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Made for the 250thOn this day › August 21
What happened on August 21 in American history
August 21 is the 233rd day of the year (the 234th in leap years). Patriot Compass has published 8 stories from August 21 spanning 1778 to 1993. Among them: in 1778, Twenty thousand British troops ring French Pondichéry; the garrison numbers under 1,500; and in 1858, Lincoln and Douglas meet on an outdoor platform in Ottawa; 12,000 show up.
1778Member story · 1776 Club
Twenty thousand British troops ring French Pondichéry; the garrison numbers under 1,500
Word of war with France reached India in July; General Munro's army arrives outside the walls in August.
1858Member story · 1776 Club
Lincoln and Douglas meet on an outdoor platform in Ottawa; 12,000 show up
Three hours of argument over slavery's spread west, with a Senate seat and a stenographer's pencil deciding what the nation reads tomorrow.
1888Member story · 1776 Club
A bank clerk's ledger fix becomes a patented machine
Patent No. 388,116 gives William Seward Burroughs his first commercially workable design, three years after he first filed.
1942Member story · 1776 Club
Ichiki's midnight charge across the sandbar meets Marine machine guns; his regiment is wiped out
A coastwatcher's warning confirmed the attack was coming before 900 Japanese troops charged at Alligator Creek.
1944
Delegates gather at a Georgetown estate to sketch the peace that follows the war
Cordell Hull opens the talks that will draft the blueprint for a new world body.
1959
Eisenhower signs the proclamation: Hawaii is now the 50th state
The order follows a territorial vote in which 94 percent said yes to joining the Union.
1968
Marine Corps' first Black Medal of Honor recipient is honored in Washington
Eighteen months after he smothered a grenade to save his platoon, James Anderson Jr.'s parents accept the medal in his place.
1993Member story · 1776 Club
Three days from Mars, Mars Observer goes silent
The spacecraft was set to switch on its transmitter for orbital insertion; it never called home.
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