Historical Events on May 21

Events 1 - 200 of 219

• 878 Syracuse is captured by the Muslim sultan of Sicily
• 879 Pope John VIII gives blessings to duke Branimir and to Croatian people, considered to be international recognition of the Croatian state
• 996 Pope Gregory V crowns his cousin Otto III as Holy Roman Emperor in St Peter's Basilica in Rome

• 1040 King Henry III gives Utrecht the Groninger currency

• 1281 Kublai Khan's second invasion of Japan begins with an attack on Tsushima Island but meets fierce resistance; his troops are forced to withdraw
• 1382 Earthquake centered on Dover Straits with estimated magnitude of 6.0 causes widespread damage, including to Canterbury Cathedral

• 1502 Portuguese explorer João Da Nova discovers the uninhabited Saint Helena island in the South Atlantic Ocean
• 1602 Martha's Vineyard 1st sighted by Captain Bartholomew Gosnold
• 1674 General John Sobieski chosen King of Poland

• 1683 West Indian Company sells 1/3 of Suriname

• 1758 Mary Campbell is abducted from her home in Pennsylvania by Lenape during the French and Indian War
• 1792 Mount Unzen on Japan's Shimabara Peninsula, erupts creating a tsunami, killing about 15,000; Japan's deadliest volcanic eruption
• 1793 Curacao Island Council forbids criticism of House of Orange

• 1809 Battle of Aspern-Essling: Austrian Archduke Charles beats Napoleon and his army. Napoleon's first defeat in 10 years.
• 1819 1st bicycles (swift walkers) in US introduced in NYC
• 1832 First US Democratic National Convention, is held in Baltimore
• 1840 Captain William Hobson proclaims British sovereignty over New Zealand; the North Island by treaty and the South Island by 'discovery'
• 1846 1st steamship arrives in Hawaii

• 1856 Lawrence, Kansas, is captured and sacked by pro-slavery forces
• 1861 Richmond, Virginia, is designated the Confederate Capital
• 1863 Siege of Port Hudson, Louisiana, begins
• 1864 Battle of Spotsylvania Court House of the US Civil War ends inclusively with an estimated 32,000 casualties on both sides
• 1864 General David Hunter takes command of Department of West Virginia
• 1864 Russia declares an end to the Russian-Circassian War and many Circassians are forced into exile. The day is designated to be the Circassian Day of Mourning.
• 1871 French Army attacks Paris beginning the Semaine Sanglante (Bloody Week), a weeklong battle that kills 10,000-15,000 and ends the Paris Commune
• 1879 Battle of Iquique: Chilean naval forces overcome Peruvian ships (War of the Pacific)

• 1881 US National Lawn Tennis Association is established in NYC, New York
• 1891 Australian boxer Peter Jackson and future world heavyweight champion Jim Corbett fight a No Contest in 61 rounds at California Athletic Club, San Francisco
• 1892 Ruggero Leoncavallo's opera "I Pagliacci" premieres in Milan
• 1894 22-year-old French Anarchist Émile Henry is executed by guillotine. His last words were reputed to be "Courage, camarades! Vive l'anarchie!"
• 1897 Yerkes Observatory 40" (1m) refractor used for 1st time
• 1898 US Assay Office in Seattle, Washington, authorized
• 1904 Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) forms in Paris
• 1904 France recalls its ambassador to the Vatican to protest the Pope's attempt to discipline two French bishops; this is yet another incident driving France and the Catholic Church apart
• 1906 Louis H. Perlman patents a demountable tire carrying rim for cars
• 1906 The US and Mexico sign an agreement over distribution of the waters of the Rio Grande, increasingly diverted to the US for irrigation
• 1908 1st American horror movie silent film "Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde" premieres in Chicago

• 1911 French troop enter Fez in Morocco to quell anti-European agitation
• 1914 Greyhound Bus Co begins in Minnesota
• 1916 Britain begins "Summer Time" (daylight saving time)
• 1917 Leo Pinckney, 1st American drafted during WWI
• 1917 The Great Fire of Atlanta: at least 10,000 people were displaced, but there was only one fatality
• 1918 US House of Representatives passes amendment allowing women to vote
• 1920 Mexican President Venustiano Carranza is executed by army generals after fleeing an armed rebellion in Mexico
• 1921 Oldest radio station west of Mississippi River licensed in Greeley Co.
• 1922 Colonel Jacob Ruppert buys out Colonel Tillinghast L’Hommedieu Huston's interest in NY Yankees for $1,500,000 to become sole owner

• 1922 Rollin Kirby's "On the Road to Moscow" is the 1st cartoon to receive a Pulitzer Prize
• 1924 Nathan Leopold & Richard Loeb kidnap and kill Bobby Franks to demonstrate their supposed intellectual superiority by committing a "perfect crime"
• 1925 George Lloyd, Baron Lloyd of Dolobran, becomes British High Commissioner in Egypt
• 1925 Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsun leaves Spitsbergen with 2 seaplanes for the North Pole
• 1926 White Sox Earl Sheely hits a record 6th consecutive double

• 1929 Automatic electric stock quotation board installed in NYC
• 1929 Sergei Prokoviev's ballet "Prodigal Son" premieres in Paris

• 1934 Oskaloosa, Iowa, becomes first US city to fingerprint its citizens
• 1936 Sada Abe is arrested after wandering the streets of Tokyo for days with her dead lover's severed genitals in her hand. Her story soon becomes one of Japan's most notorious scandals.

