Events on June 21 43
Year 533
A Byzantine expeditionary fleet under Belisarius sails from Constantinople to attack the Vandals in Africa, via Greece and Sicily.
Year 1529
French forces are driven out of northern Italy by Spain at the Battle of Landriano during the War of the League of Cognac.
Year 1582
Sengoku period: Oda Nobunaga, the most powerful of the Japanese daimyōs, was forced to commit suicide by his own general Akechi Mitsuhide.
Year 1621
Execution of 27 Czech noblemen on the Old Town Square in Prague as a consequence of the Battle of White Mountain.
Year 1734
In Montreal in New France, a slave known by the French name of Marie-Joseph Angélique is put to death, having been convicted of setting the fire that destroyed much of the city.
Year 1768
James Otis, Jr. offends the King and Parliament in a speech to the Massachusetts General Court.
Year 1788
New Hampshire ratifies the Constitution of the United States and is admitted as the ninth state in the United States.
Year 1791
King Louis XVI of France and his immediate family begin the Flight to Varennes during the French Revolution.
Year 1798
Irish Rebellion of 1798: The British Army defeats Irish rebels at the Battle of Vinegar Hill.
Year 1848
In the Wallachian Revolution, Ion Heliade Rădulescu and Christian Tell issue the Proclamation of Islaz and create a new republican government.
Year 1854
The first Victoria Cross is awarded during the bombardment of Bomarsund in the Åland Islands.
Year 1900
Boxer Rebellion. China formally declares war on the United States, Britain, Germany, France and Japan, as an edict issued from the Empress Dowager Cixi.
Year 1915
The U.S. Supreme Court hands down its decision in Guinn v. United States 238 US 347 1915, striking down Oklahoma grandfather clause legislation which had the effect of denying the right to vote to blacks.
Year 1919
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police fire a volley into a crowd of unemployed war veterans, killing two, during the Winnipeg general strike.
Year 1919
Admiral Ludwig von Reuter scuttles the German fleet in Scapa Flow, Orkney. The nine sailors killed are the last casualties of World War I.
Year 1929
An agreement brokered by U.S. Ambassador Dwight Whitney Morrow ends the Cristero War in Mexico.
Year 1940
The first successful west-to-east navigation of Northwest Passage begins at Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Year 1942
World War II: A Japanese submarine surfaces near the Columbia River in Oregon, firing 17 shells at nearby Fort Stevens in one of only a handful of attacks by Japan against the United States mainland.
Year 1945
World War II: The Battle of Okinawa ends when the organized resistance of Imperial Japanese Army forces collapses in the Mabuni area on the southern tip of the main island.
Year 1952
The Philippine School of Commerce, through a republic act, is converted to Philippine College of Commerce, later to be the Polytechnic University of the Philippines.
Year 1964
Three civil rights workers, Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Mickey Schwerner, are murdered in Neshoba County, Mississippi, United States, by members of the Ku Klux Klan.
Year 1970
Penn Central declares Section 77 bankruptcy, largest ever US corporate bankruptcy up to this date.
Year 1973
In handing down the decision in Miller v. California 413 US 15, the Supreme Court of the United States establishes the Miller test for obscenity in U.S. law.
Year 1982
John Hinckley is found not guilty by reason of insanity for the attempted assassination of U.S. President Ronald Reagan.
Year 1989
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Texas v. Johnson that American flag-burning was a form of political protest protected by the First Amendment.
Year 2000
Section 28 (of the Local Government Act 1988), outlawing the 'promotion' of homosexuality in the United Kingdom, is repealed in Scotland with a 99 to 17 vote.
Year 2001
A federal grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, indicts 13 Saudis and a Lebanese in the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 American servicemen.
Year 2004
SpaceShipOne becomes the first privately funded spaceplane to achieve spaceflight.
Year 2005
Edgar Ray Killen, who had previously been acquitted for the murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Mickey Schwerner, is convicted of manslaughter 41 years afterwards (the case had been reopened in 2004).
Year 2012
A boat carrying more than 200 refugees capsized in the Indian Ocean between the Indonesian island of Java and Christmas Island, killing 17 people and leaving 70 others missing.