January 21: Today in History – Historical Events
Early Centuries – January 21 Historic Events – Before the 1700s
1. 21st Jan 1324: On this day there was a Zen Buddhist religious debate between Shingon and Tendal.
2. 21st Jan 1522: Adrain Florisz Boeyens, head inquisitor was elected on this day as Pope.
3. 21st Jan 1542: Parliament passes a bill of attainder, a legislature finding a person guilty of treason without trial, against Queen Katherine Howard.
4. 21st Jan 1664: Count Miklos of Zrinyi sets out to a battle on this day against the Turkish Invasion Army.
5. 21st Jan 1677: On this day the first medical publication in America, a pamphlet on smallpox was published in Boston.
18th Century – What Happened on January 21 – The 1700s
6. 21st Jan 1732: This day marks the signing of the Treaty of Riascha by Russia and Persia.
7. 21st Jan 1749: On this day fire destroys the Verona Philharmonic Theatre. It was however rebuilt in 1754.
8. 21st Jan 1789: This day marked the publication of the first American novel when “Power of Sympathy” by WH Brown was published.
9. 21st Jan 1793: On this day Poland was divided by the signing of a partition treaty by Prussia and Russia.
10. 21st Jan 1793: Following his conviction for high treason Louis XVI of France was executed by the guillotine in Paris on this day.
19th Century – January 21 This Day That Year – The 1800s
11. 21st Jan 1813: On this day pineapple was introduced to Hawaii.
12. 21st Jan 1827: The first black “Freedom Journal” was published on this day.
13. 21st Jan 1830: On this day blacks were forcibly deported from Portsmouth, Ohio.
14. 21st Jan 1853: Russell Hawes patents his envelope-folding machine on this day in Worcester.
15. 21st Jan 1861: Jefferson Davis and four other southern Senators resigned during the Civil War.
16. 21st Jan 1863: Part of the cattle market in the city of Dublin was leased out on this day for 100,000 years.
17. 21st Jan 1880: The first US sewage disposal system that is separated from the stormwater drain in Memphis, Tennessee.
18. 21st Jan 1882: On this day the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) was formed.
19. 21st Jan 1887: Heavy rains in Australia. Brisbane received a daily rainfall of 465mm or 18.3 inches in a day, which is a record for the Australian city.
20. 21st Jan 1890: On this day the first issue of the student-weekly newspaper “Propria Cures” was published in Amsterdam.
21. 21st Jan 1894: 500 m skating world record was established by Oscar Fredriksen who skates 500 m in 47.8 sec.
22. 21st Jan 1899: On this day the German car manufacturer Opel manufactured its first automobile.
20th Century – Important Events On This Day January 21st – The 1900s
23. 21st Jan 1900: On this day the second contingent of Canadian troops set sail from Halifax to fight in South Africa against the Boers.
24. 21st Jan 1903: Magician and escape artist Harry Houdini escapes from Halvemaansteeg police station in Amsterdam on this day.
25. 21st Jan 1910: British-Russia military intervention in Persia.
26. 21st Jan 1913: Aristide Briand forms the French government for the second time on this day.
27. 21st Jan 1916: A National Board of Censorship made up of film fans representing movie studios was formed to serve as an industry watchdog and to help studios avoid government censorship. They said that they would not accept nudity in films.
28. 21st Jan 1919: The Irish War of Independence was sparked off on this day when the Irish militant nationalist party Sinn Fein created its parliament in Dublin and declared Ireland independent of Great Britain.
29. 21st Jan 1920: On this day home meal classes were planned by the Red Cross in Pennsylvania. This was a series of eight sessions run by a dietician from the state college.
30. 21st Jan 1920: In the 14 Davis Cup played in Sydney in Australia, Australia beat Great Britain 4-1.
31. 21st Jan 1921: This day marks the founding of the Italian Communist Party at Livorno.
32. 21st Jan 1925: The Albanian Parliament on this day declared itself as a republic its President was Ahmed Zogoe.