• 1940 AVRO chairman Willem Vogt fires all Jewish employees
• 1940 Battle of Arras: British and French Allied forces counterattack south of Arras, France, winning time to reinforce and foritfy the Channel Ports
• 1940 Paul Reynaud forms French government
• 1941 German airforce occupies airport at Maleme, Crete
• 1941 Singer Johan Heesters visits Dachau concentration camp
• 1941 SS Robin Moor becomes the first US ship sunk by a U-boat during World War II
• 1942 Convoy PQ16 departs Great Britain for Russia
• 1943 Fastest 9 inning AL baseball night game (89 mins), Chicago White Sox beat visiting Washington Senators, 1-0
• 1944 WWII: West Loch Disaster - explosion during munition loading kills at least 160 sailors, injures nearly 400, destroys six ships and damages 3 piers and several buildings at Pearl Harbor U.S. Naval Base in Oahu, Hawaii; details were kept classified until the early 1960s
• 1945 Australian Services win 1st Victory Test Cricket at Lord's by 6 wickets

• 1946 Physicist Louis Slotin is exposed to a lethal dose of radiation while preparing a plutonium core experiment at the Los Alamos lab, he dies 9 days later and the accident ends all hands-on nuclear assembly work at Los Alamos

• 1951 The opening of the Ninth Street Show, otherwise known as the 9th Street Art Exhibition - a gathering of a number of notable artists, and the stepping-out of the post war New York avant-garde, collectively know as the New York School.
• 1952 Booklyn Dodgers score 15 runs in their 1st inning to beat Cincinnati Reds 19-1

• 1953 French government of René Mayer resigns
• 1954 US Twenty-sixth amendment to give 18-year-olds right to vote is defeated
• 1955 1st transcontinental round-trip solo flight-sunrise to sunset
• 1955 WFRV TV channel 5 in Green Bay, Wisconsin (ABC/NBC) begins broadcasting
• 1956 Jordan government of Said el-Mufti forms
• 1956 US explodes 1st airborne hydrogen bomb over Bikini Atoll
• 1956 WITI TV channel 6 in Milwaukee, WI (CBS/ABC) begins broadcasting

• 1958 Indonesian paratroopers reconquer Morotai Island
• 1958 US performs nuclear test at Bikini Island (atmospheric tests)
• 1959 Cleveland Metroparks Zoo Children's Petting Farm opens (Cleveland, Ohio)

• 1961 Governor Patterson declares martial law in Montgomery, Alabama
• 1962 3 more Cleveland HR set AL record for most HR (26) over 8 games
• 1964 1st nuclear-powered lighthouse begins operations (Chesapeake Bay)
• 1964 Fire in Belgian resort kills 19
• 1964 US begin intelligence flights above Laos
• 1966 "Downtown" by Mrs Miller hits #82
• 1966 A "loyalist" group calling itself the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) issued a statement declaring war on the Irish Republican Army (IRA)

• 1966 Louie Louie by The Kingsmen reentered the chart & hits #97

• 1968 Billy Williams of the Chicago Cubs sets outfielder record of 695 straight MLB games
• 1968 Nuclear-powered sub USS Scorpion, with 99 men, reported missing & is later found at the bottom of the ocean off Azores

• 1968 USSR performs nuclear test (underground)
• 1968 WEKW TV channel 52 in Keene, NH (PBS) begins broadcasting
• 1969 Civil unrest in Rosario, Argentina, aka Rosariazo, following the death of a 15-year-old student.

• 1970 National Guard mobilizes to quell disturbances at Ohio State University
• 1970 USSR performs nuclear test at Novaya Zemlya USSR

• 1971 National Guard mobilizes to quell riot in Chattanooga, Tennessee

• 1972 The Official Irish Republican Army (OIRA) kidnaps and shoots dead William Best (19), a soldier in the Royal Irish Rangers stationed in Germany whilst on leave at home
• 1975 Lowell W Perry confirmed as chairman of US Equal Opportunity Commission
• 1975 Trial against Baader-Meinhof-group begins in Stuttgart
• 1977 Electric Light Orchestra releases "Telephone Line" in the UK; it would peak in the Top 10 in the UK and US
• 1977 Fire in hotel Duc de Brabant Brussels, kills 19
• 1977 San Diego Padres beat Mont Expos, 11-8, in 21 innings

