This day in History: August 21

Aug 21, 2022 News

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Compiled By Zena Henry

Nat Turner leads black slaves and free blacks in a rebellion

Turner was born on the Virginia Plantation of Benjamin Turner, who allowed him to be instructed in reading, writing, and religion. Sold three times in his childhood and hired out to John Travis (1820s), he became a fiery preacher and leader of enslaved Africans on Benjamin Turner’s plantation and in his Southampton County neighbourhood. Close to 60 Whites were killed during the rebellion, including the Travis family. (History.com)

The Famous Mona Lisa portrait is stolen

On August 21, 1911, Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre by Vincenzo Peruggia, an Italian labourer living in Paris.

Already one of the most famous paintings in the world at the time and the centerpiece of the French art collection for nearly 400 years by then, the theft of the Mona Lisa—known as la Gioconda in Italian and la Joconde in French—was a catalyst to its launch to superstardom as the global icon of art itself.

On August 21, 2011, the 100th anniversary of the theft, film director Joe Medeiros screened his 88-minute documentary ‘The Missing Piece: The Truth About the Man Who Stole the Mona Lisa’ to a select audience in Philadelphia, PA. (Subsequent to these early screenings, Madeiros changed the name of the documentary to ‘Mona Lisa is Missing.’ (Sources: France Revisited)

The Prelude to the United Nations begins

Dumbarton Oaks Conference, (August 21–October 7, 1944) was a meeting at Dumbarton Oaks, a mansion in Georgetown, Washington, D.C., where representatives of China, the Soviet Union, the United States, and the United Kingdom formulated proposals for a world organisation that became the basis for the United Nations. This conference constituted the first important step taken to carry out paragraph 4 of the Moscow Declaration of 1943, which recognised the need for a postwar international organisation to succeed the League of Nations.

‘The Dumbarton Oaks Proposals’ (Proposals for the Establishment of a General International Organisation) did not furnish a complete blueprint for the United Nations. They failed to provide an agreed arrangement on such crucial questions as the voting system of the proposed Security Council and the membership provisions for the Constituent Republics of the Soviet Union. These issues were resolved at the Yalta Conference in February 1945, which also resulted in the proposal of a trusteeship system under the new agency to take the place of the League of Nations mandate system (see Trusteeship Council). The proposals, as thus supplemented, formed the basis of negotiations at the San Francisco Conference, out of which came the Charter of the United Nations in 1945. (Source: Britannica)

Physicist who designed World War 2 atomic bombs accidentally irradiated

Haroutune Krikor Daghlian Jr. (May 4, 1921 – September 15, 1945) was an American Physicist with the Manhattan Project, which designed and produced the atomic bombs that were used in World War II. He accidentally irradiated himself on August 21, 1945, during a critical mass experiment at the remote Omega Site of the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico and died 25 days later from the resultant radiation poisoning.

Daghlian was irradiated as a result of a criticality accident that occurred when he accidentally dropped a tungsten carbide brick onto a 6.2 kg plutonium–gallium alloy bomb core. This core, subsequently nicknamed the “demon core”, was later involved in the death of another Physicist, Louis Slotin. (Wikipedia)

The Soviet Union successfully conducts test of first intercontinental ballistic missile

R-7, also called Semyorka, is a Soviet/Russian missile and launch vehicle. Under the direction of the rocket pioneer Sergey Korolyov, the Soviet Union during the 1950s developed an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that was capable of delivering a heavy nuclear warhead to American targets. That ICBM, called the R-7 or Semyorka (“Number 7”), was first successfully tested on August 21, 1957. Because Soviet nuclear warheads were based on a heavy design, the R-7 had significantly greater weight-lifting capability than did initial U.S. ICBMs. When used as a space launch vehicle, this gave the Soviet Union a significant early advantage in the weight that could be placed in orbit or sent to the Moon or nearby planets. (Sources: Britannica)

Carbon dioxide gas erupts from volcanic Lake Nyos in Cameroon

On 21 August, 1986, a limnic eruption at Lake Nyos in northwestern Cameroon killed 1,746 people and 3,500 livestock.

The eruption triggered the sudden release of about 100,000–300,000 tons (1.6 million tons, according to some sources) of carbon dioxide (CO2). The gas cloud initially rose at nearly 100 kilometres per hour (62 mph; 28 m/s) and then, being heavier than air, descended onto nearby villages, displacing all the air and suffocating people and livestock within 25 kilometres (16 miles) of the lake. A degassing system has since been installed at the lake, with the aim of reducing the concentration of CO2 in the waters and therefore the risk of further eruptions. (Source: Wikipedia)

Hundreds reported killed by chemical attacks in Ghouta, Syria

The Ghouta chemical attack occurred in Ghouta, Syria, during the Syrian Civil War, in the early hours of 21 August 2013. Two opposition-controlled areas in the suburbs around Damascus were struck by rockets containing the chemical agent Sarin. Estimates of the death toll range from at least 281 people to 1,729. The attack was the deadliest use of chemical weapons since the Iran–Iraq War.

United Nations investigating teams confirmed “clear and convincing evidence” of the use of Sarin delivered by surface-to-surface rockets.  A 2014 report by the UN Human Rights Council found that “significant quantities of Sarin were used in a well-planned indiscriminate attack targeting civilian-inhabited areas, causing mass casualties. The evidence available concerning the nature, quality and quantity of the agents used on 21 August indicated that the perpetrators likely had access to the chemical weapons stockpile of the Syrian military. (Wikipedia)

 

 

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