Birthday Paper › What happened on …? › August 21

Events on August 21

• 1192 In Japan, shōgunal rule begins with the Kamakura shogunate. For his military achievements, Minamoto no Yoritomo receives the hereditary title of Seii Taishōgun from the Tennō and takes over the government in Kamakura.
• 1715 In Bonn-Poppelsdorf, the foundation stone for Poppelsdorf Palace is laid. The baroque building is erected on behalf of the Elector of Cologne, Joseph Clemens of Bavaria.
• 1862 The Vienna Stadtpark is opened as the oldest public park in Vienna still in existence (2025).
• 1869 With the mountain guides Franz Innerkofler and Peter Salcher, Paul Grohmann succeeds in making the first ascent of the Cima Grande in the Dolomites.
• 1911 During renovation work at the Louvre, Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa is stolen.
• 1949 One week after the first Bundestag election, a pivotal informal meeting of leading CDU and CSU politicians takes place at Konrad Adenauer's home in Rhöndorf.
• 1955 At the first football international between the USSR and the Federal Republic of Germany at the Dynamo Stadium in Moscow, the Soviet Union wins 3:2 in front of 80,000 spectators (including 1,500 Germans).
• 1965 On the second attempt, the launch of Gemini 5 succeeds. With 190 hours in space, Gordon Cooper and Pete Conrad set a new long-duration record.
• 1968 Within a few hours, troops of the Warsaw Pact occupy all strategically important positions in the ČSSR (Czechoslovak Socialist Republic), thereby ending the so-called Prague Spring.
• 1986 The sudden release of around 1.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide from Lake Nyos in Cameroon leads to the deaths by asphyxiation of approximately 1,700 people in the surrounding settlements.
• 1991 The coup attempt in the Soviet Union against Mikhail Gorbachev fails after the majority of the troops have declared their loyalty and the president of the Russian constituent republic, Boris Yeltsin, has publicly condemned the coup attempt.
• 2005 1.2 million people celebrate the closing Mass of the World Youth Day with Pope Benedict XVI at Marienfeld near Cologne.

Born on August 21

• 1872 Aubrey Beardsley, British illustrator, poet, graphic artist and caricaturist
• 1893 Lili Boulanger, French composer
• 1894 Christian Schad, German painter and graphic artist
• 1912 Robert Lips, Swiss comic artist, creator of the “Globi” character
• 1930 Margaret, Countess of Snowdon, British aristocrat
• 1951 Glenn Hughes, British rock musician
• 1961 Stephen Hillenburg, American comic artist and writer
• 1962 Astrid Frohloff, German journalist and television presenter
• 1970 John Carmack, American programmer and game developer
• 1990 Andreas Mies, German tennis player

Is your birthday on August 21?

Then there is a newspaper that tells only the story of your day: what was going on in the world on August 21 of your birth year, which song was at the top, what the weather was like at your birthplace, plus birthday twins and a personal greeting.

• For every birth year from 1946
• 4 to 10 pages, always €14.90, as a PDF to print
• With a greeting page for voice and video messages

Create the paper for August 21 · €14.90

Day and month are already filled in, you only choose the birth year.

Source of events and birthdays: German Wikipedia article „21. August“, licence CC BY-SA 4.0, selected, shortened and translated by Birthday Paper.

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