June 21 in History

Louis XVI was the last king of France before the fall of the monarchy during the French Revolution. The son of Louis, Dauphin of France, and Maria Josepha of Saxony, Louis became the new Dauphin when his father died in 1765. In 1770, he married Marie Antoinette. He became King of France and Navarre on his paternal grandfather's death on 10 May 1774, and reigned until the abolition of the monarchy on 21 September 1792. From 1791 onwards, he used the style of king of the French.

The Peninsular War (1808–1814) was fought in the Iberian Peninsula by the Iberian nations Spain and Portugal, along with the United Kingdom, against the invading and occupying forces of the First French Empire during the Napoleonic Wars. In Spain, it is considered to overlap with the Spanish War of Independence. It overlapped with the War of the Fifth Coalition (1809) and the War of the Sixth Coalition (1812–1814).

The Maniots or Maniates is the traditional name for the native Greek inhabitants of the Mani Peninsula in the southern Peloponnese region of Greece. They have historically been known as Mainotes, and the peninsula as Maina.

The American Civil War was a civil war in the United States between the Union and the Confederacy, which was formed in 1861 by states that had seceded from the Union to preserve slavery in the United States, which they saw as threatened because of the election of Abraham Lincoln and the growing abolitionist movement in the North. The war ended with Union victory, the dissolution of the Confederacy and the abolition of slavery, freeing four million African Americans.

The Boxer Rebellion, also known as the Boxer Uprising, Boxer Movement, Yihetuan Movement, or Boxer War, was an anti-foreign, anti-imperialist, and anti-Christian uprising in North China between 1899 and 1901, towards the end of the Qing dynasty, by the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists. Its members were known as the "Boxers" in English, owing to many of them practicing Chinese martial arts, which at the time were referred to as "Chinese boxing". It was defeated by the Eight-Nation Alliance of foreign powers.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police is the national police service of Canada. The RCMP is an agency of the Government of Canada; it also provides police services under contract to 11 provinces and territories, over 150 municipalities, and 600 Indigenous communities. The RCMP is commonly known as the Mounties in English.

Knockcroghery is a village and townland in County Roscommon, Ireland. It is located on the N61 road between Athlone and Roscommon town, near Lough Ree on the River Shannon. The townland of Knockcroghery is in the civil parish of Killinvoy and the historical barony of Athlone North.

Conscription, also known as the draft in American English, is the practice in which the compulsory enlistment in a national service, mainly a military service, is enforced by law. Conscription dates back to antiquity and it continues in some countries to the present day under various names. The modern system of near-universal national conscription for young men dates to the French Revolution in the 1790s, where it became the basis of a very large and powerful military. Most European nations later copied the system in peacetime, so that men at a certain age would serve 1 to 8 years on active duty and then transfer to the reserve force. In the early 2000s, Norway and Sweden became the first nations to conscript women on the same legal terms as men. In 2025, Denmark ruled to implement a similar system.

Vichy France, also known as the Pétainist regime and Pétainist France, officially the French State, was a French rump state headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain during World War II, established as a result of German victory in the Battle of France. It was named after its seat of government, the city of Vichy.

The Bombardment of Fort Stevens occurred in June 1942, in the American Theater and the Pacific Theater of World War II. The Imperial Japanese submarine I-25 fired on Fort Stevens, which defended the Oregon side of the Columbia River's Pacific entrance.

The Polytechnic University of the Philippines is a public research university in the Philippines with a main campus in Santa Mesa, Manila. It was founded on 19 October 1904, as the Manila Business School (MBS) and as part of Manila's public school system. It was eventually promoted to a chartered state university in 1978, by virtue of Presidential Decree 1341. PUP has more than 20 campuses across Central Luzon, Southern Luzon and Metro Manila. With over 80,000 enrolled students in all campuses, PUP claims to be the largest state university in the Philippines by student population.

A conclave was held from 19 to 21 June 1963 to elect a new pope to succeed John XXIII, who had died on 3 June 1963. It was the last conclave before the introduction of the current 80-year-old age limit for cardinal electors in 1970, and of the 82 members of the College of Cardinals, all but two attended. On the sixth ballot, the conclave elected Cardinal Giovanni Montini, the archbishop of Milan. After accepting his election, he took the name Paul VI. His coronation on 30 June 1963 was the latest papal coronation to date.

