March 21 in History

The siege of Rome took place on 2 March 537 – 12 March 538 AD and it was the city's first siege during the Gothic War (535–554) between the defending Byzantine Empire's forces under the leadership of General Belisarius against a numerically superior Ostrogothic (Goths) force under King Vitiges. The siege was the first major encounter between the forces of the two opponents, and played a decisive role in the subsequent development of the war. Belisarius prepared the fortification of Rome for the upcoming siege and organized the city's defense with about 5,000 troops, installed artillery on the walls, and recruited citizens to assist in manning the walls. The Goths established fortified camps around Rome and attempted to cut its water supply. They soon launched an assault against Rome on multiple fronts using siege towers, battering rams, and ladders, but the defenders repulsed the Gothic attacks. The failure of the Gothic assault turned the siege into a prolonged struggle of attrition. Gothic forces captured the port of Portus and attempted to further isolate Rome. The food shortages and disease increasingly affected the population, who placed pressure on Belisarius to act. Byzantine reinforcements eventually reached the city, enabling Belisarius to make extensive use of cavalry, including mounted archers, in sorties against the besiegers. After an unsuccessful attempt to defeat the Goths in open battle, Belisarius largely relied on the city's fortifications, cavalry hit-and-run tactics to effectively besiege the besiegers. A temporary armistice gave the Byzantines time to strengthen their defenses and increase pressure against the Goths, who also had food shortages issues. The siege ended in March 538 after Byzantine forces under John the Sanguinary captured Ariminum (modern-day Rimini), a strategic city near the Gothic capital of Ravenna. Vitiges abandoned the siege on 12 March and withdrew north with his army to capture Ariminum.

Heraclius was Byzantine emperor from 610 to 641. His rise to power began in 608, when he and his father, Heraclius the Elder, the Exarch of Africa, led a revolt against the unpopular emperor Phocas.

The Battle of Vincy (or Vinchy, now Les Rues-des-Vignes) was a battle of the Frankish civil war of 715–18 fought near Cambrai, in the modern département of Nord. It was a contest between Charles Martel and the Austrasians on one side and the king of the Franks, Chilperic II, and his mayor of the palace, Ragenfrid, on the other. After the Battle of Amblève in 716, King Chilperic and Ragenfrid returned defeated to Neustria. Instead of following them at once, Charles again used tactics he would use all his remaining life, in a successful military career. He took time to rally more men and prepare, before descending in full force. By the following spring, Martel had attracted enough support to confront the Neustrians. He chose where to provoke them to battle, and, at a place and time of his choosing. Charles eventually followed them and dealt them a serious blow at Vincy on 21 March 717. He pursued the fleeing king and mayor to Paris. On this success, he proclaimed Clotaire IV king of Austrasia in opposition to Chilperic and deposed the bishop of Rheims, Rigobert, replacing him with one Milo. The defeated Chilperic II, and his mayor of the palace, Ragenfrid, were essentially broken after this battle.

Northumbria was an early medieval English kingdom, existing between 654 and 1066 AD, at its height spanning modern-day Northern England and Southern Scotland.

Louis VII (1120 – 18 September 1180), was King of France from 1137 to 1180. His first marriage was to Duchess Eleanor of Aquitaine, one of the wealthiest and most powerful women in western Europe. The marriage temporarily extended the Capetian lands to the Pyrenees. Louis was the second son of Louis VI of France and Adelaide of Maurienne, and was initially prepared for a career in the Church. Following the death of his older brother, Philip, in 1131, Louis became heir apparent to the French throne and was crowned as his father's co-ruler. In 1137, he married Eleanor of Aquitaine and shortly thereafter became sole king following his father's death. During his march, as part of the Second Crusade in 1147, Louis stayed at the court of King Géza II of Hungary on the way to Jerusalem. During his stay in the Holy Land, disagreements with Eleanor led to a deterioration in their marriage. She persuaded him to stay in Antioch but Louis instead wanted to fulfil his vows of pilgrimage to Jerusalem. He was later involved in the failed siege of Damascus and eventually returned to France in 1149. Louis' reign saw the founding of the University of Paris. He and his counsellor, Abbot Suger, pushed for greater centralisation of the state and favoured the development of French Gothic architecture, notably the construction of Notre-Dame de Paris. Louis' marriage to Eleanor was annulled in 1152 after the couple had produced two daughters, but no male heir. Immediately after their annulment, Eleanor married Henry, Duke of Normandy and Count of Anjou, to whom she conveyed Aquitaine. Following Henry's accession as King Henry II of England, these territories formed the Angevin Empire. Later, Louis supported Henry and Eleanor's sons in their rebellion against their father to foment further disunity in the Angevin realms. His second marriage to Constance of Castile also produced two daughters, but his third wife, Adela of Champagne, gave birth to a son, Philip Augustus, in 1165. Louis died in 1180 and was succeeded by his son, Philip II.

Emperor Antoku (安徳天皇, Antoku-tennō; 22 December 1178 – 25 April 1185) was the 81st emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession. His reign spanned the years from 1180 through 1185. His death marked the end of the Heian period and the beginning of the Kamakura period. During this time, the Imperial House of Japan was involved in a bitter struggle between warring clans. Minamoto no Yoritomo with his cousin Minamoto no Yoshinaka, led a force from the Minamoto clan against the Taira, who controlled the emperor. During the climactic sea Battle of Dan-no-ura in April 1185, Antoku's grandmother Taira no Tokiko took him and plunged with him into the water in the Shimonoseki Straits, drowning the child emperor rather than allowing him to be captured by the opposing forces. This clash of clans led to numerous legends and tales. The story of Emperor Antoku and his mother's family became the subject of the Kamakura period epic poem The Tale of the Heike (Heike is an alternative reading of the Japanese characters for "House of the Taira"). Antoku's tomb is said to be located in a number of places around western Japan, including the island of Iōjima, a result of the spreading of legends about the emperor and the battle.

