Ever-When
On this day

What happened on 21 July?

14 events from the Ever-When timeline, ranked by how much they mattered.

  1. 1613 Romanov dynasty founded Michael Romanov is crowned tsar; the dynasty rules Russia until 1917.
  2. 1954 Geneva Accords partition Vietnam Vietnam divided at the 17th parallel pending nationwide elections that never happen.
  3. 1798 Battle of the Pyramids French victory near Cairo against the Mamluks during the Egyptian Campaign.
  4. 1960 Sirimavo Bandaranaike becomes world's first female PM The Sri Lankan leader becomes the first woman ever elected head of government.
  5. 1861 First Battle of Bull Run Washington society drives out with picnic baskets to watch the rebellion crushed in an afternoon — and flees back down the turnpike with the routed Union army. The first great batt
  6. 1774 Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca A humiliating peace with Russia after war: the Ottomans cede Black Sea territory and Russia gains a claim to protect Orthodox subjects, a marker of Ottoman decline.
  7. 1969 'One small step': the Moonwalk broadcast Six hundred million people — a fifth of humanity then alive — watch a ghostly figure descend a ladder and hear the words 'one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind'. The l
  8. 1542 Roman Inquisition established Pope Paul III sets up a Holy Office of the Inquisition based in Rome to combat heresy; central institution of Counter-Reformation.
  9. 1899 Born: Ernest Hemingway American novelist of A Farewell to Arms and The Old Man and the Sea.
  10. 1858 The pact of Plombières At a spa town in the Vosges, Cavour and Napoleon III secretly agree the script for a war: Piedmont will provoke Austria, France will help drive it from Italy, and France will take
  11. 1972 Bloody Friday The Provisional IRA detonates some twenty bombs across Belfast in eighty minutes, killing nine and maiming many more as crowds flee one blast into another. The carnage hardens opin
  12. 2011 International Space Station assembly completed Conventional end of International Space Station assembled.
  13. 1403 Battle of Shrewsbury Henry IV defeats the Percy rebellion; Henry, Prince of Wales (future Henry V) takes an arrow to the face and survives.
  14. 1936 Siege of the Alcazar Nationalist defenders hold the Alcazar of Toledo until relieved, an early propaganda victory.
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