What Happened on August 21st in History
30 historical events on this date
The locals of Knock, County Mayo, Ireland report their having seen an apparition of the Virgin Mary. The apparition is later named "Our Lady of Knock" and the spot transformed into a Catholic pilgrimage site.
Knock is a village in County Mayo, Ireland.
An F5 tornado strikes Rochester, Minnesota, leading to the creation of the Mayo Clinic.
On August 21, 1883, a violent and devastating tornado affected southeastern portions of the U.S. state of Minnesota. The massive tornado, retrospectively estimated to have been an F5 on the modern...
The first successful adding machine in the United States is patented by William Seward Burroughs.
An adding machine is a class of mechanical calculator, usually specialized for bookkeeping calculations. Consequently, the earliest adding machines were often designed to read in particular...
Six hundred American school teachers, Thomasites, arrived in Manila on the USAT Thomas.
The Thomasites were a group of 600 American teachers who traveled from the United States to the newly occupied territory of the Philippines on the US Army Transport Thomas. The group included 346...
The Mona Lisa is stolen by Vincenzo Peruggia, a Louvre employee.
The Mona Lisa is a half-length portrait painting by the Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci. Considered an archetypal masterpiece of the Italian Renaissance, it has been described as "the best known,...
World War I: The Battle of Charleroi, a successful German attack across the River Sambre that pre-empted a French offensive in the same area.
World War I, or the First World War, also known as the Great War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Central Powers. Major areas of conflict included Europe and the...
World War I: The Second Battle of the Somme begins.
The Second Battle of the Somme of 1918 was fought during the First World War on the Western Front from late August to early September, in the basin of the River Somme. It was part of a series of...
World War II: The Guadalcanal campaign: American forces defeat an attack by Imperial Japanese Army soldiers in the Battle of the Tenaru.
World War II, or the Second World War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries participated. Tanks and aircraft played major...
Dumbarton Oaks Conference, prelude to the United Nations, begins.
The Dumbarton Oaks Conference, or, more formally, the Washington Conversations on International Peace and Security Organization, was an international conference at which proposals for the...
World War II: Canadian and Polish units capture the strategically important town of Falaise, Calvados, France.
Operation Tractable was the final attack conducted by Canadian and Polish troops, supported by a British tank brigade, during the Battle of Normandy during World War II. The operation was to capture...
Physicist Harry Daghlian is fatally irradiated in a criticality accident during an experiment with the Demon core at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Haroutune Krikor Daghlian Jr. was an American physicist with the Manhattan Project, which designed and produced the atomic bombs that were used in World War II. He accidentally irradiated himself on...
The Soviet Union successfully conducts a long-range test flight of the R-7 Semyorka, the first intercontinental ballistic missile.
The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until its dissolution in 1991. It was the world's...
United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs an executive order proclaiming Hawaii the 50th state of the union. Hawaii's admission is currently commemorated by Hawaii Admission Day.
The president of the United States (POTUS) is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president directs the executive branch of the federal government and is the...
Xá Lợi Pagoda raids: The Army of the Republic of Vietnam Special Forces loyal to Ngô Đình Nhu, brother of President Ngo Dinh Diem, vandalizes Buddhist pagodas across the country, arresting thousands and leaving an estimated hundreds dead.
The Xá Lợi Pagoda raids were a series of synchronized attacks on a number of Buddhist pagodas in the major cities of South Vietnam shortly after midnight on 21 August 1963. The raids were executed...
The Socialist Republic of Romania is proclaimed, following the adoption of a new constitution.
The Socialist Republic of Romania was the Romanian socialist state that existed from 1947 to the Revolutions of 1989. From 1947 to 1965, the state was known as the Romanian People's Republic. The...
Cold War: Nicolae Ceaușescu, leader of the Socialist Republic of Romania, publicly condemns the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, encouraging the Romanian population to arm itself against possible Soviet reprisals.
