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“The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Wikiquote (Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882) was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century.)
June 21st, 217 BC
Roman Empire:
217 BC - Battle of Lake Trasimene: The Romans, led by Gaius Flaminius, are ambushed and defeated by Hannibal.
Wikipedia Photo: ● Ancient roman statue ● Detail of Head from Roman Statue of Antinous, credit Corbis ● Statue of Neptune, Trevi Fountain, Rome ● International Sand Sculpture Festival, FIESA 7 ancient Rome.
Relief from a 3rd-century sarcophagus depicting a battle between Romans and Germanic warriors; the central figure is perhaps the emperor Hostilian / Depiction of the Menorah on the Arch of Titus in Rome.
June 21st, 533
Byzantine Empire (East Roman Empire):
533 - A Byzantine expeditionary fleet under Belisarius sails from Constantinople to attack the Vandals in Africa via Greece and Sicily.
Wikipedia Image: The Baptism of Constantine painted by Raphael's pupils (1520–1524, fresco, Vatican City, Apostolic Palace); Mural of Saints Cyril and Methodius, 19th century, Troyan Monastery, Bulgaria; Justinian I depicted on one of the famous mosaics of the Basilica of San Vitale, Ravenna; The Greek fire was first used by the Byzantine Navy during the Byzantine-Arab Wars (from the Madrid Skylitzes, Biblioteca Nacional de España, Madrid); Alexios I, founder of the Komnenos dynasty.
June 21st, 1307
Mongol Empire:
Külüg Khan is enthroned as Khagan of the Mongols and Wuzong of the Yuan.
Wikipedia Image: Map of Mongol Empire at its height; Genghis Khan, credit The Field Museum in Chicago; Genghis Khan various Mongolian tribes joined together in 1206; Mongol warriors was created for an Islamic history book, Rashid al-Din's History of the World of 1307, courtesy of the Edinburgh University Library, Scotland.
June 21st, 1529
Italian Wars:
1529 - War of the League of Cognac: French forces were driven out of northern Italy by Spain at the Battle of Landriano.
Wikipedia Image: Italian Wars: (Great Italian Wars or The Renaissance Wars), were a series of conflicts from 1494 to 1559 that involved, at various times, most of the city-states of Italy, the Papal States, most of the major states of Western Europe (France, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, England, and Scotland) as well as the Ottoman Empire.
June 21st, 1621
Battle of White Mountain: Execution of 27 Czech noblemen on the Old Town Square in Prague leads to the Battle of White Mountain.
Wikipedia.org Painting: Battle of White Mountain; James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth
June 21st, 1788
New Hampshire ratifies the Constitution of the United States and is admitted as the 9th state in the United States.
Wikipedia Painting: Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States, by Howard Chandler Christy
June 21st, 1798
Irish Rebellion of 1798: The British Army defeats Irish rebels at the Battle of Vinegar Hill.
Wikipedia Painting: In End of the Irish Invasion; (the Destruction of the French Armada, 1797), James Gillray caricatured the failure of Hoche's expedition.
June 21st, 1813
French Revolutionary Wars / Napoleonic Wars:
1813 - Peninsular War - Battle of Vitoria.
Wikipedia Painting: Battle of Trafalgar: The British HMS Sandwich fires to the French flagship Bucentaure (completely dismasted) in the battle of Trafalgar;
Napoleon in Berlin (Meynier). After defeating Prussian forces at Jena, the French Army entered Berlin on 27 October 1806;
Battle of the Bridge of Arcole Napoleon Bonaparte leading his troops over the bridge of Arcole, by Horace Vernet;
Napoleon as King of Italy (Appiani);
Napoleon Crossing the Alps (David). In 1800 Bonaparte took the French Army across the Alps, eventually defeating the Austrians at Marengo;
Charge of the Russian Imperial Guard cavalry against French cuirassiers at the Battle of Friedland, 14 June 1807;
Battle of Borodino as depicted by Louis Lejeune. The battle was the largest and bloodiest single-day action of the Napoleonic Wars;
Napoleon's withdrawal from Russia, a painting by Adolph Northen;
Wellington at Waterloo by Robert Alexander Hillingford;
Napoleon is often represented in his green colonel uniform of the Chasseur à Cheval, with a large bicorne and a hand-in-waistcoat gesture.
