August 21

1680 – Pueblo Indians capture Santa Fe from the Spanish during the Pueblo Revolt.

1716 – The arrival of Venetian naval reinforcements and the news of their loss at Petrovaradin force the Ottomans to abandon the Siege of Corfu, keeping the Heptanese Islands in the Ionian sea under Venetian rule

1831 – Nat Turner leads black slaves and free blacks in a rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia.

1858 – The first Lincoln–Douglas debate is held in Ottawa, Illinois.

1863 –  Quantrill’s Guerillas raid Lawrence, Kansas

1878 – The American Bar Association is founded in Saratoga Springs, New York

1897 – Ransom Eli Olds founds the Olds Motor Vehicle Company in Lansing, Michigan

1901 – 600 American school teachers on the USAT Thomas, arrive at Manila, in the newly occupied territory of the Philippines, to establish a public school system to train Filipino teachers and students in basic education and the English language

1904 – William ‘Count’ Basie is born in Red Bank, New Jersey.

1911 – Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa is stolen by Vincenzo Peruggia, a Louvre employee.

1918 – The Second Battle of the Somme begins during World War I.

1942 – U.S. Marines, deployed in the defense along the Tenaru river on Guadalcanal, defeat attacking Japanese soldiers of the Ichiki Butai attempting their first ground offensive to retake the airfield on the island.

1945 – Physicist Harry Daghlian is fatally irradiated in a criticality accident during an experiment at Los Alamos National Laboratory with the ‘Demon Core’, the plutonium core of what would have been the 3rd bomb dropped on Japan.
President Truman orders an immediate halt to Lend-Lease aid.

1959 – President Eisenhower signs an executive order proclaiming Hawaii the 50th state of the union

1968 – James Anderson Jr. posthumously receives the first Medal of Honor to be awarded to an African American U.S. Marine.

1974 – Buford Pusser dies in a vehicle accident near Adamsville, Tennessee.

1991 – The coup attempt by communist hardliners against Mikhail Gorbachev collapses.

1993 – 3 days before its planned arrival and insertion into orbit, NASA loses, and never regains contact with the Mars Observer spacecraft.

1995 – Atlantic Southeast Airlines Flight 529, an Embraer EMB 120 Brasilia,  crashes in Carroll County, Georgia, after the left engine fails, killing 4 of the 26 passengers on board, and the Captain of the aircraft, with 4 more passengers later dying of injuries.

2000 – Tiger Woods wins the 82nd PGA Championship, becoming the first golfer to win 3 major tournaments in a calendar year since Ben Hogan in 1953

2017 – A solar eclipse traverses the continental United States.