Would you believe that on this day in history, the Battle of San Jacinto led to the independence of Texas? Learn more interesting occurrences of this day, April 21 in world history. Read on to find out!
- 1792-Brazilian revolutionary Tiradentes was hanged in Rio de Janeiro.
- 1836-General Sam Houston defeated Santa Anna at the Battle of San Jacinto.
- 1865-U.S. President Abraham Lincoln’s funeral train left Washington.
- 1918-German fighter ace Baron Manfred von Richthofen, “The Red Baron”, was shot down and killed.
- 1934-The Surgeon’s photo, allegedly showing the Loch Ness Monster, was published in the Daily Mai
- 1943-U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt announced that several Doolittle pilots had been executed by the Japanese.
- 1952-Secretaries Day was first celebrated on this day.
- 1959-Alf Dean used a rod & reel to hook a 2,664lb, 16′ 10″ great white shark off the coast of Ceduna, Australia.
- 1960-Brasilia became the capital of Brazil.
- 1967-Dictator Georgios Papadopoulos assumed power in Greece.
- 1972-Apollo 16 astronauts John Young and Charles Duke explored the surface of the moon.
- 1989-The Game Boy handheld video game device was released in Japan.
- 1989-Thousands of Chinese crowd Beijing’s Tiananmen Square cheering students demanding greater political freedom.
- 1992-Polish astronomer Aleksander Wolszczan announced that he found two planets orbiting the pulsar PSR 1257+12.
- 1994-Jackie Parker became the first woman to qualify to fly an F-16 combat plane.
- 1998-Astronomers announced in Washington that they had discovered possible signs of a new family of planets orbiting a star 220 light-years away.
- 2000-North Carolina researchers announced that the heart of a 66 million-year-old dinosaur was more like a mammal or bird than that of a reptile.
- 2000-Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act went into effect.
- 2003-North and South Korea agreed to hold Cabinet-level talks.
- 2009-The World Digital Library was launched by UNESCO.