June 21

1377 King Edward III of England died at Sheen, near London of a stroke on June 21, 1377. Around September 29, 1376, Edward fell ill with a large abscess. After a brief period of recovery in February 1377, he passed away of a stroke at the Ancient Royal Manor of Sheen, Kew. His tomb in Westminster Abbey is made from a wax portrait modeled from Edward's dead body.

1527 In the spring of 1527 Italian historian and author Niccolò Machiavelli was sent by Francesco Guicciardini, the pope's commissary of war in Lombardy, to Civita Vecchia. However, soon after his return to Florence he fell ill. He took medicine which disagreed with him; and on June 21, 1527 Machiavelli died, at 58, after receiving his last rites. Machiavelli was buried at the Church of Santa Croce in Florence.

1734 A Portuguese-born black slave known by the French name of Marie-Joseph Angélique was put to death in Montreal on June 21, 1734, having been tried and convicted of setting fire to her owner's home. The fire spread and destroyed much of what is now referred to as Old Montreal.

Lawsuit against Marie-Josèphe-Angéliqu

1788 New Hampshire became the ninth state on June 21, 1788, when it accepted the United States Constitution. Its State House was built in 1818 and first occupied in 1819. It is the oldest state capitol in which a legislature still meets in its original chambers.

1791 Following the storming of the Bastille, Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette and the French royal family moved to the Tuileries Palace in Paris, where they lived under a form of house arrest under the watch of La Fayette's Garde nationale. Louis XVI had allies beyond France's borders who wanted to see him regain the throne. The king and queen planned an escape and broke from the Tuileries on the night of June 21, 1791, under the guise of servants, but were discovered 142 miles from Paris,

Louis XVI and his family arrested in Varennes by Thomas Falcon Marshall (1854)

1854 The Victoria Cross was introduced in January 1856 by Queen Victoria to honor acts of valor during the Crimean War. It was struck from the metal of Russian guns captured in the Crimean War. Irishman Charles Davis Lucas performed the earliest actions to be recognized with the Victoria Cross. It was awarded for conspicuous bravery during the naval bombardment of Bomarsund on June 21, 1854.

1868 The Mastersingers of Nürnberg, a bourgeois comedy with text by Richard Wagner was first performed at the Königliches Hof- und National-Theater on June 21, 1868. It is among the longest operas commonly performed, usually taking around four and a half hours.

1893 George Washington Gale Ferris Jr (1859-96) designed the first Ferris wheel. It was launched on June 21, 1893 and towered 140 feet into the air for the World’s Columbian Exposition Fair that was being held in Chicago. It was intended to rival the height of the Eiffel Tower, a marvel of the 1889 fair in Paris.

1913 Mrs Georgia "Tiny" Broadwick became the first woman parachutist to jump from an aircraft on June 21, 1913. She jumped from a home-made plane 1,000ft over Los Angeles. Broadwick deployed her parachute manually, thus becoming the first person to jump free-fall.

1926 Dutch engineer Lou Ottens was born on June 21, 1926. Ottens worked at electronics and technology company Philips. Out of irritation about the existing tape recorder, he looked into a way to shrink large reel-to-reel tapes into something more compact and less expensive. Ottens came up with the audio cassette, essentially a miniature reel-to-reel mechanism in an enclosure, which Philips introduced in Europe at the 1963 Berlin Radio Show.

1940 Richard Nixon first became acquainted with red haired Pat Ryan at a Little Theater group when they were cast together in The Dark Tower. He asked Pat Ryan to marry him the first night they went out. Nixon courted the redhead he called his "wild Irish Gypsy" for two years before they married at the Mission Inn in Riverside, California, on June 21, 1940. They had two daughters, Patricia, known as Tricia, and Julie.

1948 The British troopship HMT Empire Windrush docked at the Port of Tilbury, near London, on  June 21, 1948. Over 800 West Indian immigrants disembarked the ship the next day, becoming known as the "Windrush generation". It marked the start of modern immigration to the United Kingdom.

1948 The Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine, the world's first stored-program computer, ran its first computer program on June 21, 1948. Nicknamed Baby, it was built at the Victoria University of Manchester, England. The Baby was not regarded as a full-fledged computer, but more a proof of concept. It was succeeded by Manchester Mark 1 of 1949, which was the first electronic digital stored-program computer to go into regular service.

1963 When Pope John XXIII died of stomach cancer, it triggered a conclave to elect a new pope. Cardinal Giovanni Montini was elected on the sixth ballot of the papal conclave on June 21, 1963 and he took the pontifical name of "Paul VI". He was the first pope to leave Italy in some 150 years and was known as the "flying pope" because he was the first pontiff to travel widely and to go by airplane.

1968 Theodor Geisel, aka Dr Seuss, married his first wife Helen Palmer in 1927. Helen had a long struggle with illnesses, including cancer and Geisel cheated on his wife with Audrey Stone Dimond while she was sick. Helen found out about the affair and committed suicide in October 1967, with an overdose of barbiturates. He married Audrey Stone Dimond on June 21, 1968 and they remained together until his death in 1991.

1971 On June 21, 1971 French aviator Jean Boulet set the world record for the highest altitude reached by a helicopter, when he piloted an Aérospatiale SA 315B Lama to an altitude of 12,442 metres (40,820 ft).  However, when Boulet started to descend, the engine failed, but he safely landed the helicopter with absolutely no power. Because of his unpowered flight back to the ground, he is also credited with the largest altitude flown with an autogyro.

1975 Midsummer is the day of the summer solstice when the Sun is at its highest point in the sky during a year. The word solstice comes from Latin and means that "the Sun stands still". Astronomically, the summer solstice, or longest day, which usually falls on June 20 or 21. The last time it did not fall on either of those dates was in 1975 when it was June 22nd. The earliest known reference to midsummer is in a tenth century Anglo-Saxon translation of Bede's Ecclesiastical History.

1982 Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, was born at 9:03 pm on June 21, 1982 at St Mary's Hospital, London. He was the first ever heir to the throne to be born in a hospital.  His father is Charles, Prince of Wales and his mother was Diana, Princess of Wales. He has one younger brother, Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex. When he was little, William called the Queen ‘Gary’, as he couldn’t say ‘ Granny’.

1999 The Australian radio-astronomer Dr John O'Sullivan and his team are credited with inventing Wi-Fi during a failed experiment to detect tiny black holes. The first major use of Wi-Fi came when Apple Inc. adopted the wireless network for their iBook series of laptops which was unveiled by Steve Jobs on June 21, 1999. It was the first mainstream computer designed and sold with integrated wireless networking. The Wi-Fi network connectivity was branded at the time by Apple as AirPort.

2008 In 2008, Greenlanders voted in favor of self-rule. Under the new structure, in effect since June 21, 2009, the Danish government retains control of foreign affairs and defense and the local Greenland government assumed responsibility for everything else.

2017 Former tennis star Boris Becker was declared bankrupt by the Bankruptcy and Companies Court in London on June 21, 2017. He was found guilty of concealing a substantial amount of assets, which included the failure to surrender his trophies as part of his debt settlement during the bankruptcy proceedings. As a result of his actions, Becker received a 30-month prison sentence for these offenses.

The Summer solstice is a tradition for many pagans. Some choose to hold the rite on June 21, even when this is not the longest day of the year, and some celebrate June 24, the day of the solstice in Roman times.