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History on the 21st of August

History
Date Text
21 Aug 1245 RELIGIOUS Alexander of Hales, 59, died. An English scholastic theologian, Alexander is regarded as the founder of the Franciscan school of theology.
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21 Aug 1799 RELIGIOUS Birth of Alexander R. Reinagle, English church organist. He penned many sacred compositions, including ST. PETER, which afterward became the melody to the hymn, "In Christ There is No East or West."
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21 Aug 1866 RELIGIOUS Birth of Civilla D. Martin, teacher and songwriter, in Nova Scotia. A pastor's wife, she penned in 1904 the hymn, "Be Not Dismayed, Whate'er Betide" (a.k.a. "God Will Take Care of You").
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21 Aug 1874 RELIGIOUS Popular 19th century preacher Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887) was accused by Theodore Tilton of committing adultery with his wife. The resulting trial ended in a 9-3 hung jury decision, in Beecher's favor.
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21 Aug 1914 WW2 Erwin Rommel saw his first WW1 action in the Meuse Valley on the Western Front. 
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21 Aug 1914 WW2 The First British troops in action were C Squadron, 4th Dragoon Guards who clashed with a German cyclist/cavalry patrol in the village of Soignies, France. Corporal Thomas of that squadron was credited with firing the first British shot in anger of the war. 
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21 Aug 1914 WW1 Begin of Battle of the Ardennes
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21 Aug 1914 WW1 Begin of Battle of Charleroi
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21 Aug 1914 WW1 Begin of Siege of Namur
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21 Aug 1915 WW2 Robert Furman was born. 
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21 Aug 1915 WW1 Begin of Battle of Hill 60
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21 Aug 1915 WW1 Begin of Battle of Scimitar Hill
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21 Aug 1921 WW2 Settsu completed her work at Kure Naval Arsenal, Japan. 
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21 Aug 1921 WW2 USS Arizona arrived at San Diego, California, United States. 
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21 Aug 1930 WW2 Princess Margaret (later Countess of Snowdon) was born at Glamis Castle, Scotland, United Kingdom. 
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21 Aug 1930 RELIGIOUS Pioneer linguistic educator Frank C. Laubach wrote in a letter: 'If this entire universe has a desperate need of love to incarnate itself, then "important duties" which keep us from helping little people are not duties but sins.'
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21 Aug 1937 WW2 Patrolling Japanese E8N floatplanes intercepted six Chinese Gamma 2E light bombers over the suburbs of Shanghai, China. The Japanese succeeded in forcing the Chinese to abandon the planned attack on the Kunda Texile Factory, but failed to shoot down any aircraft (but the Japanese claimed two victories). Lieutenant Yue Yiqin of the 22nd Pursuit Squadron of the Chinese 4th Pursuit Group, flying a Hawk III biplane fighter, shot down the Japanese floatplane flown by Petty Officer First Class Shigeru Yano, who survived the downing. Yano attempted to ram a Chinese aircraft as he went down; he failed to make contact as none of the Chinese fighters reported being rammed, but Yano believed he did. 
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21 Aug 1937 WW2 Yuan Baokang, flying a Hawk III fighter, shot down a prototype G3M bomber piloted by Hikosaburo Sato over Hai'an, Jiangsu Province, China. 
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21 Aug 1937 WW2 Nachi transferred the headquarters company and 1st company of 6th Infantry Regiment of Japanese Army 3rd Division to cruiser Jintsu and eight destroyers off Zhoushan, Zhejiang Province, China. 
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21 Aug 1938 WW2 Japanese 10th Division captured Luoshan, Hubei Province and Xinzi, Jiangxi Province in China. 
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21 Aug 1939 WW2 French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier ordered his representatives in Russia to speed up negotiations with the Soviet Union; since Poland would not agree to Soviet troops within its borders, the French representatives were given the authority to accept a miltiary treaty excluding Poland. Soviet representative Kliment Voroshilov noted to the British and the French that if Poland was unwilling to allow Soviet troops to cross its borders, then there was little point for the Soviet Union to be a part of this military alliance. At 2100 hours, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin responded to the request from German leader Adolf Hitler to move the date of the meeting between the respective foreign ministers to 22 or 23 Aug 1939; with the two sides having agreed on a draft of a German-Soviet non-aggression agreement, the radio in Berlin, Germany interrupted a musical program to announce the upcoming signing of such a treaty between the two countries. 
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21 Aug 1939 WW2 German warship Admiral Graf Spee and her tanker Altmark departed Germany on a raiding mission against British shipping. 