The Cold War was a period of international geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist...
James Anderson Jr. posthumously receives the first Medal of Honor to be awarded to an African American U.S. Marine.
Private First Class James Anderson Jr. was a United States Marine who posthumously received the Medal of Honor for heroism while serving in Vietnam in February 1967. When his Medal of Honor was...
A bomb exploded in the Liberal Party campaign rally in Plaza Miranda, Manila, Philippines with several anti-Marcos political candidates injured.
The Liberal Party of the Philippines is a liberal political party in the Philippines.
Lebanese Civil War: The first troops of a multinational force lands in Beirut to oversee the Palestine Liberation Organization's withdrawal from Lebanon.
The Lebanese Civil War was a multifaceted armed conflict that took place from 1975 to 1990. It resulted in an estimated 150,000 fatalities and led to the exodus of almost one million people from...
Philippine opposition leader Benigno Aquino Jr. is assassinated at Manila International Airport (now renamed Ninoy Aquino International Airport in his honor).
Benigno Simeón "Ninoy" Aquino Jr., was a Filipino politician and journalist who served as a senator of the Philippines (1967–1972) and governor of the province of Tarlac (1963–1967). Aquino was the...
Carbon dioxide gas erupts from volcanic Lake Nyos in Cameroon, killing up to 1,800 people within a 20-kilometre (12 mi) range.
A volcano is a vent or fissure in the crust of a planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface.
The 6.9 Mw Nepal earthquake shakes the Nepal–India border with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VIII (Severe), leaving 709–1,450 people killed and thousands injured.
The 1988 Nepal earthquake occurred near the Nepal–India border on 20 August 1988 at 23:09:09 UTC. The epicenter was located in Udayapur District. Measuring Mw 6.9, it was the largest earthquake...
Latvia declares renewal of its full independence after its occupation by the Soviet Union since 1940.
Latvia, officially the Republic of Latvia, is a country in the Baltic region of northern Europe. It is one of the three Baltic states, along with Estonia to the north and Lithuania to the south. It...
Coup attempt against Mikhail Gorbachev collapses.
The 1991 Soviet coup attempt was an attempt by hardliners of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) to forcibly seize control of the country from Mikhail Gorbachev, who was Soviet president...
NASA loses contact with the Mars Observer spacecraft.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is an independent agency of the U.S. federal government responsible for the United States' civil space program and for research in aeronautics and...
Royal Air Maroc Flight 630 crashes in Douar Izounine, Morocco, killing all 44 people on board.
Royal Air Maroc Flight 630 was a passenger flight on 21 August 1994 which crashed approximately ten minutes after takeoff from Agadir–Al Massira Airport in Morocco. All 44 passengers and crew on...
Atlantic Southeast Airlines Flight 529, an Embraer EMB 120 Brasilia, attempts to divert to West Georgia Regional Airport after the left engine fails, but the aircraft crashes in Carroll County near Carrollton, Georgia, killing nine of the 29 people on board.
On August 21, 1995, Atlantic Southeast Airlines Flight 529, an Embraer EMB 120 Brasilia flying from Atlanta, Georgia, to Gulfport, Mississippi, crashed in the community of Burwell between the cities...
American golfer Tiger Woods wins the 82nd PGA Championship and becomes the first golfer since Ben Hogan in 1953 to win three majors in a calendar year.
Eldrick Tont "Tiger" Woods is an American professional golfer. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest golfers of all time and as one of the most famous athletes in modern history. Woods is...
Hundreds of people are reported killed by chemical attacks in the Ghouta region of Syria.
The Ghouta chemical attack was a chemical attack carried out by the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, in the early hours of 21 August 2013 in Ghouta, Syria during the Syrian civil war. It...
A solar eclipse traverses the continental United States.
A total solar eclipse, dubbed the "Great American Eclipse" by some media, occurred on August 21, 2017. It was visible within a band that spanned the contiguous United States from the Pacific to the...