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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.