Events on September 21 42
Year 1170
Combined English and Irish forces, under the command of Richard de Clare, Earl of Pembroke and Diarmait Mac Murchada, King of Leinster seize Norse-Gaelic Dublin, forcing Ascall mac Ragnaill, King of Dublin into exile.
Year 1217
Livonian Crusade: The Estonian leader Lembitu and Livonian leader Kaupo the Accursed are killed in Battle of Matthew's Day.
Year 1435
The Congress of Arras causes Burgundy to switch sides in the Hundred Years' War.
Year 1745
Battle of Prestonpans: A Hanoverian army under the command of Sir John Cope is defeated, in ten minutes, by the Jacobite forces of Prince Charles Edward Stuart
Year 1780
American Revolutionary War: Benedict Arnold gives the British the plans to West Point.
Year 1792
French Revolution: The National Convention declares France a republic and abolishes the absolute monarchy.
Year 1843
John Williams Wilson takes possession of the Strait of Magellan on behalf of the newly independent Chilean government.
Year 1860
Second Opium War: An Anglo-French force defeats Chinese troops at the Battle of Palikao.
Year 1896
Mahdist War: British forces under the command of Horatio Kitchener takes Dongola in the Sudan.
Year 1933
Salvador Lutteroth ran the first ever EMLL (now CMLL) show in Mexico, marking the birth of Lucha libre.
Year 1934
A large typhoon hits western Honshū, Japan, killing more than three thousand people.
Year 1938
The Great Hurricane of 1938 makes landfall on Long Island in New York. The death toll is estimated at 500-700 people.
Year 1939
Romanian Prime Minister Armand Călinescu is assassinated by far-right legionnaires of the fascist paramilitary organization Iron Guard.
Year 1942
The Holocaust in Ukraine: On the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, Nazis send over 1,000 Jews of Pidhaitsi to Bełżec extermination camp.
Year 1942
The Holocaust in Poland: At the end of Yom Kippur, Germans order Jews to permanently evacuate Konstantynów and move to the ghetto in Biała Podlaska, established to assemble Jews from seven nearby towns, including Janów Podlaski, Rossosz and Terespol.
Year 1953
Lieutenant No Kum-sok, a North Korean pilot, defects to South Korea and is associated with Operation Moolah.
Year 1964
Malta gains independence from the United Kingdom but remains in the Commonwealth.
Year 1964
The North American XB-70 Valkyrie, the world's first Mach 3 bomber, makes its maiden flight from Palmdale, California.
Year 1965
The Gambia, Maldives and Singapore are admitted as members of the United Nations.
Year 1972
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos signs Proclamation № 1081, placing the entire country under martial law and marking the beginning of his authoritarian rule.
Year 1976
Orlando Letelier is assassinated in Washington, D.C. He is a member of the Chilean socialist government of Salvador Allende, overthrown in 1973 by Augusto Pinochet.
Year 1981
Sandra Day O'Connor is unanimously approved by the U.S. Senate as the first female Supreme Court justice.
Year 1993
Russian President Boris Yeltsin suspends parliament and scraps the then-functioning constitution, thus triggering the Russian constitutional crisis of 1993.
Year 1996
The Defense of Marriage Act passes the United States Congress (a vote of 342-67 in the House of Representatives and a vote of 85-14 in the Senate). The law prohibited federal recognition of same-sex marriage, while allowing states to adopt any marital definition of their choosing.
Year 2001
America: A Tribute to Heroes is broadcast by over 35 network and cable channels, raising over $200 million for the victims of the September 11 attacks.
Year 2001
Increased racial tensions in Peterborough, England following the September 11 attacks result in the murder of Ross Parker by a gang of ten Muslims in a racially motivated attack.
Year 2013
Al-Shabaab Islamic militants attack the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya, killing at least 67 people.