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Made for the 250thOn this day › June 21
What happened on June 21 in American history
June 21 is the 172nd day of the year (the 173rd in leap years). Patriot Compass has published 16 stories from June 21 spanning 1768 to 2006. Among them: in 1768, Otis stands before the General Court and charges King and Parliament with tyranny; and in 1788, New Hampshire ratifies; the Constitution crosses the nine-state threshold.
1768
Otis stands before the General Court and charges King and Parliament with tyranny
The Boston lawyer who called taxation without representation unlawful delivers his sharpest attack yet; word is already moving toward London.
1788
New Hampshire ratifies; the Constitution crosses the nine-state threshold
Eight states had approved it and it meant nothing; the Granite State's vote today makes the Philadelphia document the law of a real nation.
1864Member story · 1776 Club
Mahone hits the gap; Barlow's division collapses in minutes near Petersburg
A ravine hides Mahone's men from both Union corps, and the Weldon Railroad stays Confederate as Grant's siege enters its first week.
1898Member story · 1776 Club
Spain surrenders Guam; the garrison thought the opening shots were a salute
The Spanish captain sends a messenger to borrow powder so he can return the courtesy, and Captain Henry Glass has to explain that the United States is at war with Spain.
1900Member story · 1776 Club
Cixi issues war edict against five foreign powers at once; Qing China is now at war with the world
The empress dowager ends months of factional paralysis with a single decree, naming the United States, Britain, Germany, France, and Japan as enemies.
1915Member story · 1776 Club
Chief Justice White strikes down Oklahoma's grandfather clause; court rules it guts the Fifteenth Amendment
The unanimous ruling voids a 1910 state law that exempted men with pre-1866 voting ancestors from literacy tests, locking nearly all Black voters out of the polls.
1929Member story · 1776 Club
Morrow and Burke broker a peace; Mexico's three-year Cristero War is over
The arreglos settlement lets worship resume and strips the Church's backing from rebel fighters, though the anticlerical articles of the 1917 Constitution stand untouched.
1942
Japanese submarine shells Fort Stevens; Doney orders blackout, holds his guns
Commander Tagami surfaces I-25 at the Columbia River mouth after dark, fires seventeen rounds, and slips away undamaged, leaving cut telephone lines on the Oregon coast.
1945Member story · 1776 Club
Organized resistance ends on Okinawa; 82 days of fighting cost 50,000 American casualties
General Ushijima's Thirty-Second Army is broken at the island's southern tip, and planners in Washington now have their grim estimate of what invading Japan will cost.
1970Member story · 1776 Club
Penn Central files for bankruptcy; the railroad is losing $1 million a day
The sixth-largest corporation in the country seeks protection under Section 77, two years after the Pennsylvania and New York Central merged into a carrier that never stopped bleeding.
1982Member story · 1776 Club
Jury finds Hinckley not guilty by reason of insanity; all 13 charges dismissed
The man who put a ricocheted bullet into the President's chest walks out of a Washington courtroom unconvicted, fifteen months after the shooting outside the Hilton.
1989Member story · 1776 Club
Supreme Court rules, 5-4: burning the flag is protected speech; 48 states' laws fall with Texas's
Gregory Lee Johnson lit the fire outside the 1984 Republican convention; today the First Amendment shields the act, and the Senate responds within hours, 97-3, with "profound disappointment."
1993Member story · 1776 Club
Endeavour lifts off with a broken retrieval system and a satellite to catch
Commander Grabe and five crewmates carry the first Spacehab module aloft; EURECA has been drifting in low Earth orbit, uncollected, for eleven months.
2000Member story · 1776 Club
Clinton awards the Medal of Honor to 22 Asian American veterans of WWII; seven are no longer alive to receive it
Most served in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team; a 1996 study found their Distinguished Service Crosses were downgraded during the war because of racial discrimination.
2004Member story · 1776 Club
Melvill lights a hybrid rocket over the Mojave and rides a private ship past 100 kilometers
SpaceShipOne, built by Burt Rutan for roughly $25 million of Paul Allen's money, breaks a 43-year government monopoly on crewed spaceflight.
2006Member story · 1776 Club
IAU names Pluto's two new moons Nix and Hydra
The designations P1 and P2, spotted by Hubble just last year, become names drawn from underworld mythology and chosen with a nod to the New Horizons mission whose initials they share.
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