The Erfurt massacre was a massacre of the Jewish community in Erfurt, Germany, on 21–22 March 1349. Accounts of the number of Jews killed in the massacre vary widely from between 100 and up to 3000. Any Jewish survivors were expelled from the city. Some Jews set fire to their homes and possessions and perished in the flames before they could be lynched. The many Black Death persecutions and massacres that occurred in France and Germany at that time were sometimes in response to accusations that the Jews were responsible for outbreaks of the Black Death, and other times justified with the belief that killing the local Jews would prevent the spread of the Black Death to that locale. Although these beliefs, and the accompanying massacres, were frequently encouraged by local bishops or itinerant Flagellants, the Catholic Church, including Pope Clement VI under whom the Flagellants and the Black Death began, and his successor, Innocent VI, were firmly against it. In a papal bull condemning the Flagellant movement in late 1349, Pope Clement VI criticized their "shedding the blood of Jews". Erfurt later suffered the ravages of the Black Plague, where over 16,000 residents died during a ten-week period in 1350. Among those murdered was prominent Talmudist Alexander Suslin. A few years after the 1349 massacre, Jews moved back to Erfurt and founded a second community, which was disbanded by the city council in 1458.

Oxford is a cathedral city and non-metropolitan district in Oxfordshire, England, of which it is the county town.

The Great New Orleans Fire (1788) (Spanish: Gran Incendio de Nueva Orleans, French: Grand incendie de La Nouvelle-Orléans) was a fire that destroyed 856 of the 1,100 structures (77.8% of buildings) in New Orleans, Louisiana (New Spain), on March 21, 1788, spanning the south central Vieux Carré from Burgundy to Chartres Street, almost to the Mississippi River front buildings. An additional 212 buildings were destroyed in a later citywide fire on December 8, 1794.

The Papal States, officially the State of the Church, were a conglomeration of territories on the Italian Peninsula under the direct sovereign rule of the pope from 756 to 1870. They were among the major Italian states from the 8th century until the unification of Italy, which took place between 1859 and 1870, culminating in their incorporation into the Kingdom of Italy.

The Battle of Alexandria (also known as the Battle of Canope/Canopus) was fought on 21 March 1801, where the British army and naval forces repelled an assault by the French army as part of the French invasion of Egypt and Syria. Led by General Sir Ralph Abercromby, the British entrenched army engaged a French force under Divisional-general Jacques-François Menou near the ruins of Nicopolis, on the narrow spit of land between the Mediterranean Sea and Abukir. The British routed Menou's army after several hours of fierce fighting, though Abercromby was mortally wounded. Part of the French casualties at Alexandria was caused by British naval force under Frederick Maitland, whose role was also important in suppressing the French attacks. John Hely-Hutchinson, who replaced Abercromby, led the British army to Alexandria and laid siege to the city, which surrendered in September.

The Napoleonic Code (French: Code Napoléon), officially the Civil Code of the French (French: Code civil des Français; simply referred to as Code civil), is the French civil code established during the French Consulate in 1804 and still in force in France, although heavily and frequently amended since its inception. Although Napoleon himself was not directly involved in the drafting of the Code, as it was drafted by a commission of four eminent jurists, he chaired many of the commission's plenary sessions, and his support was crucial to its enactment. The code, with its stress on clearly written and accessible law, was a major milestone in the abolition of the previous patchwork of feudal laws. Historian Robert Holtman regards it as one of the few documents that have influenced the whole world. The Napoleonic Code was not the first legal code to be established in a European country with a civil-law legal system; it was preceded by the Codex Maximilianeus bavaricus civilis (Bavaria, 1756), the Allgemeines Landrecht (Prussia, 1794), and the West Galician Code (Galicia, then part of Austria, 1797). It was, however, the first modern legal code to be adopted with a pan-European scope, and it strongly influenced the law of many of the countries formed during and after the Napoleonic Wars. The Napoleonic Code influenced developing countries outside Europe attempting to modernize and defeudalize their countries through legal reforms, such as those in the Middle East, while in Latin America the Spanish and Portuguese had established their own versions of the civil code.

