Today In History: March 21
On March 21, 1413 – Henry V becomes King of England.
On March 21, 1556 – In Oxford, Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer is burned at the stake.
On March 21, 1788 – A fire in New Orleans leaves most of the town in ruins.
On March 21, 1857 – An earthquake in Tokyo, Japan kills over 100,000.
On March 21, 1859 – Zoological Society of Philadelphia, 1st in US, incorporated
On March 21, 1905 – Albert Einstein publishes his theory on special relativity.
On March 21, 1928 – Charles Lindbergh is presented the Medal of Honor for the first solo trans-Atlantic flight.
On March 21, 1933 – Construction of Dachau, the first Nazi Germany concentration camp, is completed.
On March 21, 1960 – Apartheid: Massacre in Sharpeville, South Africa: Police open fire on a group of unarmed black South African demonstrators, killing 69 and wounding 180.
On March 21, 1963 – Alcatraz, a federal penitentiary on an island in San Francisco Bay, closes.
On March 21, 1965 – Ranger program: NASA launches Ranger 9 which is the last in a series of unmanned lunar space probes.
On March 21, 1965 – 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.
On March 21, 1970 – The first Earth Day proclamation is issued by San Francisco Mayor Joseph Alioto.
On March 21, 1980 – US President Jimmy Carter announces a United States boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow to protest the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan.
On March 21, 1985 – 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.
On March 21, 1989 – Sports Illustrated reports allegations tying baseball player Pete Rose to baseball gambling.
On March 21, 1999 – Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones become the first to circumnavigate the Earth in a hot air balloon.
On March 21, 2006 – Immigrant workers constructing the Burj Khalifa and a new terminal of Dubai International Airport riot causing $1M in damage.
Born on March 21:
1685 – Johann Sebastian Bach, German composer (d. 1750)
1949 – Eddie Money, American musician
1962 – Matthew Broderick, American actor
1962 – Rosie O’Donnell, American comedian, actress, talk show host, and publisher
Today in Alaskan history:
1913 Governor Walter E. Clark signed the first law of the first Alaska Legislature, providing for Womens Suffrage .
1969 The city of Fairbanks was named an All-American City by editors of Look Magazine and the National Municipal League.