Battle of the Nile (Battle of Aboukir Bay).
June 21st, 1877
The Molly Maguires, ten Irish immigrants convicted of murder, are hanged at the Schuylkill County and Carbon County, Pennsylvania prisons.
Wikipedia.org Photo: The The Molly Maguires was a 19th century secret society of mainly Irish-American coal miners.
June 21st, 1898
Spanish-American War: The The United States captures Guam from Spain.
Wikipedi Image: Satellite image Cuba, credit: Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, NASA / GSFC; A Catalan satirical drawing published in La Campana de Gràcia (1896), criticizing U.S. behavior regarding Cuba; W. A. Rogers. "The Battle of Desmayo - The Cuban Balaklava" In: Harper's Pictorial History of the War with Spain. Vol. 1. New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1899. NYPL, United States History, Local History and Genealogy Division.
June 21st, 1900
China - Boxer Rebellion:
1900 - China formally declared war on the United States, Britain, Germany, France and Japan, as an edict issued from the Dowager Empress Cixi.
Wikipedia Photo: China from NASA Wordwind Satellite; © Great Wall of China, credit National Geographic; LongJi Terrace, credit National Geographic; Great Bear Rainforest, credit Paul Nicklen, National Geographic; Platoons of clay soldiers were buried with China's first emperor, Qin Shi Huang Di, (required a labor force of 700,000 to build), credit O. Louis Mazzatenta, National Geographic.
The Boxer Rebellion, U.S. Army. ● Guangxu Emperor (fourth from left) with his officials and European officers shortly after the Boxer Rebellion.
June 21st, 1915
The Supreme Court of the United States hands down its decision in Guinn v. United States 238 US 347 1915, striking down an Oklahoma law denying the right to vote to some citizens.
Wikipedia Photo: United States Supreme Court building; Guardian of Law, by James Earle Fraser, US Supreme Court, Washington, DC, USA.
June 21st, 1919
The Royal Canadian Mounted Policefire a volley into a crowd of unemployed war veterans, killing two, during the Winnipeg General Strike.
Wikipedia Photo: Crowd gathered outside old City Hall during the Winnipeg General Strike, June 21, 1919
June 21st, 1919
World War I:
1919 - Admiral Ludwig von Reuter scuttles the German fleet in Scapa Flow, Orkney. The nine sailors killed are the last casualties of World War I.
Wikipedia Photo: Trenches on the Western Front; a British Mark IV Tank crossing a trench; Royal Navy battleship HMS Irresistible sinking after striking a mine at the Battle of the Dardanelles; a Vickers machine gun crew with gas masks, and German Albatros D.III biplanes. National Archives and Records Administration.
June 21st, 1940
World War II:
1940 - France signs an armistice with Germany at Compiègne.
1942 - Tobruk falls to German and Italian forces.
1942 - A Japanese submarine surfaces near the Columbia River in Oregon, firing 17 shells at nearby Fort Stevens in one of only a handful of attacks by the Japanese against the United States mainland.
1945 - Battle of Okinawa; Ends when the organized resistance of Imperial Japanese Army orces collapses in the Mabuni area on the southern tip of the main island.
Wikipedia Photo: Bombing of Dresden in World War II; August Schreitmüller's sculpture 'Goodness' surveys Dresden after a firestorm started by Allied bombers in 1945.
USS Bunker Hill was hit by kamikazes piloted by Ensign Kiyoshi Ogawa and another airman on 11 May 1945. 389 personnel were killed or missing from a crew of 2,600; Ensign Kiyoshi Ogawa, who flew his aircraft into the USS Bunker Hill during a Kamikaze mission on 11 May 1945; Kamikaze Missions - Lt Yoshinori Yamaguchi's Yokosuka D4Y3 (Type 33 Suisei) "Judy" in a suicide dive against USS Essex. The dive brakes are extended and the non-self-sealing port wing tank is trailing fuel vapor and/or smoke 25 November 1944.