The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) were a global series of conflicts fought by a fluctuating array of European coalitions against the French First Republic (1803–1804) under the First Consul followed by the First French Empire (1804–1815) under the Emperor of the French, Napoleon. The wars originated in political forces arising from the French Revolution (1789–1799) and French Revolutionary Wars (1792–1802) and produced a period of French domination over continental Europe. The wars are categorised as seven conflicts, five named after the coalitions that fought Napoleon, plus two named for their respective theatres: the War of the Third Coalition, War of the Fourth Coalition, War of the Fifth Coalition, War of the Sixth Coalition, War of the Seventh Coalition, the Peninsular War, and the French invasion of Russia. The first stage of the wars broke out when Britain declared war on France on 18 May 1803. After minor campaigns, Britain allied with Austria, Russia, and minor powers, to form the Third Coalition in April 1805. Napoleon defeated the allied Russo-Austrian armies in the subsequent war which climaxed in French victories at Ulm and at Austerlitz, leading to the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire and Austria being forced to make peace. Britain and Russia remained at war with France. Concerned about increasing French power, Prussia joined Britain and Russia in the Fourth Coalition, which resumed war in October 1806. Napoleon defeated the Prussians at Jena-Auerstedt and the Russians at Friedland, bringing an uneasy peace to the continent by July 1807, and again leaving Britain as France's sole major enemy. Britain was unable to dispute French dominance on the continent but obtained hegemony over the seas after victories including Trafalgar. Russia used the interim peace to resolve wars with the Ottomans, Swedes, and Iranians. Hoping to isolate and weaken Britain economically through his Continental System, Napoleon launched an invasion of Portugal, the only remaining British ally in continental Europe. After occupying Lisbon in November 1807, and with the bulk of French troops present in Spain, Napoleon seized the opportunity to turn against his former ally, depose the reigning Spanish royal family, and declare his brother as Joseph I the King of Spain in 1808, to the disapproval of the Spanish populace. Spain joined Britain and Portugal, with the three powers engaging France in the Peninsular War. The diversion of French armies to the large new Anglo-Spanish front led to Austria reentering the conflict and forming the Fifth Coalition in April 1809, composed of Austria, Spain, and Britain. Austria won the Battle of Aspern-Essling but was defeated at Wagram, forcing the imposition of a harsh peace in October 1809. Britain, Spain, and Portugal remained at war with France. Concurrently Russia, unwilling to bear the economic consequences of reduced trade, violated the Continental System, prompting Napoleon to launch an invasion in June 1812. The resulting campaign was costly for both sides, but ultimately ended in disaster for France and the near-destruction of Napoleon's Grande Armée. French forces retreated from Russia by December 1812 and began reconstituting their lost strength. Encouraged by the defeat, Austria, Prussia, and several minor powers joined Russia, Britain, and Spain in a Sixth Coalition and began a campaign against France. The Sixth Coalition defeated Napoleon at Leipzig in October 1813. The allies then invaded France on two fronts: the Russians, Austrians, and Prussians invaded France from the east, while the British, Spanish, and Portuguese invaded France from the west. Coalition troops captured Paris in March 1814, forced Napoleon to abdicate in April, exiled him to the island of Elba, and restored power to the Bourbons. Napoleon escaped exile in February 1815 and reassumed control of France for around one hundred days, igniting the eponymous conflict. The allies formed the Seventh Coalition, which defeated him at Waterloo in June 1815 and exiled him to Saint Helena, where he died in 1821. The wars had profound consequences on history. New methods of warfare were introduced, including mass conscription and guerrilla warfare. Politically, the wars greatly influenced Europe through the advancements in civil law brought about by the Napoleonic Code, which was largely retained where it was adopted, and the spread of nationalism and liberalism. Independence movements emerged in Spanish America as a direct consequence of the wars, leading to the decline of the Spanish and Portuguese Empires. France's defeat led to the rise of Britain as the world's foremost naval and economic power, a status it would hold for the remainder of the century. After the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the Congress of Vienna redrew Europe's borders and brought a relative peace to the continent, with no major great power conflicts until the Crimean War in 1853.

The Greek War of Independence, also known as the Greek Revolution or the Greek Revolution of 1821, was a successful war of independence fought by Greek revolutionaries against the Ottoman Empire from 1821 to 1829. In 1826, the Greeks were assisted by the British Empire, the Kingdom of France, and the Russian Empire, while the Ottomans were aided by their vassals, especially by the Eyalet of Egypt. The war led to the formation of modern Greece, which in subsequent years would be expanded to its current size. The revolution is commemorated by Greeks in Greece and the Greek diaspora on 25 March, as Independence Day. All Greek territory, except the Ionian Islands, came under Ottoman rule in the 15th century, in the decades surrounding the Fall of Constantinople. During the following centuries, there were sporadic but unsuccessful Greek uprisings against Ottoman rule. In 1814, a secret organization called the Filiki Eteria (Society of Friends) was founded by Nikolaos Skoufas, Emmanuil Xanthos, and Athanasios Tsakalov with the aim of liberating Greece. It planned to launch revolts in the Peloponnese, the Danubian Principalities, and Constantinople. The insurrection was planned for 25 March 1821, the Orthodox Christian Feast of the Annunciation. However, the plans were discovered by the Ottoman authorities, forcing it to start earlier. The first revolt began on 21 February 1821 in the Danubian Principalities, but it was soon put down by the Ottomans. These events urged Greeks in the Peloponnese into action and on 17 March 1821, the Maniots were first to declare war. In September 1821, the Greeks, under the leadership of Theodoros Kolokotronis, captured Tripolitsa. Revolts in Crete, Macedonia, and Central Greece broke out, but were suppressed. Greek fleets achieved success against the Ottoman navy in the Aegean Sea and prevented Ottoman reinforcements from arriving by sea. Tensions developed among Greek factions, leading to two consecutive civil wars. The Ottoman Sultan called in Muhammad Ali of Egypt, who agreed to send his son, Ibrahim Pasha, to Greece with an army to suppress the revolt in return for territorial gains. Ibrahim landed in the Peloponnese in February 1825 and brought most of the peninsula under Egyptian control by the end of that year. Though an Ottoman–Egyptian invasion of Mani failed, Athens fell, and revolutionary morale decreased. The three great powers—Russia, Britain, and France—decided to intervene, sending their naval squadrons to Greece in 1827. They destroyed the Ottoman–Egyptian fleet at the Battle of Navarino, and turned the tide in favor of the revolutionaries. In 1828, the Egyptian army withdrew under pressure from a French expeditionary force. The Ottoman garrisons in the Peloponnese surrendered and the Greek revolutionaries retook central Greece. The Ottoman Empire declared war on Russia allowing for the Russian army to move into the Balkans. This forced the Ottomans to accept Greek autonomy in the Treaty of Adrianople and semi-autonomy for Serbia and the Romanian principalities. After nine years of war, Greece was recognized as an independent state under the London Protocol of February 1830. Further negotiations in 1832 led to the London Conference and the Treaty of Constantinople, which defined the final borders of the new state and established Prince Otto of Bavaria as the first king of Greece. The slogan of the revolution, Eleftheria i thanatos 'Freedom or death', became Greece's national motto.

