On this day: Tony Blair elected leader of Labour party in 1994
21 July
National day of Belgium.
230: St Pontianus began his reign as Pope.
365: An earthquake with its epicentre at Crete, was followed by a a tsunami around the eastern Mediterranean that is believed to have destroyed Alexandria.
1542: Pope Paul III established the Inquisition in Rome.
1831: Belgium gained independence from Netherlands; Leopold I became king.
Advertisement
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide Ad1861: Bull Run, the first major battle of the American Civil War, ended with victory for the south.
1873: Jesse James and James Younger’s gang carried our their first train robbery at Adair, Iowa.
1919: Anthony Fokker established airplane factories in Hamburg and Amsterdam.
1919: A dirigible crashed through the skylight of a Chicago bank, killing 13 people.
Advertisement
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide Ad1940: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were annexed by Soviet Union.
1951: The Dalai Lama returned to Tibet.
1960: Francis Chichester docked in New York in Gypsy Moth II, setting a new record of 40 days for a solo Atlantic crossing.
1968: Jan Janssen became the first Dutchman to win the Tour de France.
1969: Neil Armstrong became the first man to step on to the moon.
Advertisement
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide Ad1972: Two passenger trains collided head-on in Seville, Spain, with the loss of 76 lives.
1978: President Hugo Banzer of Bolivia fled during a military soup led by General Juan Pereda. He returned to power in 1997.
1989: Mike Tyson knocked out Carl williams after only 93 seconds to retain his world heavyweight crown.
1989: Comedian Ken Dodd walked free after 23-day trial in which he was cleared of defrauding the Inland Revenue.
Advertisement
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide Ad1994: Tony Blair became the youngest man to be elected leader of the Labour Party. He promised “new politics to take us into a new millennium”.
1995: American golfer Arnold Palmer paid an emotional farewell to St Andrews, 35 years after playing his first Open at the Old Course.
2001: At the conclusion of a fireworks display on Okura Beach in Akashi, Japan, 11 people were killed and more than 120 injured when a pedestrian footbridge became overcrowded and people leaving the event fell down in a domino effect.
2005: Four terrorist bombings, occurring exactly two weeks after the similar 7 July bombings, targeted London’s public transport system. All four bombs failed to detonate and all four suspected suicide bombers were captured and later convicted and imprisoned for long terms.
Advertisement
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide Ad2007: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the final book in the series by JK Rowling, was published.
2008: Bosnian-Serb war criminal Radovan Karadzic was arrested in Serbia and indicted by a United Nations tribunal.
2010: In parts of Scotland, a month’s worth of rain fell in just ten hours, causing flooding in 100 homes and businesses in Perth.