History Events on March 21

Apartheid: Sharpeville massacre, South Africa: Police open fire on a group of black South African demonstrators, killing 69 and wounding 180.

#Apartheid

Battle of Karameh in Jordan between the Israel Defense Forces and the combined forces of the Jordanian Armed Forces and PLO.

#Battle_of_Karameh

The Los Angeles Rams sign Kenny Washington, making him the first African American player in professional American football since 1933.

#Los_Angeles_Rams

World War II: Operation Carthage: Royal Air Force planes bomb Gestapo headquarters in Copenhagen, Denmark. They also accidentally hit a school, killing 125 civilians.

#Operation_Carthage

Namibia becomes independent after 75 years of South African rule.

#Namibia

Wehrmacht officer Rudolf von Gersdorff plots to assassinate Adolf Hitler by using a suicide bomb, but the plan falls through; von Gersdorff is able to defuse the bomb in time and avoid suspicion.

#Wehrmacht

Code Napoléon is adopted as French civil law.

#Napoleonic_Code

Annulment of the marriage of King Louis VII of France and Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine.

#Louis_VII_of_France

Charles Lindbergh is presented with the Medal of Honor for the first solo trans-Atlantic flight.

#Charles_Lindbergh

Emperor Heraclius returns the True Cross, one of the holiest Christian relics, to Jerusalem.

#Heraclius

World War II: British troops liberate Mandalay, Burma.

#World_War_II

Syngman Rhee is removed from office after being impeached as the President of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea.

#Syngman_Rhee

World War I: The first phase of the German Spring Offensive, Operation Michael, begins.

#World_War_I

The first Earth Day proclamation is issued by Joseph Alioto, Mayor of San Francisco.

#Earth_Day

Journalist Henry Morton Stanley begins his trek to find the missionary and explorer David Livingstone.

#Henry_Morton_Stanley

Ponce massacre: Nineteen people in Ponce, Puerto Rico are gunned down by police acting on orders of the US-appointed Governor, Blanton C. Winship.

#Ponce_massacre

The Hungarian Soviet Republic is established becoming the first Communist government to be formed in Europe after the October Revolution in Russia.

#Hungarian_Soviet_Republic

Pope John Paul II makes his first ever pontifical visit to Israel.

#Pope_John_Paul_II

The Battle of Alexandria is fought between British and French forces near the ruins of Nicopolis near Alexandria in Egypt.

#Battle_of_Alexandria

Over 360 are killed and 20,000 homes destroyed in the Great Dayton Flood in Dayton, Ohio.

#Great_Dayton_Flood

With the church leadership driven out of Rome during an armed conflict, Pius VII is crowned Pope in Venice with a temporary papal tiara made of papier-mâché.

#Papal_States

On the day of his execution in Oxford, former Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer deviates from the scripted sermon by renouncing the recantations he has made and adds, "And as for the pope, I refuse him, as Christ's enemy, and Antichrist with all his false doctrine."

#Oxford

Emperor Antoku accedes to the throne of Japan.

#Emperor_Antoku

Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones become the first to circumnavigate the Earth in a hot air balloon.

#Bertrand_Piccard

World War II: Bulgaria and the Soviet Union successfully complete their defense of the north bank of the Drava River as the Battle of the Transdanubian Hills concludes.

#Kingdom_of_Bulgaria

A fire in New Orleans leaves most of the town in ruins.

#Great_New_Orleans_Fire_(1788)

Otto von Bismarck is appointed as the first Chancellor of the German Empire.

#Otto_von_Bismarck

Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary (in California) closes.

#Alcatraz_Federal_Penitentiary

U.S. President Jimmy Carter announces a United States boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow to protest the Soviet-Afghan War.

#Jimmy_Carter

Ranger program: NASA launches Ranger 9, the last in a series of unmanned lunar space probes.

#Ranger_program

Alan Freed presents the Moondog Coronation Ball, the first rock and roll concert, in Cleveland, Ohio.

#Alan_Freed

Napoleonic Wars: Austrian forces repel French troops in the Battle of Arcis-sur-Aube.

#Napoleonic_Wars

Jiangsu Tianjiayi chemical plant in China explodes, killing at least 47 people and injuring 640 others.

Four police officers are shot and killed and a fifth is wounded in two shootings at Oakland, California.

The social media site Twitter is founded.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change enters into force.

Debi Thomas became the first African American to win the World Figure Skating Championships

The first cases of the 1983 West Bank fainting epidemic begin; Israelis and Palestinians accuse each other of poison gas, but the cause is later determined mostly to be psychosomatic.

Dr. 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.

Shah of Iran Reza Shah Pahlavi formally asks the international community to call Persia by its native name, Iran.

The Butler Act prohibits the teaching of human evolution in Tennessee.

The New Economic Policy is implemented by the Bolshevik Party in response to the economic failure as a result of war communism.

Alexander Stephens gives the Cornerstone Speech.

The Bahá'í calendar begins. This is the first day of the first year of the Bahá'í calendar. It is annually celebrated by members of the Bahá'í Faith as the Bahá'í New Year or Náw-Rúz.

Battle of Vincy between Charles Martel and Ragenfrid.

Siege of Rome: King Vitiges attempts to assault the northern and eastern city walls, but is repulsed at the Praenestine Gate, known as the Vivarium, by the defenders under the Byzantine generals Bessas and Peranius.