The Wellington-Winchilsea Duel took place on 21 March 1829 at Battersea, then in Surrey on the outskirts of London. It was a bloodless duel fought between the British prime minister Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington and George Finch-Hatton, 10th Earl of Winchilsea. It was the second and last duel fought by a sitting prime minister following the 1798 Pitt–Tierney duel on Putney Heath.

Alexander Hamilton Stephens (February 11, 1812 – March 4, 1883) was an American politician who was the only vice president of the Confederate States from 1861 to 1865, and later the 50th governor of Georgia from 1882 until his death in 1883. A member of the Democratic Party, he represented the state of Georgia in the United States House of Representatives before and after the Civil War. Stephens attended Franklin College and established a legal practice in his hometown of Crawfordville, Georgia. After serving in both houses of the Georgia General Assembly, he was elected to the U.S. Congress, taking his seat in 1843. He became a leading Southern Whig and strongly opposed the Mexican–American War. After the war, Stephens was a prominent supporter of the Compromise of 1850 and helped draft the Georgia Platform, which opposed secession. A proponent of the expansion of slavery into the territories, Stephens also helped pass the Kansas–Nebraska Act. As the Whig Party collapsed in the 1850s, Stephens joined the Democratic Party and worked with President James Buchanan to admit Kansas as a state under the pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution (which was overwhelmingly rejected by Kansas voters in a referendum). Stephens declined to seek re-election in 1858 but continued to publicly advocate against secession. After Georgia and other Southern states seceded and formed the Confederate States of America, Stephens was elected as the Confederate Vice President. On March 21, 1861, Stephens delivered his infamous Cornerstone Speech while visiting Savannah, Georgia, which defended slavery; enumerated contrasts between the American and Confederate foundings, ideologies, and constitutions; and laid out the Confederacy's rationale for seceding. Stephens would attempt to deny and retract this speech following the Confederacy's defeat in 1865. In the course of the war, he became increasingly critical of President Jefferson Davis's policies, especially Confederate conscription and the suspension of habeas corpus. In February 1865, he was one of the commissioners who met with Abraham Lincoln at the abortive Hampton Roads Conference to discuss peace terms. After the war, Stephens was imprisoned until he was pardoned by President Andrew Johnson in October 1865. The following year, the Georgia legislature elected him to the U.S. Senate, but the Senate declined to seat him due to his role in the Civil War. He won election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1873 and served until 1882, when he resigned from Congress to become governor of Georgia. Stephens served as governor until his death in 1883.

Otto Eduard Leopold, Prince of Bismarck, Count of Bismarck-Schönhausen, Duke of Lauenburg (1 April 1815 – 30 July 1898), was a German statesman and diplomat who oversaw the unification of Germany and served as its first chancellor from 1871 to 1890. Bismarck's Realpolitik and firm governance earned him the nickname Iron Chancellor (Eiserner Kanzler). From Junker landowner origins, Bismarck rose rapidly in Prussian politics under King Wilhelm I of Prussia. He served as the Prussian ambassador to Russia and France and in both houses of the Prussian parliament. From 1862 to 1890, he held office as the minister president and foreign minister of Prussia. Under Bismarck's leadership, Prussia provoked three short, decisive wars against Denmark, Austria, and France. After Austria's defeat in 1866, he replaced the German Confederation with the North German Confederation, which aligned the smaller North German states with Prussia while excluding Austria. In 1870, Bismarck secured France's defeat with support from the independent South German states before overseeing the creation of a unified German Empire under Prussian rule. Following Germany's unification, he was given the aristocratic title Prince of Bismarck (Fürst von Bismarck). From 1871 onwards, his balance-of-power approach to diplomacy helped maintain Germany's position in a peaceful Europe. While averse to maritime colonialism, Bismarck acquiesced to elite and popular opinion by acquiring colonies. As part of his domestic political maneuvering, Bismarck created the first welfare state, with the goal of undermining his socialist opponents. In the 1870s, he allied himself with the low-tariff, anti-Catholic Liberals and fought the Catholic Church, in what was called the Kulturkampf (lit. 'culture struggle'). This was unsuccessful, with the Catholics responding by forming the powerful German Centre Party and using universal male suffrage to gain a bloc of seats. Bismarck responded by ending the Kulturkampf, breaking with the Liberals and forming a political alliance with the Centre Party to fight the Socialists. Under his direction, the Imperial Reichstag was sidelined and did not control government policy. A staunch monarchist, Bismarck ruled autocratically through a strong bureaucracy with power concentrated in the hands of the Junker elite. After being dismissed from office by Wilhelm II, he retired to write his memoirs. Bismarck is most famous for his role in German unification. During the German Imperial period, he became a hero to German nationalists, who built monuments honouring him. Historians praise him as a visionary who kept the peace in Europe through diplomacy. However, he has been criticized for his domestic policies, such as his persecution of Catholics, as well as his authoritarian rule in general as Chancellor.

Sir Henry Morton Stanley (born John Rowlands; 28 January 1841 – 10 May 1904) was a Welsh-American explorer, journalist, soldier, colonial administrator, author, and politician famous for his exploration of Central Africa and search for missionary and explorer David Livingstone. Besides his discovery of Livingstone, he is mainly known for his search for the sources of the Nile and Congo rivers, the work he undertook as an agent of King Leopold II of the Belgians that enabled the occupation of the Congo Basin region, and his command of the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition. He was knighted in 1897, and served in Parliament as a Liberal Unionist member for Lambeth North from 1895 to 1900. More than a century after his death, Stanley's legacy remains the subject of enduring controversy. Although he personally had high regard for many of the native African people who accompanied him on his expeditions, the exaggerated accounts of corporal punishment and brutality in his books fostered a public reputation as a hard-driving, cruel leader, in contrast to the supposedly more humanitarian Livingstone. His contemporary image in Britain suffered from the perception that he was American. In the 20th century, his reputation was also seriously damaged by his role in establishing the Congo Free State for King Leopold II. Nevertheless, he is recognised for his important contributions to Western knowledge of the geography of Central Africa and for his resolute opposition to the slave trade in East Africa.