33. 21st Jan 1925: Plans were in the making to further able to allow Americans to hear broadcasts from London, Paris, and Berlin.
34. 21st Jan 1926: The Locarno treaties were on this day accepted by the Belgian Parliament.
35. 21st Jan 1927: On this day the first opera broadcast from a US opera house, Faust in Chicago took place.
36. 21st Jan 1929: On this day Horace Dodge, a millionaire from Detroit was sued for $25,000. The reason was that he got into a fistfight he got into with a doorman of the Royal Hawaiian Hotel.
37. 21st Jan 1929: In an attempt to encourage the breaking of the trade barriers from Canada to Cape Horn an idea of union between Latin-American Republics along with Anglo-American Republics was addressed on this day.
38. 21st Jan 1932: On this day the non-attack treaty was stopped by the USSR and Finland.
39. 21st Jan 1935: It was on this day that the Wilderness Society was incorporated in the USA.
40. 21st Jan 1938: On this day obligatory unemployment insurance was started by the Dutch government.
41. 21st Jan 1939: Joan Tozzer wins the US female Figure Skating championship.
42. 21st Jan 1939: Robin Lee wins the US male Figure Skating championship.
43. 21st Jan 1940: Netherlands subjected foreign correspondents to censorship.
44. 21st Jan 1941: Bulgaria adopts anti-Jewish measures.
45. 21st Jan 1941: It was for the first time that commercial extraction of Magnesium was extracted from seawater.
46. 21st Jan 1941: On this day “Daily Worker” the British communist newspaper was banned.
47. 21st Jan 1942: On this day all pinball machines were ruled illegal by a Bronx magistrate.
48. 21st Jan 1942: On this day Foca was occupied by Tito’s partisans.
49. 21st Jan 1943: Worosjilowsk was re-conquered by the Soviet forces.
50. 21st Jan 1943: on this day Soviet forces re-conquer Gumrak airport near Stalingrad.
51. 21st Jan 1943: On this day the Royal Navy promoted Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham to Admiral of the Fleet.
52. 21st Jan 1944: On this day London was attacked by 447 German bombers.
53. 21st Jan 1944: Magdeburg was attacked by 649 British bombers on this day.
54. 21st Jan 1945: The British troops landed on Ramree near the coast of Burma.
55. 21st Jan 1949: On this day the first inaugural parade was televised.
56. 21st Jan 1952: The general election in India was won by the Congress party led by Jawaharlal Nehru.
57. 21st Jan 1953: On this day John Foster Dulles was appointed as the US Secretary of State.
58. 21st Jan 1954: On this day the first automobile powered by gas turbine was demonstrated in New York City.
59. 21st Jan 1960: In South Africa, coalmine rock falls and traps 437 miners in Coalbrook. 417 of them died of methane poisoning.
60. 21st Jan 1961: On this day a cruise ship Santa Maria was seized by Portuguese rebels.
61. 21st Jan 1962: On this day US President John F Kennedy arrived in Uruguay.
62. 21st Jan 1965: Mohammad Bokharaei, a member of the Fadayan-e Islam, assassinated Iranian Premier Hassan Ali Mansur on this day.
63. 21st Jan 1967: Peggy Fleming won the US female Figure Skating championship.
64. 21st Jan 1967: Gary Visconti won the US male Figure Skating championship.
65. 21st Jan 1968: A B-52 bomber of the United States with a nuclear bomb on board crashed Greenland.
66. 21st Jan 1968: The Battle of Khe Sanh one of the most publicized and controversial battles of the Vietnam War began on this day.
67. 21st Jan 1970: A Boeing 747 belonging to Pan Am makes its first flight from New York to London on this day.
68. 21st Jan 1972: The North East Frontier Agency of Assam becomes Arunachal Pradesh on this day.
69. 21st Jan 1972: On this day Manipur, Meghalaya, and Tripura become separate states of the Indian Union.
