September 21 is the 264th day of the year (265th in leap years). There are 101 days remaining.

Events

1700-1899

• 1745 - Battle of Prestonpans - Hanoverian army under the command of John Cope is defeated, in ten minutes, by the Jacobite forces of Prince Charles Edward Stuart
• 1780 - Benedict Arnold gives the British the plans to West Point
• 1792 - French National Convention votes to abolish the monarchy
• 1827 - Joseph Smith, Jr. claims that the angel Moroni gave him a record of gold plates, one-third of which is translated into The Book of Mormon
• 1860 - In the Second Opium War, an Anglo-French force defeats Chinese troops at the Battle of Baliqiao
• 1896 - British force under Horatio Kitchener takes Dongola in the Sudan
• 1897 - The Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus letter is published in the New York Sun.
• 1898 - Empress Dowager Cixi seizes power and ends the Hundred Days' Reform in China.

1900-1999

• 1921 - Ammonium nitrate explosion at chemical storage facility in Oppau, Germany , 561 killed.
• 1937 - J. R. R. Tolkien publishes The Hobbit.
• 1942 - B-29 Superfortress makes its debut.
• 1950 - George Marshall sworn in as the 3rd Secretary of Defense of United States
• 1964 - Malta becomes independent from the United Kingdom
• 1970 - Monday Night Football premieres.
• 1972 - Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos issues Proclamation No. 1081 placing the entire country under martial law.
• 1981 - Belize granted full independence from the United Kingdom
• 1984 - Brunei gains its independence from the United Kingdom
• 1993 - Russian President Boris Yeltsin suspends parliament and scraps the then-functioning constitution, thus triggering the Russian constitutional crisis of 1993.
• 1999 - Taiwan experiences earthquake with magnitude of 7.6 on the Richter Scale.

2000-2099

• 2001 - Deep Space 1 flies within 2,200 km of Comet Borrelly
• 2003 - Galileo mission terminated by sending the probe into Jupiter's atmosphere, where it is crushed by the pressure at the lower altitudes
• 2004 - American Idiot, Green Day's 7th album is released in North America
• 2004 - Stephen King finishes the seventh book of his Dark Tower series

Births

Up to 1699

• 1415 - Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor
• 1452 - Girolamo Savonarola, Dominican priest, briefly ruler of Florence (d. 1498)

1700-1899

• 1756 - John MacAdam, road builder (d. 1836)
• 1840 - Murad V, Ottoman sultan (d. 1904)
• 1842 - Abd-ul-Hamid II, Ottoman sultan (d. 1918)
• 1866 - H. G. Wells, science fiction author (d. 1946)
• 1873 - Papa Jack Laine, jazz musician (d. 1966)
• 1874 - Gustav Holst, composer (d. 1934)

1900-1999

• 1902 - Luis Cernuda, Spanish poet (d. 1963)
• 1912 - Chuck Jones, animator (d. 2002)
• 1919 - Fazlur Rahman, scholar (d. 1988)
• 1920 - Jay Ward, animator (d. 1988)
• 1931 - Larry Hagman, actor
• 1934 - Leonard Cohen, singer-songwriter
• 1935 - Henry Gibson, actor
• 1944 - Fannie Flagg, actress, novelist
• 1945 - Jerry Bruckheimer, film and television producer
• 1946 - Moritz Leuenberger, member of the Swiss Federal Council
• 1947 - Donald Felder , musician
• 1947 - Stephen King, author
• 1947 - Marsha Norman, playwright
• 1949 - Artis Gilmore, basketball star
• 1950 - Charles Clarke, British politician
• 1950 - Bill Murray, actor
• 1951 - Aslan Maskhadov, Chechen rebel leader
• 1953 - Arie Luyendyk, Indianapolis 500 winner
• 1957 - Ethan Coen, film director
• 1959 - Dave Coulier, actor
• 1960 - David James Elliott, actor
• 1961 - Nancy Travis, actress
• 1962 - Rob Morrow , actor
• 1963 - Cecil Fielder, baseball player
• 1965 - Cheryl Hines, actress (Curb Your Enthusiasm, Father of the Pride)
• 1966 - Kiefer Sutherland, actor
• 1967 - Tyler Stewart , drummer for Barenaked Ladies
• 1967 - Faith Hill, country singer
• 1968 - Ricki Lake, actress, talk show hostess
• 1971 - Luke Wilson, actor
• 1972 - Jon Kitna, American football quarterback
• 1972 - Liam Gallagher, lead singer of Oasis
• 1975 - Doug Davis, baseball player
• 1980 - Kareena Kapoor, Bollywood actress

Deaths

1500-1899

• 1558 - Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor
• 1796 - François Séverin Marceau-Desgraviers, French General (b. 1769)
• 1832 - Sir Walter Scott, historical novelist and poet
• 1897 - Wilhelm Wattenbach, German historian

1900-1999

• 1904 - Chief Joseph, Nez Perce leader
• 1926 - Leon Charles Thevenin , French telegraph engineer (b. 1857)
• 1938 - Ivana Brlic-Mazuranic Croat writer (b. 1874)
• 1954 - Kokichi Mikimoto, inventor of the cultured pearl
• 1957 - King Haakon VII of Norway
• 1974 - Jacqueline Susann, novelist
• 1974 - Walter Brennan, Academy Award winning actor
• 1987 - Jaco Pastorius, bassist (b. 1951)
• 1995 - Rudy Perpich, US - Croat politician (b. 1928)
• 1998 - Florence Griffith Joyner, Olympic Games track-and-field star

2000-2099

• 2002 - Robert L. Forward, physicist, writer
• 2003 - Robert Lochner, creator of Kennedy's "Ikh been oin Bear-lee-ner" ("Ich bin ein Berliner")
• 2004 - Barry Noble Wakeman, American naturalist and educator (born 1939)

Holidays and observances

• In ancient Greece, the eighth day of the Eleusinian Mysteries, when the secret rites in the Telesterion finish and the feast, Pannychis, begins.
• Independence Day in Malta (1964), Belize (1981) & Armenia (1991)
• Mabon - Neopagan festival of Mabon
• peace one day

External links

• BBC: On This Day

September 20 · September 22 · August 21 · October 21 · more historical anniversaries