more events on March 21
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1984
A Soviet submarine crashes into the USS Kitty Hawk off the coast of Japan.
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1980
President Jimmy Carter announces to the U.S. Olympic Team that they will not participate in the 1980 Summer Games in Moscow as a boycott against Soviet intervention in Afghanistan.
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1975
As North Vietnamese forces advance, Hue and other northern towns in South Vietnam are evacuated.
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1971
Two U.S. platoons in Vietnam refuse their orders to advance.
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1965
The United States launches Ranger 9, last in a series of unmanned lunar explorations.
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1963
Alcatraz Island, the federal penitentiary in San Francisco Bay, California, closes.
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1951
Secretary of Defense George C. Marshall reports that the U.S. military has doubled to 2.9 million since the start of the Korean War.
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1941
The last Italian post in East Libya, North Africa, falls to the British.
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1939
Singer Kate Smith records “God Bless America” for Victor Records.
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1928
President Calvin Coolidge presents the Congressional Medal of Honor to Charles Lindbergh, a captain in the US Army Air Corps Reserve, for making the first solo trans-Atlantic flight. On June 11, 1927, Lindbergh had received the first Distinguished Flying Cross ever awarded.
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1918
The Germans launch the ‘Michael’ offensive, better remembered as the First Battle of the Somme.
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1910
The U.S. Senate grants ex-President Teddy Roosevelt an annual pension of $10,000.
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1908
Frenchman Henri Farman carries a passenger in a bi-plane for the first time.
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1906
Ohio passes a law that prohibits hazing by fraternities.
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1885
Raoul Lufbery, French-born American fighter pilot of World War I.
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1869
Florenz Ziegfeld, producer, creator of Ziegfeld Follies.
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Albert Kahn, architect who originated modern factory design.
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1865
The Battle of Bentonville, N.C. ends, marking the last Confederate attempt to stop Union General William Sherman.
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1858
British forces in India lift the siege of Lucknow, ending the Indian Mutiny.
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1851
Emperor Tu Duc orders that Christian priests are to put to death.
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1806
Benito Juarez, President of Mexico.
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Lewis and Clark begin their trip home after an 8,000 mile trek of the Mississippi basin and the Pacific Coast.
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1788
Almost the entire city of New Orleans, Louisiana, is destroyed by fire.
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1685
Johann Sebastian Bach, German composer.
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1617
Pocahontas (Rebecca Rolfe) dies of either small pox or pneumonia while in England with her husband, John Rolfe.
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1556
Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, is burned at the stake at Oxford after retracting the last of seven recantations that same day.
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630
Heraclius restores the True Cross, which he has recaptured from the Persians.