70. 21st Jan 1974: The prices of gold and silver sore. Gold hits a record $161.31 and silver $3.97 an ounce in London.
71. 21st Jan 1976: The first commercial flights of supersonic jet Concorde were operated by Britain and France.
72. 21st Jan 1977: On this day almost all the Vietnam War draft evaders were pardoned by President Jimmy Carter.
73. 21st Jan 1979: With Pluto moving closer Neptune became the outermost planet.
74. 21st Jan 1979: Price of gold sores. It reached a record $875 per troy oz.
75. 21st Jan 1979: Norman Stronge and his son James who were both former members of Ulster Unionist Members of Parliament, were assassinated by the Irish Republican Army at their home, which was then burnt down.
76. 21st Jan 1983: Anthony E Hecht was awarded the Bollingen Prize for poetry.
77. 21st Jan 1983: President Jimmy Carter on this day certified that human rights abuses had decreased in El Salvador, making the country eligible for military aid.
78. 21st Jan 1984: Scott Hamilton wins the US male Figure Skating championship.
79. 21st Jan 1985: There was a bomb attack on this day on the Borobudur temple in Java.
80. 21st Jan 1986: In the Nude Olympics race held in Indiana 100 people participated despite the temperature being 3°C.
81. 21st Jan 1986: There was a bomb attack in East Beirut killing 27 people.
82. 21st Jan 1988: On this day the United States of America accepted the immigration of 30,000 US-Vietnamese children.
83. 21st Jan 1989: A woman was assaulted and raped in the room of an Oklahoma football player on this day.
84. 21st Jan 1990: On this day US tennis player John McEnroe became the first player to be expelled from the Australian Open championship.
85. 21st Jan 1991: Bob Simon, a CBS News correspondent was captured by the Iraqis in the Persian Gulf.
86. 21st Jan 1992: On this day UN served a resolution to Libya to hand over intelligence agents accused of two airliner bombings.
87. 21st Jan 1993: Fela Kuti, a Nigerian singer was on this day arrested on suspicion of murder.
88. 21st Jan 1999: Today was one of the largest drug busts in American history. The US Coast Guard intercepted a ship carrying 4,300 KG of cocaine.
21st Century – January 21 This Day In History – The 2000s
89. 21st Jan 2002: On this day the Canadian dollar was at an all-time low against the US dollar at US$0.6279.
90. 21st Jan 2004: On this day the Royal Canadian Mounted Police searched the residence of reporter Juliet O’Neill. They were investigating leaks concerning the deportation of Maher Arar.
91. 21st Jan 2004: NASA’s spacecraft MER-A (the Mars Rover Spirit) ceases communication with mission control. The problem was fixed remotely from Earth on Feb 6th.
92. 21st Jan 2007: A rare frilled shark was videotaped in the Awashim Marine Park in Japan.
93. 21st Jan 2008: The last speaker of the Eyak language in Alaska died on this day making the language extinct.
94. 21st Jan 2008: This was a black day for worldwide stock markets. FTSC 100 had its biggest ever one-day points fall. Asian stocks dropped 15% and European stocks closed with their worst result since 9/11.
95. 21st Jan 2009: For the first time the Japanese car maker takes the coveted number one spot in the sale of cars from General Motors, who were number one for over 70 years.
96. 21st Jan 2013: Bus mishap in Bolivia kills 18 and injures 24. The bus fell down a ravine in Yungas.
97. 21st Jan 2013: On this day two trains collided in Vienna in Austria. 41 people were injured in the collision.
98. 21st Jan 2013: On this day a 5.9 magnitude earthquake strikes Indonesia. One person was killed and 15 injured.
99. 21st Jan 2013: There was a car bomb explosion in Salamiyeh in Syria. 30 people were killed in the explosion.
100. 21st Jan 2013: Minister of Finance of Netherlands, Jeroen Dijsselbbloem becomes the President of the Euro Group.
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