On This Day
What Happened on January 21 in History
8 events that happened on January 21, oldest first. Every entry is written in our own words and links to its source.
The Young Republic and the Civil War Era
1793
King Louis XVI of France was executed by guillotine in Paris.
The National Convention had convicted him of conspiring with foreign powers and sentenced him to death the day before. He died in the Place de la Revolution.
Source: history.com
The Early 1900s and the World Wars
1910
The Angel Island Immigration Station opened in San Francisco Bay, the main entry point for Asian immigrants.
Often called the Ellis Island of the West, the island station gave officials greater control over who entered the country. Over the next 30 years an estimated 100,000 Chinese and 70,000 Japanese immigrants were processed there.
Source: nps.gov; history.com
1924
Vladimir Lenin, architect of the Bolshevik Revolution and first leader of the Soviet Union, died at 54.
Lenin died of a brain hemorrhage. He had founded the Bolshevik faction in 1903 and returned to Russia from Switzerland in 1917 to lead the communist seizure of power.
Source: history.com
The Cold War
1950
Former State Department official Alger Hiss was convicted of perjury in a case tied to Soviet espionage charges.
Whittaker Chambers had accused Hiss of passing secret documents in the 1930s. Hiss's first trial ended in a hung jury, and after the second he served 44 months of a five-year sentence while insisting he was innocent.
Source: history.com; findingaids.library.nyu.edu
1968
North Vietnamese forces opened the siege of the U.S. Marine base at Khe Sanh in Vietnam.
The battle began with a firefight between Marines and North Vietnamese troops in the hills northwest of the base. The next day enemy artillery hit the main ammunition dump, setting off 1,500 tons of explosives.
Source: history.com
1968
A B-52 bomber carrying four nuclear bombs crashed onto the sea ice near Thule Air Base in Greenland.
A fire that started near a heating vent forced the crew to bail out, and six of the seven survived. The crash broke open the weapons, spread radioactive material and strained relations with Denmark.
Source: pbs.org
1976
The supersonic Concorde began passenger service with flights from London and Paris.
One Concorde flew from Heathrow to Bahrain while another left Orly for Rio de Janeiro by way of Senegal. Cruising at about 1,350 miles an hour, the jet cut travel times by more than half.
Source: history.com
1977
President Jimmy Carter pardoned the men who had evaded the draft during the Vietnam War.
Carter granted an unconditional pardon for violations of the Selective Service Act committed from 1964 to 1973. Some 100,000 young Americans had gone abroad to avoid the war, about 90 percent of them to Canada.
Source: archives.gov; history.com