June 21 is Go Skate Day
Summer Solstice
National Peaches and Cream Day
World Sauntering Day
World Handshake Day
First day of summer
1749 – Halifax, Nova Scotia, was founded.
Publication of Federalist Paper #80: The Powers of the Judiciary written by Alexander Hamilton in 1788.
1788 – The U.S. Constitution went into effect when New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify it.
New Hampshire Day, the ninth state
- Capital: Concord
- Nickname: Granite State
- Bird: Purple finch
- Flower: Purple lilac
- Tree: White birch
- Motto: Live free or die
See our page for New Hampshire for interesting facts and trivia about New Hampshire.
1834 – Cyrus McCormick patented the first practical mechanical reaper for farming. His invention allowed farmers to more than double their crop size.
1877 – The Molly Maguires, ten Irish immigrants convicted of murder, were hanged at the Schuylkill County and Carbon County, Pennsylvania prisons.
June 21, 1838 – Wheatstone’s discovery of the stereoscopic viewer was described in a paper, On some remarkable, and hitherto unobserved Phenomena of Binocular Vision, which he read to the Royal Society, London. This is the visual effect whereby pictures of an object drawn from slightly different viewpoints for individual eyes could be viewed with his stereoscope and give the perception of the object in three dimensions. He read a second part to this paper on 15 Jan 1852. This principle was later popularized with photographs to make stereo view cards.
June 21, 1893 – The Ferris Wheel was introduced at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, IL. It was invented by George Washington Ferris, a Pittsburgh bridge builder, for the purpose of creating an attraction like the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Each of the 36 cars carried 60 passengers, making a full passenger load of 150 tons. Ferris didn’t use rigid spokes: instead, he used a web of taut cables, like a bicycle wheel. Supported by two 140 foot steel towers, its 45 foot axle was the largest single piece of forged steel at the time in the world. The highest point of the wheel was 264 feet. The wheel and cars weighed 2100 tons, with another 2200 tons of associated levers and machinery. Ferris died just four years later, at the age of only 38.
1948 – Columbia Records introduced the long-playing record album in a public demonstration at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York, New York. Made of nonbreakable Vinilyte plastic, and designed for the new speed of 33-1/3 r.p.m., the records were developed by Dr. Peter Goldmark of Columbia Records. The 12 inch record could play 23 minutes per side, as compared to only 4 minutes per side on the earlier 78 rpm record. The LP was also an improvement by the quietness of its surfaces and its greatly increased fidelity. The first LP featured violinist Yehudi Menuhin. Columbia originated the term “LP” itself, which was copyrighted. Thus, although many other firms could make long-playing records, only Columbia could make an LP.
1963 – France announced that they were withdrawing from the North Atlantic NATO fleet.
1973 – In handing down the decision in Miller v. California 413 US 15, the Supreme Court of the United States establishes the Miller Test for obscenity in U.S. law. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states may ban materials found to be obscene according to local standards. The Miller Test has three parts:
- Whether “the average person, applying contemporary community standards”, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest,
- Whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by applicable state law,
- Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.
1989 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that burning the American flag as a form of political protest was protected by the First Amendment.
2001 – 
2001-06-21 – A federal grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, indicted 13 Saudis and a Lebanese in the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 American servicemen.