German V1 flying-bomb and V2 Rockets - Preparations for a Salvo Launch of V-2 Rockets in the Heidelager near Blizna (Poland) (1944), credit German History in Documents and Images GHDI.
Eastern Front (World War II); Germans race towards Stalingrad. August 1942; Soviet children during a German air raid in the first days of the war, June 1941, by RIA Novosti archive; Soviet sniper Roza Shanina in 1944. About 400,000 Soviet women served in front-line duty units Caucasus Mountains, winter 1942/43; Finnish ski patrol: the invisible enemy of the Soviet Army with an unlimited supply of skis; Men of the German Engineers Corps cross a river which is swollen after the first autumn rains, to strengthen bridges linking the German positions on the central front in Russia. by Keystone / Getty Images. October 1942; Russian snipers fighting on the Leningrad front during a blizzard. Photo by Hulton Archive / Getty Images, 1943; German soldiers surrendering to the Russians in Stalingrad, the soldier holding the white flag of surrender is dressed in white so that there could be no doubt of his intentions, a Russian soldier is on the right of the photograph. by Keystone / Getty Images, January 1943.
June 21st, 1964
Three civil rights workers; Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Mickey Schwerner, are murdered in Neshoba County, Mississippi, United States, by members of the Ku Klux Klan.
Wikipedia Photo: Forty-four days after James Chaney, Mickey Schwerner and Andy Goodman were missing, FBI agents uncovered their bodies, buried 15 feet beneath an earthen dam.
June 21st, 1973
1973 - In Miller v. California the Supreme Court of the United States establishes the Miller Test for obscenity in U.S. law.
Wikipedia Photo: United States Supreme Court building; Guardian of Law, by James Earle Fraser, US Supreme Court, Washington, DC, USA.
June 21st, 1982
John Hinckley is found not guilty by reason of insanity for the attempted assassination of United States President Ronald Reagan.
Wikipedia Photo: Official Portrait of President Reagan 1981.
● The attempted assassination of United States President Ronald Reagan.
June 21st, 2006
Pluto's newly discovered moons are officially named Nix and Hydra.
Wikipedia Image: Pluto, center and it's previously known moon Charon, below Pluto and right of center, shine brightly. Two newly discovered moons appear more faintly to the right of the pair. ● Artist's concept above shows the Pluto system from the surface of one of the candidate moons. credit: NASA
June 21st, 2013
Modern conflicts in the Middle East, social unrest and terrorist attacks:
2013 - Peshawar mosque attack (2013); A suicide bomber kills 15 and injures 20 in a Shi'ite mosque in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar.
2012 - Indian Ocean migrant boat disaster; A boat carrying more than 200 refugees capsized in the Indian Ocean between the Indonesian island of Java and Christmas Island, killing 17 people and leaving 70 others missing..
Wikipedia Photo: Middle East satellite image, NASA. ● Camels are seen early morning on a beach in the Marina area of Dubai October 16, 2008. (Steve Crisp, Reuters) ● A portrait of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad burns during clashes between rebels and Syrian troops in Selehattin, near Aleppo, on July 23, 2012. (Bulent Kilic, AFP / GettyImages) ● Egyptians gather in their thousands in Tahrir Square to mark the one year anniversary of the revolution on Jan. 25, 2012 in Cairo Egypt. Tens of thousands have gathered in the square on the first anniversary of the Arab uprising which toppled President Hosni Mubarak. (Jeff J Mitchell, Getty Images) ● Black smoke rises above the Tehran skyline as supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi burn tires and other material in the streets as they fight running battles with police to protest the declared results of the Iranian presidential election in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, June 13, 2009. (Ben Curtis, AP) ● The Iron Dome defense system fires to interecpt incoming missiles from Gaza in the port town of Ashdod, Thursday, Nov. 15, 2012. (Tsafrir Abayov, AP)