Historical Events on March 21

President Barack Obama

Here are some historical events that have occurred on March 21:

1556 - The Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, is burned at the stake in Oxford, England, for heresy.

1804 - The French civil code, the "Code Napoléon," is adopted, establishing the legal framework for much of continental Europe.

1871 - Otto von Bismarck is appointed as the first Chancellor of the German Empire.

1918 - World War I: The first phase of the German Spring Offensive, Operation Michael, begins along the Western Front.

1925 - The Butler Act is signed into law in Tennessee, prohibiting the teaching of evolution in public schools.

1960 - Police in Sharpeville, South Africa, open fire on a group of black demonstrators, killing 69 people. This event became known as the Sharpeville Massacre and is a turning point in the history of the anti-apartheid struggle.

1963 - Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary in San Francisco Bay is closed.

1965 - Martin Luther King Jr. leads a march of 3,200 people in Alabama from Selma to Montgomery, to protest the denial of voting rights to African Americans.

1980 - On the day of the vernal equinox, a solar eclipse is visible from northern Africa and parts of Europe.

2006 - The social media platform Twitter is founded.

2014 - A mudslide in Oso, Washington, USA, kills 43 people and injures 49 others.

2016 - President Barack Obama becomes the first sitting U.S. president to visit Cuba since 1928, as relations between the two countries begin to normalize.

These are just a few events that have occurred on March 21st throughout history.