• 1978 118 Unification church couples wed in England
• 1978 Yamada Mumon Roshi appointed head of Zen Rinzai Sect

• 1979 National Volksraad installed in Namibia
• 1979 Stanley Cup Final, Montreal Forum, Montreal, Quebec: 4 consecutive titles for Montreal Canadiens; beat NY Rangers, 4-1 for a 4 games to 1 series win

• 1980 US Coast Guard Ensign Jean Marie Butler is 1st woman to graduate from US service academy

• 1981 Stanley Cup Final, Nassau Coliseum, Uniondale, NY: NY Islanders win back-to-back titles; beat Minnesota North Stars, 5-1 for 4 games to 1 series win
• 1982 "WKRP in Cincinnati", an ensemble TV sitcom created by Hugh Wilson and set in a struggling radio station, 90th and final episode airs on CBS
• 1982 British troops land on Falkland Islands, in the South Atlantic, to repel Argentine military invasion
• 1983 "Bang The Drum All Day" single by Todd Rundgren hits #63
• 1983 Challenger moves to Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center (Florida), for mating for STS-7 mission

• 1985 Israel exchanges 1,150 prisoners with the PFLP-GC in return for 3 Israeli soldiers
• 1986 Atlanta Brave Rafael Ramirez hits 4 doubles in a game
• 1986 US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site

• 1987 Xignals PC Board BBS begins in Alabama
• 1988 "Da'Butt" by EU hits #35
• 1988 New building for the National Gallery of Canada, designed by Moshe Safdie, opens in Ottawa, Ontario [1]
• 1988 US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site

• 1990 Dow Jones avg hits a record 2,844.68

• 1991 Ethiopia's Marxist president (Mengistu Haile Mariam) resigns
• 1992 China performs nuclear test at Lop Nor, PRC
• 1992 New Jersey Senate overrides Governor Florio's veto & lowers sales tax to 6%
• 1993 Opposition and independence leader Xanana Gusmao of East Timor sentenced to life in prison (released 1999)
• 1993 Robin Smith scores 167 in England Texaco Trophy loss v Australia
• 1993 Venezuela president Carlos Andres Perez fired
• 1994 MLB Cincinnati Reds bat out of order against Los Angeles Dodgers in 2nd inning
• 1994 South Yemen secedes from Yemen

• 1996 Blackout in many areas of Queens, NY

• 1996 The Trappist Martyrs of Atlas are executed.

• 1998 In Miami, Florida, five abortion clinics are hit by a butyric acid attacker.

• 2001 French Taubira law officially recognizes the Atlantic slave trade and slavery as crimes against humanity.
• 2001 The Enron Corporation's power generating venture in India, the Dabhol Power Company, serves formal notice that it will terminate its power supply contract and pull out
• 2003 An earthquake hits northern Algeria killing more than 2,000 people.
• 2004 Sherpa Pemba Dorjie climbs Mount Everest in 8 hours 10 minutes, breaking his rival Sherpa Lakpa Gelu's record from the previous year.
• 2004 Stanislav Petrov awarded World Citizen Award for averting a potential nuclear war in 1983 after correctly guessing Russian early warning system at fault
• 2006 The Republic of Montenegro holds a referendum proposing independence from the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro. The Montenegrin people choose independence with a majority of 55%.
• 2006 The Swedish ice hockey team Tre Kronor takes gold in the World Championship, becoming the first nation to hold both the World and Olympic titles separately in the same year.
• 2007 Cutty Sark, the last surviving tea clipper, is badly damaged by fire in Greenwich, England.
• 2012 120 people are killed and 350 injured by a suicide bomb in Sana'a, Yemen
• 2012 13 people are killed and 22 people injured after a bus falls 80 metres off a cliff in Albania

• 2013 Microsoft announces the release of Xbox One
• 2014 José Mário Vaz is elected President of Guinea-Bissau

• 2014 Thai army declares martial law and closes down several news stations

• 2016 Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, leader of the Afghan Taliban is reportedly killed by a US drone in Pakistan
• 2016 On same card, American boxer Jermell Charlo KOs John Jackson in 8th to claim vacant WBC super welterweight title, and Jermall Charlo beats Austin Trout on points to retain IBF version; first twins to hold world championships in same weight division

• 2017 The Tradition Senior Men's Golf, Greystone G&CC: Defending champion Berhard Langer wins by 5 strokes from Scott Parel & Scott McCarron

• 2018 Mushrooms have poisoned more than 800 in western Iran, killing 11
• 2018 Teenager who started California's 2017 Eagle Creek Fire ordered to pay $36.6 million to cover damages by district judge
• 2018 Truckers begin a 10 strike in Brazil, blocking roads in protest at the price of diesel leading to country-wide shortages

• 2019 Austria's far-right Freedom Party resigns from the ruling coalition after two of their ministers are sacked for offering government contracts for political influence in a video

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