On This Day: 21 November
164 BCE – Judas Maccabeus, son of Mattathias of the Hasmonean family, restores the Temple in Jerusalem. This event is commemorated each year by the festival of Hanukkah.
235 – Pope Anterus succeeds Pontian as the nineteenth pope. During the persecutions of emperor Maximinus Thrax he is martyred.
1009 – Lý Công Uẩn is enthroned as emperor of Đại Cồ Việt, founding the Lý dynasty.
1386 – Timur of Samarkand captures and sacks the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, taking King Bagrat V of Georgia captive.
1620 – Plymouth Colony settlers sign the Mayflower Compact (November 11, O.S.)
1676 – The Danish astronomer Ole Rømer presents the first quantitative measurements of the speed of light.
1783 – In Paris, Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent d'Arlandes, make the first untethered hot air balloon flight.
1789 – North Carolina ratifies the United States Constitution and is admitted as the 12th U.S. state.
1861 – American Civil War: Confederate President Jefferson Davis appoints Judah Benjamin Secretary of War.
1877 – Thomas Edison announces his invention of the phonograph, a machine that can record and play sound.
1894 – Port Arthur, China, falls to the Japanese, a decisive victory of the First Sino-Japanese War; Japanese troops are accused of massacring the remaining inhabitants.
1902 – The Philadelphia Football Athletics defeated the Kanaweola Athletic Club of Elmira, New York, 39–0, in the first ever professional American football night game.
1905 – Albert Einstein's paper that leads to the mass–energy equivalence formula, E = mc², is published in the journal Annalen der Physik.
1910 – Sailors on board Brazil's warships including the Minas Gerais, São Paulo, and Bahia, violently rebel in what is now known as the Revolta da Chibata (Revolt of the Lash).
1916 – Mines from SM U-73 sink the HMHS Britannic, the largest ship lost in the First World War.
1918 – The Flag of Estonia, previously used by pro-independence activists, is formally adopted as the national flag of the Republic of Estonia.
1918 – The Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act 1918 is passed, allowing women to stand for Parliament in the UK.
1918 – A pogrom takes place in Lwów (now Lviv); over three days, at least 50 Jews and 270 Ukrainian Christians are killed by Poles.
1920 – Irish War of Independence: In Dublin, 31 people are killed in what became known as "Bloody Sunday".
1922 – Rebecca Latimer Felton of Georgia takes the oath of office, becoming the first female United States Senator.
1927 – Columbine Mine massacre: Striking coal miners are allegedly attacked with machine guns by a detachment of state police dressed in civilian clothes.
1942 – The completion of the Alaska Highway (also known as the Alcan Highway) is celebrated (however, the highway is not usable by standard road vehicles until 1943).
1944 – World War II: American submarine USS Sealion sinks the Japanese battleship Kongō and Japanese destroyer Urakaze in the Formosa Strait.
1945 – The United Auto Workers strike 92 General Motors plants in 50 cities to back up worker demands for a 30-percent raise.
1950 – Two Canadian National Railway trains collide in northeastern British Columbia in the Canoe River train crash; the death toll is 21, with 17 of them Canadian troops bound for Korea.
1953 – The Natural History Museum, London announces that the "Piltdown Man" skull, initially believed to be one of the most important fossilized hominid skulls ever found, is a hoax.
1959 – American disc jockey Alan Freed, who had popularized the term "rock and roll" and music of that style, is fired from WABC-AM radio over allegations he had participated in the payola scandal.
1961 – The "La Ronde" opens in Honolulu, first revolving restaurant in the United States.
1962 – The Chinese People's Liberation Army declares a unilateral ceasefire in the Sino-Indian War.
1964 – The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge opens to traffic. At the time it is the world's longest bridge span.
[ On This Day ]
