What Happened on March 21st in History
30 historical events on this date
The Butler Act prohibits the teaching of human evolution in Tennessee.
The Butler Act was a 1925 Tennessee law prohibiting public school teachers from denying the Genesis account of humankind's origin. The law also prevented the teaching of the evolution of humans from...
Charles Lindbergh is presented with the Medal of Honor for the first solo trans-Atlantic flight.
Charles Augustus Lindbergh was an American aviator, military officer, and author. On May 20â21, 1927, he made the first nonstop flight from New York to Paris, a distance of 3,600 miles (5,800Â km),...
The landmark Australian Eastern Mission led by John Latham departs on its three-month tour of East and South-East Asia.
The Australian Eastern Mission (AEM) was a 1934 diplomatic tour of East and South-East Asia led by Australian deputy prime minister John Latham. The mission was the first such official tour sent by...
Shah of Iran Reza Shah Pahlavi formally asks the international community to call Persia by its native name, Iran.
The monarchs of Iran ruled for over two and a half millennia, beginning as early as the 8th century BC and enduring until the 20th century AD. The earliest Iranian monarch is generally considered to...
Ponce massacre: Nineteen unarmed civilians in Ponce, Puerto Rico are gunned down by police in a terrorist attack ordered by the US-appointed Governor, Blanton Winship.
The Ponce massacre took place on Palm Sunday, March 21, 1937, in Ponce, Puerto Rico, when a peaceful civilian march turned into a police shooting in which 17 civilians, one policeman and one...
Wehrmacht officer Rudolf von Gersdorff plots to assassinate Adolf Hitler by using a suicide bomb, but the plan falls through; von Gersdorff is able to defuse the bomb in time and avoid suspicion.
The Wehrmacht were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer (army), the Kriegsmarine (navy) and the Luftwaffe. The designation "Wehrmacht" replaced the...
World War II: British troops liberate Mandalay, Burma.
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...
World War II: Operation Carthage: Royal Air Force planes bomb Gestapo headquarters in Copenhagen, Denmark. They also accidentally hit a school, killing 125 civilians.
Operation Carthage, on 21 March 1945, was a British air raid on Copenhagen, Denmark during the Second World War which caused significant collateral damage. The target of the raid was the Shellhus,...
World War II: Bulgaria and the Soviet Union successfully complete their defense of the north bank of the Drava River as the Battle of the Transdanubian Hills concludes.
The Tsardom of Bulgaria, also known as the Third Bulgarian Tsardom, commonly known in English as the Kingdom of Bulgaria, or simply Bulgaria, was a constitutional monarchy in Southeastern Europe,...
The Los Angeles Rams sign Kenny Washington, making him the first African American player in professional American football since 1933.
The Los Angeles Rams are a professional American football team based in the Greater Los Angeles area. The Rams compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football...
Alan Freed presents the Moondog Coronation Ball, the first rock and roll concert, in Cleveland, Ohio.
Albert James "Alan" Freed was an American disc jockey. He also produced and promoted large traveling concerts with various acts, helping to spread the importance of rock and roll music throughout...
Apartheid: Sharpeville massacre, South Africa: Police open fire on a group of black South African demonstrators, killing 69 and wounding 180.
Apartheid was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa from 1948 to the early 1990s. It was characterised by an authoritarian political...
Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary closes.
United States Penitentiary, Alcatraz Island, also known simply as Alcatraz or The Rock, was a maximum security federal prison on Alcatraz Island, 1.25 miles (2.01Â km) off the coast of San Francisco,...
Ranger program: NASA launches Ranger 9, the last in a series of uncrewed lunar space probes.
The Ranger program was a series of uncrewed space missions by the United States in the 1960s whose objective was to obtain the first close-up images of the surface of the Moon. The Ranger spacecraft...
Martin Luther King Jr. leads 3,200 people on the start of the third and finally successful civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.
Martin Luther King Jr. was an American civil rights activist and Baptist minister who was a prominent leader of the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968. He advanced civil...
Battle of Karameh in Jordan between the Israel Defense Forces and the combined forces of the Jordanian Armed Forces and PLO.
The Battle of Karameh was a 15-hour military engagement between Israel and the combined forces of Jordan and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in the Jordanian border town of Karameh...
The first Earth Day proclamation is issued by Joseph Alioto, Mayor of San Francisco.
Earth Day is an annual event on April 22 to demonstrate support for environmental protection. First held on April 22, 1970, it now includes a wide range of events coordinated globally through...
San Diego Comic-Con, the largest pop and culture festival in the world, hosts its inaugural event.
San Diego Comic-Con is a comic book convention and multi-genre entertainment event held annually in San Diego, California, United States, at the San Diego Convention Center. Founded in 1970,...
Cold War: American President Jimmy Carter announces a United States boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow to protest the SovietâAfghan War.
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...
The first cases of the 1983 West Bank fainting epidemic begin; Israelis and Palestinians accuse each other of poison gas, but the cause is later determined mostly to be psychosomatic.
In late March and early April 1983, large numbers of Palestinians in the West Bank complained of fainting and dizziness, the vast majority of whom were teenage schoolgirls and a smaller number of...
Canadian paraplegic athlete and humanitarian Rick Hansen begins his circumnavigation of the globe in a wheelchair in the name of spinal cord injury medical research.
Paraplegia, or paraparesis, is an impairment in motor or sensory function of the lower extremities. The word comes from Ionic Greek (ÏαÏαÏληγίη) "half-stricken". It is usually caused by spinal cord...
Debi Thomas becomes the first African American to win the World Figure Skating Championships.
Debra Janine Thomas is an American figure skater and physician. She is the 1986 World champion, the 1988 Olympic bronze medalist, and a two-time U.S. national champion. Her rivalry with East...
Transbrasil Flight 801 crashes into a slum near SĂŁo Paulo/Guarulhos International Airport, killing 25 people.
Transbrasil Flight 801 (TR801/TBA801) was a scheduled cargo flight from Eduardo Gomes International Airport to SĂŁo Paulo/Guarulhos International Airport that crashed on 21 March 1989. The Boeing 707...
Namibia becomes independent after 75 years of South African rule.
Namibia, officially the Republic of Namibia, is a country in Southern Africa. It borders the Atlantic Ocean to the west, Angola and Zambia to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the...
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change enters into force.
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is the UN process for negotiating an agreement to limit dangerous climate change. It is an international treaty among countries to...
Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones become the first to circumnavigate the Earth in a hot air balloon.
Bertrand Piccard FRSGS is a Swiss explorer, psychiatrist and environmentalist. Along with Brian Jones, he was the first to complete a non-stop balloon flight around the globe, in a balloon named...
Pope John Paul II makes his first ever pontifical visit to Israel.
Pope John Paul II was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of Vatican City from 16 October 1978 until his death in 2005. He was the first non-Italian pope since Adrian VI in the 16th century,...
The social media site Twitter (now officially named X) is founded.
Social media are new media technologies that facilitate the creation, sharing and aggregation of content amongst virtual communities and networks. Common features include:Online platforms enable...
The 2019 Xiangshui chemical plant explosion occurs, killing at least 47 people and injuring 640 others.
On 21 March 2019, a major explosion occurred at a chemical plant in Chenjiagang Chemical Industry Park, Chenjiagang, Xiangshui County, Yancheng, Jiangsu, China. According to reports published on 25...
China Eastern Airlines Flight 5735 crashes in Guangxi, China, killing 132 people.
China Eastern Airlines Flight 5735 (MU5735) was a domestic passenger flight from Kunming Changshui International Airport to Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport in China. At 14:23 China Standard...