World War I, or the First World War, also known as the Great War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Central Powers. One of the deadliest conflicts in history, World War I resulted in an estimated 15 to 22 million deaths, including those in war crimes and genocides. The war also helped spread the Spanish flu pandemic. The conflict saw important developments in weaponry, including the first large-scale use of machine guns, artillery, aircraft, chemical weapons, and tanks.

The Hungarian Soviet Republic, also known as the Socialist Federative Soviet Republic of Hungary was a short-lived state that existed from 21 March 1919 to 1 August 1919 (133 days), succeeding the First Hungarian Republic. The Hungarian Soviet Republic was a small rump state run by communists and socialists which, at its time of establishment, controlled approximately only 23% of Hungary's historic territory. The nominal head of government was Sándor Garbai, but the de facto leader was Béla Kun, leader of the Party of Communists in Hungary. Unable to reach an agreement with the Triple Entente, which maintained an economic blockade of Hungary, in dispute with neighboring countries over territorial disputes, and beset by profound internal social changes, the Hungarian Soviet Republic failed in its objectives and was abolished a few months after its foundation. Its main figure was the Communist Béla Kun, despite the fact that in the first days the majority of the new government consisted of radical Social Democrats. The new system effectively concentrated power in the governing councils, which exercised it in the name of the working class. The new Communist government failed to reach an agreement with the Triple Entente that would lead to the lifting of the economic blockade, the improvement of the new borders or the recognition of the new government by the victorious powers of World War I. A small volunteer army was organized mostly from Budapest factory workers and attempts were made to recover the territories lost to neighboring countries, an objective that had widespread support from many working-class people in some larger cities, not only by those favorable to the new regime. Initially, thanks to patriotic support from conservative officers, the republican forces advanced against the Czechoslovaks in north Hungary, after suffering a defeat in the east at the hands of the Romanian Army in late April, which led to a retreat on the banks of the Tisza. In mid-June, the birth of the Slovak Soviet Republic was proclaimed, which lasted two weeks until a Hungarian withdrawal at the request of the Triple Entente. Later that month, there was an attempted coup by the Social Democrats of Budapest, which was put down by the communist government. On 20 July, the republic launched a new attack on the Romanian posts who were deep in Hungary at the Tisza river. After a few days of the Hungarian advance, the Romanians managed to stop the offensive and break through the Hungarian lines. Kun and most of the government fled to Vienna. The Social-Democrat–Communist government was succeeded by an exclusively Social Democratic one on 1 August. The communists left Budapest and went abroad. Despite the opposition from the Entente, the Romanians entered Budapest, the Hungarian capital, on 4 August. The Hungarian heads of government applied controversial doctrinal measures in both foreign (internationalism instead of national interests during wartime) and domestic policy (planned economy and heightened class struggle) that made them lose the favor of the majority of the population. The attempt of the new executive to profoundly change the lifestyle and the system of values of the population proved to be a resounding failure; After the withdrawal from Slovakia, the application of some measures aimed at regaining popular support was ordered, but without great success; in particular, the ban on the sale of alcoholic beverages was repealed, and attempts were made to improve the monetary situation and food supply. Unable to apply these policies effectively, the republic had already lost the support of the majority of the population between June and July, which led, together with the military defeats, to its downfall. The failure of internal reform was compounded by the political and economic isolation imposed on Hungary by the Triple Entente, the military failures against neighboring countries, and the impossibility of joining forces with the Red Army because of the ongoing Russian Civil War contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Republic.

The New Economic Policy (NEP) (Russian: новая экономическая политика (НЭП), romanized: novaya ekonomicheskaya politika) was an economic policy of the Soviet Union proposed by Vladimir Lenin in 1921 as a temporary expedient. Lenin characterized the NEP in 1922 as an economic system that would include "a free market and capitalism, both subject to state control", while socialized state enterprises would operate on "a profit basis". Nouveau riche people who took an advantage of the NEP were called NEPmen (нэпманы). The NEP represented an early form of market socialism to foster economic growth for the country, which had suffered severely since World War I and the Russian Civil War. The Soviet authorities partially revoked the complete nationalization of industry (established during the period of war communism of 1918 to 1921) and introduced a mixed economy which allowed private individuals to own small and medium-sized enterprises, while the state continued to control large industries, banks and foreign trade. The Bolshevik government adopted the NEP in the course of the 10th Congress of the All-Russian Communist Party (March 1921). The decree on 21 March 1921: "On the Replacement of Prodrazvyorstka by Prodnalog" abolished forced grain-requisition (prodrazvyorstka) and introduced a tax on farmers, payable in the form of raw agricultural product (prodnalog). Further decrees refined the policy. Other policies included monetary reform (1922–1924) and the attraction of foreign capital. NEP was abandoned in 1928 with Joseph Stalin's "Great Break" and gradually phased out during 1928–1931.

The Butler Act was a 1925 Tennessee law prohibiting public school teachers from denying the Genesis account of humankind's origin. The law also prevented the teaching of the evolution of humans from what it referred to as lower orders of animals in place of the Biblical account. The law was introduced by Tennessee House of Representatives member John Washington Butler, for whom the law was named. It was enacted as Tennessee Code Annotated Title 49 (Education) Section 1922, having been signed into law by Tennessee governor Austin Peay. The law was challenged and upheld later that year in a famous trial in Dayton, Tennessee called the Scopes Trial which involved a raucous confrontation between prosecution attorney and fundamentalist religious leader, William Jennings Bryan, and prominent defense attorney and religious agnostic, Clarence Darrow. It was not repealed until 1967.