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21 Aug 1940 WW2 Joseph Stalin's political enemy Leon Trotsky died of severe brain damage as the result of the previous day's assassination attempt by undercover NKVD agent Ramón Mercader. 
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21 Aug 1940 WW2 German armed merchant cruiser Widder sank British collier Anglo Saxon 1,000 miles west of Africa. Survivors in lifeboats were machine gunned. In total, 34 crew members were killed. 7 survivors got away in a lifeboat, but would not reach land, Eleuthera Island in the Bahamas, 2,500 miles away, for 71 days; by that time, only 2 were still alive. One of the survivors, Able Seaman Robert Tapscott, would later provide testimony to convict Captain Ruckteschell of Widder as a war criminal. 
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21 Aug 1940 WW2 Italian submarine Dandolo damaged Dutch tanker Hermes 200 miles west of Lisbon, Portugal. 
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21 Aug 1940 WW2 Destroyers USS Walke and USS Wainwright arrived at Pará, Brazil. 
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21 Aug 1940 WW2 Douglas Bader shot down a German Do 17 aircraft off Great Yarmouth, England, United Kingdom. 
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21 Aug 1940 WW2 Iride, with four manned torpedoes on board intended for an attack on British ships in Alexandria in Egypt, was sunk by British torpedo bombers in the Gulf of Bomba off Libya. 
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21 Aug 1940 WW2 The United Kingdom House of Commons authorized foreign troops of occupied nations to conduct training in Britain under their own flags. 
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21 Aug 1940 WW2 Bad weather prevented large formations of German bombers from forming, so the German Luftwaffe dispatched only small one- to two-aircraft raids against coastal Britain. On this day, 1 Hurricane fighter was shot down, 2 RAF personnel were killed on the ground, and 40 RAF personnel were wounded; 4 civilians were killed, and 178 were wounded; several merchant ships were damaged or sunk. On the German side, 13 bombers were shot down. 
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21 Aug 1941 WW2 Hitlers ordered that the Russian city of Leningrad was to be besieged, not captured. 
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21 Aug 1941 WW2 Japanese aircraft sank Chinese gunboats Jiangxi and Jiangkun at Bazhong, Sichuan Province, China. 
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21 Aug 1941 WW2 A German naval cadet became the first victim of French Resistance, shot in a Metro station in Paris, France. Over 150 Parisians were shot in reprisal. 
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21 Aug 1941 WW2 Adolf Hitler directed the transfer of units away from the Moscow, Russia area in order to bolster the siege on Leningrad (aiming for the linking up with Finnish forces) and the battles in Ukraine (aiming for the oil fields in the Caucasus region). 
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21 Aug 1941 WW2 The first Allied Arictic convoy, codenamed Dervish, set sail from Hvalfjörður, Iceland for Arhangelsk, Russia. 
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21 Aug 1942 WW2 Kiyono Ichiki passed away. 
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21 Aug 1942 WW2 USS Gar ended her third war patrol. 
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21 Aug 1942 WW2 Destroyer Yuzuki arrived at Rabaul, New Britain, Bismarck Islands. 
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21 Aug 1942 WW2 Heinrich Prinz zu Sayn-Wittgenstein was awarded the German Cross in Gold. 
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21 Aug 1942 WW2 German submarine U-506 sank British ship City of Wellington 100 miles southwest of Freetown, British West Africa at 2243 hours; 7 were killed, 66 survived. 
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21 Aug 1942 WW2 USS Tambor sank Japanese collier Shinsei Maru No. 6 off Ponape, Senyavin Islands, Caroline Islands. 
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21 Aug 1942 WW2 14 Zero fighters of Japanese 6th Air Group arrived at Lakunai airfield near Rabaul, New Britain. 
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21 Aug 1942 WW2 Japanese 41st Infantry Regiment landed at Buna, Australian Papua; to the southeast, Australian 18th Infantry Brigade landed on the coast of Milne Bay. 
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21 Aug 1942 WW2 The first major assault by Japanese troops on Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands by Colonel Kiyonao Ichiki and his 770 men commenced at about 0000 hours with poor intelligence that led him to severely underestimate American strength. At 0130 hours, a wave of 100 Japanese troops rushed across the river, supported by machine guns and mortar fire, only to be mowed down at the line manned by 2,500 Marines. At 0230 hours, another wave of 150 to 200 Japanese rushed again, suffering similar fates. A third wave attacked at 0500 hours, again suffering near 100% casualty rate. At 0700 hours, US 1st Marine Regiment counterattacked supported by light tanks and aircraft, enveloping and destroying the remnants of 2nd Battalion of Japanese 28th Infantry Regiment. The Battle of the Tenaru (Ilu) River ended with the Japanese suffering 740 killed (including Ichiki) and 15 captured; the Americans suffered 44 killed. During the day, men of the 2nd Battalion of the US 5th Regiment arrived at Guadalcanal from Tulagi as reinforcements. 
