21 June Events

June 21 is the 172nd day of the year (173rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 193 days remaining until the end of the year. This date is slightly more likely to fall on a Tuesday, Thursday or Sunday (58 in 400 years each) than on Friday or Saturday (57), and slightly less likely to occur on a Monday or Wednesday (56).

Events

533 – A Byzantine expeditionary fleet under Belisarius sails from Constantinople to attack the Vandals in Africa, via Greece and Sicily.
1307 – Külüg Khan is enthroned as Khagan of the Mongols and Wuzong of the Yuan.
1529 – French forces are driven out of northern Italy by Spain at the Battle of Landriano during the War of the League of Cognac.
1582 – Sengoku period: Oda Nobunaga, the most powerful of the Japanese daimyōs, was forced to commit suicide by his own general Akechi Mitsuhide.
1621 – Execution of 27 Czech noblemen on the Old Town Square in Prague as a consequence of the Battle of White Mountain.
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.
1749 – Halifax, Nova Scotia, is founded.
1768 – James Otis, Jr. offends the King and Parliament in a speech to the Massachusetts General Court.
1788 – New Hampshire ratifies the Constitution of the United States and is admitted as the ninth state in the United States.
1791 – King Louis XVI of France and his immediate family begin the Flight to Varennes during the French Revolution.
1798 – Irish Rebellion of 1798: The British Army defeats Irish rebels at the Battle of Vinegar Hill.
1813 – Peninsular War: Wellington defeats Joseph Bonaparte at the Battle of Vitoria.
1824 – Greek War of Independence: Egyptian forces capture Psara in the Aegean Sea.
1826 – Maniots defeat Egyptians under Ibrahim Pasha in the Battle of Vergas.
1848 – In the Wallachian Revolution, Ion Heliade Rădulescu and Christian Tell issue the Proclamation of Islaz and create a new republican government.
1854 – The first Victoria Cross is awarded during the bombardment of Bomarsund in the Åland Islands.
1864 – American Civil War: The Battle of Jerusalem Plank Road begins.
1898 – The United States captures Guam from Spain.
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.
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.
1919 – The Royal Canadian Mounted Police fire a volley into a crowd of unemployed war veterans, killing two, during the Winnipeg general strike.
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.
1929 – An agreement brokered by U.S. Ambassador Dwight Whitney Morrow ends the Cristero War in Mexico.
1930 – One-year conscription comes into force in France.
1940 – The first successful west-to-east navigation of Northwest Passage begins at Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
1942 – World War II: Tobruk falls to Italian and German forces.
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.
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.
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.
1957 – Ellen Fairclough is sworn in as Canada's first female Cabinet Minister.
1963 – Cardinal Giovanni Battista Montini is elected as Pope Paul VI.
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.
1970 – Penn Central declares Section 77 bankruptcy, largest ever US corporate bankruptcy up to this date.
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.
1982 – John Hinckley is found not guilty by reason of insanity for the attempted assassination of U.S. President Ronald Reagan.
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.
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.
2004 – SpaceShipOne becomes the first privately funded spaceplane to achieve spaceflight.
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).
2006 – Pluto's newly discovered moons are officially named Nix and Hydra.
2009 – Greenland assumes self-rule.
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.

Holidays and observances

Christian feast day:
Alban of Mainz
Aloysius Gonzaga
Engelmund of Velsen
Martin of Tongres
Onesimos Nesib (Lutheran)
June 21 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
Day of the Martyrs (Togo)
Father's Day (Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Uganda, Pakistan, United Arab Emirates)
Go Skateboarding Day
International Yoga Day (international)
National Aboriginal Day (Canada)
Solstice-related observances (see also June 20):
Day of Private Reflection
International Surfing Day
National Day (Greenland)
We Tripantu, a winter solstice festival in the southern hemisphere. (Mapuche, southern Chile)
Willkakuti, an Andean-Amazonic New Year (Aymara)
Fête de la Musique
World Humanist Day (Humanism)
World Hydrography Day (international)

Source: wikipedia