Syngman Rhee (Korean: 이승만; Hanja: 李承晚; pronounced [iː.sɯŋ.man]; 26 March 1875 – 19 July 1965) (also known by his art name Unam (우남; 雩南)) was a South Korean politician who served as the first president of South Korea from 1948 until his resignation in 1960. His administration was characterised by authoritarianism, limited economic development, and in the late 1950s growing political instability and public opposition to his rule. Rhee previously was the first president of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea from 1919 until his impeachment in 1925 and again as the last president from 1947 to 1948. Born in Hwanghae Province during the Joseon period, Rhee attended a local Methodist school, where he converted to Christianity. He became a Korean independence activist and was imprisoned for his activities in 1899. After his release in 1904, he moved to the United States, where he received degrees from American universities and met Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. After a brief 1910–12 return to Korea, he moved to Hawaii in 1913. In 1919, following the Japanese suppression of the March First Movement, Rhee joined the right-leaning Korean Provisional Government in exile in Shanghai. From 1918 to 1924, he served as the first President of the Korean Provisional Government until 1925. He then returned to the United States, where he advocated and fundraised for Korean independence. In 1945, he returned to US-controlled Korea. On 20 July 1948, he was elected the first president of the Republic of Korea by the National Assembly, ushering in the First Republic of Korea. As president, Rhee continued his hardline anti-communist and pro-American views that characterized much of his earlier political career. Rhee was president during the outbreak of the Korean War (1950–1953), in which North Korea invaded South Korea. He refused to sign the armistice agreement that ended the war, wishing to have the peninsula reunited by force. After the fighting ended, South Korea's economy lagged behind North Korea's and was heavily reliant on US aid, despite successful efforts to battle illiteracy. After being re-elected in 1956, he pushed to modify the constitution to remove the two-term limit, despite opposition protests. He was reelected uncontested in March 1960, after his opponent Chough Pyung-ok died from cancer before the election took place. After Rhee's ally Lee Ki-poong won the corresponding vice-presidential election by a wide margin, the opposition rejected the result as rigged, which triggered protests. These escalated into the student-led April Revolution, in which police shot demonstrators in Masan. The resulting scandal caused Rhee to resign on 26 April, ushering in the Second Republic of Korea. Following his resignation, he spent a month at the residence Ihwajang and departed for exile in Hawaii by plane on 29 May. However, according to Rhee, he went to Hawaii for medical treatment. Rhee claimed that he was never in exile – he simply was not able to return to his homeland. He spent the rest of his life in exile in Honolulu, Hawaii, and died of a stroke in 1965.

L'enfant et les sortilèges: Fantaisie lyrique en deux parties (The Child and the Spells: A Lyric Fantasy in Two Parts) is an opera in one act, with music by Maurice Ravel to a libretto by Colette. It is Ravel's second opera, his first being L'heure espagnole. Written from 1917 to 1925, L'enfant et les sortilèges was first performed in Monte Carlo on 21 March 1925, conducted by Victor de Sabata. After being offered the opportunity to write a musical work, Colette wrote the text in eight days. Several composers had proposed to Colette that she write to music, but she was only excited by the prospect of Ravel.

Charles Augustus Lindbergh (February 4, 1902 – August 26, 1974) was an American aviator, military officer, and author. On May 20–21, 1927, he made the first nonstop flight from New York to Paris, a distance of 3,600 miles (5,800 km), flying alone for over 33 hours. His aircraft, the Spirit of St. Louis, was built to compete for the $25,000 Orteig Prize for the first flight between the two cities. Although not the first transatlantic flight, it was the first solo crossing of the Atlantic and the longest at the time by nearly 2,000 miles (3,200 km), setting a new flight distance world record. The achievement garnered Lindbergh worldwide fame and stands as one of the most consequential flights in history, signalling a new era of international air transportation. Lindbergh was the son of U.S. congressman Charles August Lindbergh. He became a U.S. Army Air Service cadet in 1924. The next year, he was hired as a U.S. Air Mail pilot in the Greater St. Louis area, where he began to prepare for crossing the Atlantic. For his 1927 flight, President Calvin Coolidge presented him both the Distinguished Flying Cross and Medal of Honor, the highest U.S. military award. He was promoted to colonel in the U.S. Army Air Corps Reserve and also earned the highest French order of merit, the Legion of Honor. His achievement spurred significant global interest in flight training, commercial aviation, and air mail, which revolutionized the aviation industry worldwide (a phenomenon dubbed the "Lindbergh Boom"), and he spent much time promoting these industries. Time magazine named Lindbergh its first Man of the Year for 1927, President Herbert Hoover appointed him to the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics in 1929, and he received the Congressional Gold Medal in 1930. In 1931, he and French surgeon Alexis Carrel began work on inventing the first perfusion pump, a device credited with making future heart surgeries and organ transplantation possible. However, despite initially being a subject of media prominence, Lindbergh and Carrel's version of the perfusion pump was considered to be impractical and difficult to use, and would lose influence by the 1940s. On March 1, 1932, Lindbergh's infant child, Charles Jr., was kidnapped and murdered in what the American media called the "crime of the century". The case prompted the U.S. to establish kidnapping as a federal crime if a kidnapper crosses state lines with a victim. By late 1935, public hysteria from the case drove the Lindbergh family abroad to Europe, from where they returned in 1939. In the months before the United States entered World War II, Lindbergh's non-interventionist stance and statements about Jews and race led many to believe he was a Nazi sympathizer. Lindbergh never publicly stated support for the Nazis and condemned them several times in both his public speeches and personal diary, but associated with them on numerous occasions in the 1930s. He also supported the isolationist America First Committee and resigned from the U.S. Army Air Corps in April 1941 after President Franklin Roosevelt publicly rebuked him for his views. In September 1941, Lindbergh gave a significant address, titled "Speech on Neutrality", outlining his position and arguments against greater American involvement in the war. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and German declaration of war against the U.S., Lindbergh avidly supported the American war effort but was rejected for active duty, as Roosevelt refused to restore his colonel's commission. Instead he flew 50 combat missions in the Pacific Theater as a civilian consultant and was unofficially credited with shooting down an enemy aircraft. In 1954, President Dwight Eisenhower restored his commission and promoted him to brigadier general in the U.S. Air Force Reserve. In his later years, he became a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, international explorer, and environmentalist, helping to establish national parks in the U.S. and protect certain endangered species and tribal people in both the Philippines and east Africa. After retiring in Maui, Lindbergh died of lymphoma in 1974 at the age of 72.

