spring break
• Mar 20 Overseas spectators will not be allowed to attend the Tokyo Summer Olympics due to the pandemic Japanese organizers confirm
• Mar 20 Severe one-in-a-hundred-year flooding in Sydney and the surrounding state of New South Wales prompts evacuation orders
• Mar 21 45 crushed to death in a crowd paying respects to the late President John Magufuli at a stadium in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
• Mar 22 10 people shot dead at a supermarket in Boulder, Colorado, by 21 year-old gunman
• Mar 22 Evanston, Illinois, votes to become first US city to pay reparations to Black residents for past discriminations and effects of slavery, giving $400,000 to each household
• Mar 22 Sanctions imposed on Chinese officials over rights abuses against Uighurs in China by EU, UK, US and Canada
• Mar 22 World's largest painting "The Journey of Humanity" by British artist Sacha Jafri sells in Dubai for $62m to raise funds for children's charities

• Mar 23 Cargo ship Ever Given gets stuck in the Suez Canal, Egypt, a 400m megaship it completely blocks the shipping canal

• Mar 25 Renaissance masterpiece The Ghent Altarpiece (1432) by Hubert and Jan Van Eyck goes on display, after seven-year restoration, in Saint Bavo Cathedral in Ghent, Belgium [1]
• Mar 25 Republican-led Georgia State Senate passes restrictive changes to state voting. President Joe Biden calls it "Jim Crow in the 21st Century" and "a blatant attack on the Constitution".
• Mar 25 US President Joe Biden announces a new goal of 200 million vaccinations in his administration's first 100 days (previously 100 million)
• Mar 27 114 people including children killed in one day by armed forces in Myanmar, with more than 420 killed since protests began against the military coup [1]
• Mar 27 Iran and China sign major agreement guaranteeing Chinese investment of $400 billion and Iranian oil supply in return in Tehran [1]
• Mar 27 Militants attack the town of Palma, northern Mozambique, killing dozens in an escalation of violence in the area

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