#TodayInHistory – August 21

August 21 – Some important events on this day.

1192 👉🏼 Minamoto Yoritomo becomes Seii Tai Shōgun and the de facto ruler of Japan. (Traditional Japanese date: July 12, 1192)
1264 👉🏼 Kublai Khan accepts the surrender of his younger brother Ariq Böke at Xanadu, at the end of the Mongol civil war
1321 👉🏼 160 Jews of Chincon France, burned at stake
1541 👉🏼 Ottoman Turks under Suleiman the Magnificent capture Buda, the capital of the Hungarian Kingdom and go on to dominate central Hungary for 150 years
1703 👉🏼 The Edirne Event: Turkish army removes Sultan Mustafa II, lessening the power of the sultans
1760 👉🏼 The church (later cathedral) of “Our Lady of Candlemas of Mayagüez (Puerto Rico)” is founded, establishing the basis for the founding of the city.
1772 👉🏼 King Gustav III of Sweden completes a coup d’etat by adopting a new Constitution and installing himself as an enlightened despot, ending 50 years of parliamentary rule
1808 👉🏼 Battle of Vimeiro: British and Portuguese forces led by General Arthur Wellesley defeat French force under Major-General Jean-Andoche Junot near the village of Vimeiro, Portugal, the first Anglo-Portuguese victory of the Peninsular War.
1888 👉🏼 American inventor William Seward Burroughs patents the adding machine

1911 👉🏼 “Mona Lisa” stolen from the Louvre by Vincenzo Peruggia (Recovered in 1913).
An amateur painter sets up his easel near Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa at the Louvre in Paris, only to discover that the masterpiece is missing. Earlier in the day, in perhaps the most brazen art theft of all time, Vincenzo Peruggia had walked into the Louvre, removed the famed painting from the wall, hid it beneath his clothes, and escaped. While the entire nation of France was stunned, theories abounded as to what could have happened to the invaluable artwork. Most believed that professional thieves could not have been involved because they would have realized that it would be too dangerous to try to sell the world’s most famous painting. A popular rumor in Paris was that the Germans had stolen it to humiliate the French.
Investigators and detectives searched for the painting for more than two years without finding any decent leads. Then, in November 1913, Italian art dealer Alfredo Geri received a letter from a man calling himself Leonardo. It indicated that the Mona Lisa was in Florence and would be returned for a hefty ransom. When Peruggia attempted to receive the ransom, he was captured. Luckily, the painting was unharmed.
Peruggia, a former employee of the Louvre, claimed that he had acted out of a patriotic duty to avenge Italy on behalf of Napoleon. He served seven months of a one-year sentence and later served in the Italian army during the First World War. And the Mona Lisa is back at her home in the Louvre, where improved security measures are now in place to protect her.

1942 👉🏼 Walt Disney’s animated movie “Bambi”, based on the book by Felix Salten, is released
1959 👉🏼 Hawaii becomes the 50th US state
1965 👉🏼 Romania adopts constitution
1968 👉🏼 Warsaw Pact forces complete their invasion of Czechoslovakia by arresting the Czech leader Alexander Dubček and forcing him to sign the Moscow Protocols
1991 👉🏼 Conservative coup in the Soviet Union is crushed by popular resistance led by Boris Yeltsin in three days
1991 👉🏼 Latvia declares its independence from USSR
2015 👉🏼 1st British unmanned drone hit on a UK citizen outside a conflict – ISIS fighter Reyaad Khan in Raqqa, Syria
2015 👉🏼 After 108 years a “message in a bottle” put in the sea by UK Marine Biological Association is announced found on a beach in Amrum, Germany