The Australian Eastern Mission (AEM) was a 1934 diplomatic tour of East and South-East Asia led by Australian deputy prime minister John Latham. The mission was the first such official tour sent by Australia outside of the British Empire and has been seen as a landmark in Australian foreign policy and engagement with Asia. The mission was publicly framed as a goodwill tour, but had important commercial, diplomatic and strategic aims. It ran from 21 March to 14 June 1934 and concentrated on China, the Netherlands East Indies and Japan, with shorter visits to the British colonies of Hong Kong, Malaya, and Singapore and the American-administered Philippines. A major focus of the mission was Australian relations with Japan in the aftermath of the Manchurian Crisis. Latham's recommendations from the mission were influential on the Lyons government's trade and foreign policies in the lead-up to World War II, contributing to the expansion of the Department of External Affairs and the appointment of Australia's first diplomats in Asia later in the 1930s.

The monarchs of Iran ruled for over two and a half millennia, beginning as early as the 8th century BC and enduring until the 20th century AD. The earliest Iranian monarch is generally considered to have been either Deioces of the Median dynasty or Cyrus the Great of the Achaemenid dynasty. The last Iranian monarch was Mohammad Reza Shah of the Pahlavi dynasty (1925–1979), who was overthrown in the Iranian Revolution. Since then, Iran has been governed by theocratic supreme leaders.

The Ponce massacre took place on Palm Sunday, March 21, 1937, in Ponce, Puerto Rico, when a peaceful civilian march turned into a police shooting in which 17 civilians, one policeman and one National Guardsman were killed, and more than 200 civilians wounded. None of the civilians were armed and most of the dead were reportedly shot in their backs. The march had been organized by the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party to commemorate the abolition of slavery in Puerto Rico by the governing Spanish National Assembly in 1873, and to protest the U.S. government's imprisonment of the Party's leader, Pedro Albizu Campos, on sedition charges. An investigation led by the American Civil Liberties Union put the blame for the massacre squarely on the U.S.-appointed governor of Puerto Rico, Blanton Winship. Further criticism by members of the U.S. Congress led President Franklin D. Roosevelt to remove Winship as governor in 1939. Governor Winship was never prosecuted for the massacre and no one under his chain of command – including the police who took part in the event, and admitted to the mass shooting – were prosecuted or reprimanded. The Ponce massacre remains the largest massacre in U.S. imperial history in Puerto Rico. It has been the source of many articles, books, paintings, films, and theatrical works.

The Wehrmacht were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer (army), the Kriegsmarine (navy) and the Luftwaffe. The designation "Wehrmacht" replaced the previously used term Reichswehr and was the manifestation of the Nazi regime's efforts to rearm Germany to a greater extent than the Treaty of Versailles permitted.

World War II, or the Second World War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries participated, with many engaging in total war on an unprecedented scale. World War II was the deadliest conflict in history, causing the deaths of 60 to 75 million people, a majority of whom were civilians. Millions died as a result of massacres, starvation, disease, and genocides including the Holocaust. After the Allied victory, Germany, Austria, Japan, and Korea were occupied, and German and Japanese leaders were tried for war crimes.

Operation Carthage, on 21 March 1945, was a British air raid on Copenhagen, Denmark during the Second World War which caused significant collateral damage. The target of the raid was the Shellhus, used as Gestapo headquarters in the city centre. It was used for the storage of dossiers and the torture of Danish citizens during interrogations. The Danish Resistance had long asked the British to conduct a raid against the site. The building was destroyed, 18 prisoners were freed and Nazi anti-resistance activities were disrupted. Part of the raid was mistakenly directed against a nearby school; the raid caused 123 civilian deaths. The incident was dramatised in the 2021 Danish film The Shadow in My Eye. A similar raid against the Gestapo headquarters in Aarhus, on 31 October 1944, had succeeded.

The Tsardom of Bulgaria, also known as the Third Bulgarian Tsardom, commonly known in English as the Kingdom of Bulgaria, or simply Bulgaria, was a constitutional monarchy in Southeastern Europe, which was established on 5 October [O.S. 22 September] 1908, when the Bulgarian state was raised from a principality to a tsardom.

The Los Angeles Rams are a professional American football team based in the Greater Los Angeles area. The Rams compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) West division. The team plays its home games at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, which it shares with the Los Angeles Chargers. They are headquartered at the Rams Village at Warner Center in Los Angeles.

United States Penitentiary, Alcatraz Island, also known simply as Alcatraz or The Rock, was a maximum security federal prison on Alcatraz Island, 1.25 miles (2.01 km) off the coast of San Francisco, California, United States. The site of a fort since the 1850s, the main prison building was built from 1910 to 1912 as a U.S. Army military prison.

