Wednesday · November 11, 2026
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20111776 Club

Atlantis rolls to a stop; thirty years of shuttle flight ends before dawn

Four astronauts, the smallest crew since 1983, bring home the last shuttle mission after 4,848 orbits.

By 2011, the Space Shuttle had flown for three decades, carrying astronauts and cargo to build a space station piece by piece. In the predawn dark of July 21, 2011, Atlantis touched down at Kennedy Space Center, ending STS-135, a 12-day, 18-hour resupply mission that left the International Space Station stocked into 2012. Commander Chris Ferguson, pilot Doug Hurley, and mission specialists Sandra Magnus and Rex Walheim formed the smallest shuttle crew since 1983. Mission Commentator Rob Navias marked the wheel stop by noting the ship's voyage was at an end…

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More from July 21
1861

Green troops collide at Bull Run; the Union army breaks and runs for Washington

Spectators drove out from the capital with picnic baskets to watch; they fled home in the same traffic jam as the soldiers.
1997

Old Ironsides sails again; Cronkite takes the helm off Marblehead

The 1797 frigate moves under her own canvas for the first time in 116 years, on sails paid for through a national campaign of citizen and student donations.
1944

Marines and soldiers storm Guam's beaches, opening a three-week fight to retake it

Two and a half years after its surrender, the island is under American naval gunfire again.
19491776 Club
Twelve nations bound themselves to treat an attack on one as an attack on all.
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Read the full July 21 edition →Everything that happened on July 21 →
More from Modern America
1998

Clinton tells grand jury of "improper" ties to Lewinsky, then tells the country he misled them

Seven months after denying it on camera, the president reverses himself twice in one day.
1998

Thirteen Tomahawks hit a Khartoum medicine factory; Washington says it made nerve gas

The strike came thirteen days after the embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, and the target was a plant that made most of Sudan's antibiotics.
2020

Biden accepts the nomination alone in a Delaware ballroom, no crowd, no roar

A pandemic convention ends with the nominee speaking to a camera instead of a stadium.
1994

Thirty-three years after his death, the Air Force finally makes Eugene Bullard an officer

France called him a hero and gave him a pilot's license in 1917; his own country waited until 1994 to make it official.
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