The Penn Central Transportation Company, commonly abbreviated to Penn Central, was an American class I railroad that operated from 1968 to 1976. Penn Central combined three traditional corporate rivals, each of which were united by large-scale service into the New York metropolitan area and to a lesser extent New England and Chicago.

Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15 (1973), is a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court clarifying the legal definition of obscenity. The ruling was the origin of the three-part judicial test for determining obscene media content that can be banned by government authorities, which is now known as the Miller test.

John Warnock Hinckley Jr. is an American man who attempted to assassinate U.S. president Ronald Reagan as he left the Hilton Hotel in Washington, D.C., on March 30, 1981, two months after Reagan's first inauguration. Using a revolver, Hinckley wounded Reagan, police officer Thomas Delahanty, Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy, and White House Press Secretary James Brady. Brady was left disabled and died 33 years later from his injuries.

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that turn on questions of U.S. constitutional or federal law. It also has original jurisdiction over a narrow range of cases, specifically "all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party". In 1803, the court asserted itself the power of judicial review, the ability to invalidate a statute for violating a provision of the Constitution. It is also able to strike down presidential directives for violating either the Constitution or statutory law.

Section 28 refers to a part of the Local Government Act 1988, which stated that local authorities in England, Scotland and Wales "shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality" or "promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship". It is sometimes referred to as Clause 28, or as Section 2A in reference to the relevant Scottish legislation.

SpaceShipOne is an experimental air-launched rocket-powered aircraft with sub-orbital spaceflight capability at speeds of up to 3,000 ft/s (2,000 mph) / 910 m/s (3,300 km/h) using a hybrid rocket motor. The design features a unique "feathering" atmospheric reentry system where the rear half of the wing and the twin tail booms folds 70 degrees upward along a hinge running the length of the wing; this increases drag while retaining stability. SpaceShipOne completed the first crewed private spaceflight in 2004. That same year, it won the US$10 million Ansari X Prize and was immediately retired from active service. Its mother ship was named "White Knight". Both craft were developed and flown by Mojave Aerospace Ventures, which was a joint venture between Paul Allen and Scaled Composites, Burt Rutan's aviation company. Allen provided the funding of approximately US$25 million.

Pluto is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, a ring of bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. It is the ninth-largest and tenth-most-massive known object to directly orbit the Sun. It is the largest known trans-Neptunian object by volume by a small margin, but is less massive than Eris. Like other Kuiper belt objects, Pluto is made primarily of ice and rock and is much smaller than the inner planets. Pluto has roughly one-sixth the mass of the Moon and one-third of its volume. Originally considered a planet, its status was changed when astronomers adopted a new definition of the word with new criteria.

Greenland is an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark and is the largest of the kingdom's three constituent parts by land area, the others being Denmark proper and the Faroe Islands. Citizens of Greenland are citizens of Denmark. They are thus citizens of the European Union (EU), although Greenland is not part of the EU. It is the world's largest island and lies between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. It shares a small 1.2-kilometre (0.75 mi) border with Canada on Hans Island. The capital and largest city is Nuuk. Kaffeklubben Island off the northern coast is the world's northernmost undisputed point of land – Cape Morris Jesup on the main island was thought to be so until the 1960s. Economically, Greenland is heavily reliant on aid from Denmark, which has averaged 5.4 billion kr. annually in the period 2019–2023, amounting to more than 20% of the territory's gross domestic product.

The Indonesian Air Force is the aerial branch of the Indonesian National Armed Forces. The Indonesian Air Force is headquartered in Jakarta, Indonesia, and is headed by the Chief of Staff of the Air Force. Its order of battle is split into three Air Operations Commands. Most of its airbases are located on the island of Java. The Indonesian Air Force also has its ground force unit, called Air Force Quick Reaction Force Command (Korpasgat). The corps is also known as the "Orange Berets" due to the distinctive color of their service headgear.