The Ranger program was a series of uncrewed space missions by the United States in the 1960s whose objective was to obtain the first close-up images of the surface of the Moon. The Ranger spacecraft were designed to take images of the lunar surface, transmitting those images to Earth until the spacecraft were destroyed upon impact. A series of mishaps, however, led to the failure of the first six flights. At one point, the program was called "shoot and hope". Congress launched an investigation into "problems of management" at NASA Headquarters and Jet Propulsion Laboratory. After two reorganizations of the agencies, Ranger 7 successfully returned images in July 1964, followed by two more successful missions.

Martin Luther King Jr. was an American civil rights activist and Baptist minister who was a prominent leader of the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968. He advanced civil rights for people of color in the United States through the use of nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience against Jim Crow laws and other forms of legalized discrimination, which most commonly affected African Americans.

The Battle of Karameh was a 15-hour military engagement between Israel and the combined forces of Jordan and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in the Jordanian border town of Karameh during the War of Attrition on 21 March 1968. It was planned by Israel as one of two concurrent raids on PLO camps, one in Karameh along the Jordan River and the other in the distant village of Ghor es-Safi south of the Dead Sea.

Earth Day is an annual event on April 22 to demonstrate support for environmental protection. First held on April 22, 1970, it now includes a wide range of events coordinated globally through earthday.org including 1 billion people in more than 193 countries.

San Diego Comic-Con is a comic book convention and multi-genre entertainment event held annually in San Diego, California, United States, at the San Diego Convention Center. Founded in 1970, originally showcasing primarily comic books and science fiction/fantasy media, Comic-Con has grown to include a large range of pop culture and entertainment elements across virtually all genres.

The Cold War was a period of international geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc. It began in the aftermath of the Second World War and ended with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The term cold war is used because there was no direct fighting between the two superpowers, though each supported opposing sides in regional conflicts known as proxy wars. In addition to the struggle for ideological and economic influence and an arms race in both conventional and nuclear weapons, the Cold War was expressed through technological rivalries such as the Space Race, espionage, propaganda campaigns, embargoes, and sports diplomacy.

Paraplegia, or paraparesis, is an impairment in motor or sensory function of the lower extremities. The word comes from Ionic Greek (παραπληγίη) "half-stricken". It is usually caused by spinal cord injury or a congenital condition that affects the neural (brain) elements of the spinal canal. The area of the spinal canal that is affected in paraplegia is either the thoracic, lumbar, or sacral regions. If four limbs are affected by paralysis, tetraplegia or quadriplegia is the correct term. If only one limb is affected, the correct term is monoplegia. Spastic paraplegia is a form of paraplegia defined by spasticity of the affected muscles, rather than flaccid paralysis.

Transbrasil Flight 801 (TR801/TBA801) was a scheduled cargo flight from Eduardo Gomes International Airport to São Paulo/Guarulhos International Airport that crashed on 21 March 1989. The Boeing 707 crashed into a heavily populated slum in Guarulhos 2 kilometres from the runway. The crash resulted in the death of all 3 crew members and 22 people on the ground. 200 people were injured.

Namibia, officially the Republic of Namibia, is a country in Southern Africa. It borders the Atlantic Ocean to the west, Zambia and Angola to the north, Botswana to the east, and South Africa to the south; in the northeast, approximating a quadripoint, Zimbabwe lies less than 200 metres (660 ft) away along the Zambezi river near Kazungula, Zambia. Namibia's capital and largest city is Windhoek.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is the UN process for negotiating an agreement to limit dangerous climate change. It is an international treaty among countries to combat "dangerous human interference with the climate system". The main way to do this is limiting the increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The Convention established the principle of "common but differentiated responsibilities," which asserts that all countries share responsibility for addressing climate change. However, developed countries are expected to assume a leading role because of their greater historical emissions. It was signed in 1992 by 154 states at the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), known as the Earth Summit. The treaty entered into force in 1994. "UNFCCC" is also the name of the Secretariat charged with supporting the operation of the convention, with offices on the UN Campus in Bonn, Germany.

Bertrand Piccard FRSGS is a Swiss explorer, psychiatrist and environmentalist. Along with Brian Jones, he was the first to complete a non-stop balloon flight around the globe, in a balloon named Breitling Orbiter 3. He was the initiator, chairman, and pilot, with André Borschberg, of Solar Impulse, the first successful round-the-world solar-powered flight. In 2012 Piccard was awarded a Champions of the Earth award by the UN Environment Programme. He is the founder and chairman of the Solar Impulse Foundation.

Pope John Paul II was the head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of Vatican City from 16 October 1978 until his death in 2005. He was the first non-Italian pope since Adrian VI in the 16th century, as well as the third longest-serving pope in history, after St. Peter and Pius IX. In addition to this, he was an important philosopher and theologian of the 20th century.

Social media are new media technologies that facilitate the creation, sharing and aggregation of content amongst virtual communities and networks. Common features include:Online platforms enable users to create and share content and participate in social networking. User-generated content such as text posts or comments, digital photos or videos, and data generated through online interactions. Service specific profiles that are designed and maintained by the social media organization. Social media helps the development of online social networks by connecting a user's profile with those of other individuals or groups.

China Eastern Airlines Flight 5735 (MU5735) was a domestic passenger flight from Kunming Changshui International Airport to Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport in China. At 14:23 China Standard Time on 21 March 2022, the Boeing 737-800 aircraft descended steeply mid-flight and struck the ground at high speed in Teng County, Wuzhou, Guangxi, killing all 132 passengers and crew on board. It was the third-deadliest aviation accident in China, the deadliest involving China Eastern Airlines, and the deadliest aviation accident of 2022. The Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) is responsible for the investigation.