History of 21 June
1913 – Georgia Broadwick became the first woman to jump from an airplane.
1937 – In Paris, Leon Blum’s Popular Front Cabinet resigned.
1938 – In Washington, U.S. President Roosevelt signed the $3.75 billion Emergency Relief Appropriation Act.
1939 – Lou Gehrig quit baseball due to illness.
1940 – Richard M. Nixon and Thelma Catherine ‘Pat’ Ryan were married.
1941 – German troops entered Russia on a front from the Arctic to the Black Sea.
1942 – Ben Hogan recorded the lowest score (to that time) in a major golf tournament. Hogan shot a 271 for 72 holes in Chicago, IL.
1945 – Pan Am announced an 88-hour round-the-world flight at a cost of $700.
1954 – The American Cancer Society reported significantly higher death rates among cigarette smokers than among non-smokers.
1954 – NBC radio presented the final broadcast of “The Railroad Hour.”
1954 – Australian John Landy ran the mile in 3:58. He was the second person to achieve the feat.
1958 – In Arkansas, a federal judge let Little Rock delay school integration.
1958 – Linus Pauling and Detlev Bronk, both Americans, were elected to the Soviet Academy of Science.
1960 – In Zurich, German, Armin Hary ran 100-meters in a record 10.0 seconds.
1963 – In St. Louis, Bob Hayes set a record when he ran the 100-yard dash in 0:09.1.
1963 – France announced that they were withdrawing from the North Atlantic NATO fleet.
1970 – Tony Jacklin became the second British golfer in 50 years to win the U.S. Open golf tournament.
1973 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states may ban materials found to be obscene according to local standards.
1974 – The U.S. Supreme Court decided that pregnant teachers could no longer be forced to take long leaves of absence.
1985 – Scientists announced that skeletal remains exhumed in Brazil were those of Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele.
1989 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that burning the American flag as a form of political protest was protected by the First Amendment.
2001 – Former Haitian Army colonel Carl Dorelien taken into custody in Port St. Lucie. Dorelien had been in exile since 1994 when he was sentenced to life in prison for his role in a 1994 massacre.
2003 – The fifth Harry Potter book, “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” was published by J.K. Rowling.Amazon.com shipped out more than one million copies on this day making the day the largest distribution day of a single item in e-commerce history. The book set sales records around the world with an estimated 5 million copies were sold on the first day.
2004 – SpaceShipOne, designed by Burt Rutan and piloted by Mike Melvill, reached 328,491 feet above Earth in a 90-minute flight. The height is about 400 feet above the distance scientists consider to be the boundary of space.
2005 – Edgar Ray Killen, who had previously been unsuccessfully tried for the murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Mickey Schwerner, is convicted of manslaughter 41 years afterward (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 migrants capsized in the Indian Ocean between the Indonesian island of Java and Christmas Island, killing 17 people and leaving 70 others missing.
Celebrating Birthday Today
- 1981 – Yann Danis, Canadian ice hockey player
- 1981 – Garrett Jones, American baseball player
- 1981 – Brandon Flowers, American singer-songwriter
- 1981 – Brad Walker, American pole vaulter
- 1982 – Lee Dae-ho, South Korean baseball player
- 1982 – Prince William, Duke of Cambridge
- 1982 – Jussie Smollett, American actor, and singer
- 1983 – Edward Snowden, American activist and academic
- 1985 – Lana Del Rey, American singer-songwriter
- 1985 – Sentayehu Ejigu, Ethiopian runner
- 1985 – Byron Schammer, Australian footballer
- 1986 – Kathleen O’Kelly-Kennedy, Australian wheelchair basketball player
- 1986 – Hideaki Wakui, Japanese baseball player
- 1987 – Pablo Barrera, Mexican footballer
- 1987 – Sebastian Prödl, Austrian footballer
- 1987 – Dale Thomas, Australian footballer
- 1988 – Allyssa DeHaan, American basketball and volleyball player
- 1988 – Paolo Tornaghi, Italian footballer
- 1988 – Thaddeus Young, American basketball player
- 1989 – Abubaker Kaki, Sudanese runner
- 1990 – Ricardas Berankis, a Lithuanian tennis player
- 1990 – Francois Moubandje, Swiss footballer
- 1990 – Havard Nordtveit, Norwegian footballer
- 1991 – Gael Kakuta, French footballer
- 1992 – MAX, American singer, songwriter, actor, dancer and model
- 1994 – Başak Eraydın, a Turkish tennis player
- 1996 – Tyrone May, Australian rugby league player
- 1997 – Rebecca Black, American singer-songwriter
- 1997 – Derrius Guice, American football player