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21 Aug 1942 WW2 USS Wahoo began a period of training at Pearl Harbor, US Territory of Hawaii. 
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21 Aug 1942 WW2 Hans-Joachim Marseille departed Rome, Italy for Libya. 
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21 Aug 1943 WW2 The I. G. Farben factory in Oppau, Germany increased the minimum requirement of work for forced laborers to 67 hours per week. 
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21 Aug 1943 WW2 Claude Auchinleck compromised in regards to Orde Wingate's demands, offering to provide him with five brigades (Wingate had wanted eight) for operations in Burma. 
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21 Aug 1943 WW2 German submarine U-354 pursued an Allied convoy off northern Russia to no success. 
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21 Aug 1943 WW2 USS Bluefish arrived at Brisbane, Australia. 
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21 Aug 1943 WW2 USS Hoe departed Pearl Harbor, US Territory of Hawaii for her second war patrol. 
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21 Aug 1943 WW2 Barbers Point Naval Air Station: More of Air Group 9 departed. Part of Air Group 5 departed. Part of Air Group 23 departed. 
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21 Aug 1943 WW2 George Patton apologized to Private Paul Bennett whom he slapped at the 93rd Evacuation Hospital for accused cowardice. 
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21 Aug 1943 WW2 The authorities at the Birkenau women's camp at Auschwitz Concentration Camp in Poland selected 498 Jewish women considered unable to work for the gas chamber; 438 of them were Greeks. 
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21 Aug 1943 WW2 Erich von Manstein authorized the retreat from Kharkov, Ukraine. 
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21 Aug 1944 WW2 USS Tang attacked a Japanese cargo ship with three torpedoes without success. 
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21 Aug 1944 WW2 With Kriegsmarine support, the Germans opened a coastal corridor to German Armeegruppe Nord, but Hitler refused to authorize their withdrawal. 
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21 Aug 1944 WW2 HMS Orchis (Lieutenant Commander B. Harris) was mined and beached off Juno beach, Normandy, France. 
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21 Aug 1944 WW2 USS Guitarro attacked a Japanese convoy off Luzon, Philippine Islands and sank cargo ship Uga Maru, hitting her with two of the four torpedoes fired. 
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21 Aug 1944 WW2 USS Ray damaged a Japanese transport in the Philippine Islands, hitting her with 1 of 4 torpedoes fired. 
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21 Aug 1944 WW2 French First Army enveloped Toulon, France. 
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21 Aug 1944 WW2 US Third Army reached Reims and Troyes southeast of Paris, France. 
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21 Aug 1944 WW2 James Johnson shot down two German Fw 190 fighters near Paris, France. 
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21 Aug 1944 WW2 USS Segundo departed Pearl Harbor, US Territory of Hawaii for her first war patrol. 
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21 Aug 1944 WW2 USS Harder assisted her wolfpack in the attack of a Japanese convoy off Palawan Bay, Mindoro, Philippine Islands. 
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21 Aug 1944 WW2 Soviet 6th Guards Mechanized Corps separated German 6.Armee from the Romanian 3rd Army in northeastern Romania; as the Germans under Generaloberst Johannes Frießner fell back, Romanian troops began to refuse orders from German officers to engage the Soviets. 
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21 Aug 1944 WW2 The US 15th Army was activated at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, United States by a transfer of a group of personnel from the US 4th Army. No general officer was included in the transfer. Major General John P. Lucas was commanding general designate of the new 15th Army in addition to his other duties. 
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21 Aug 1945 WW2 US President Harry Truman canceled all contracts under the Lend-Lease Act. 
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21 Aug 1945 WW2 The first major Japanese surrender ceremony in China took place at the Zhijiang Airfield in Zhijiang County, Hunan Province at 1600 hours. 
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21 Aug 1945 WW2 Xiao Yisu accepted the Japanese surrender at Zhijiang, Hunan Province, China, and for the following two weeks prepared for the main surrender to be taken place in the capital of Nanjing. 
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21 Aug 1945 WW2 USS Missouri dispatched a 200-men party to USS Iowa for temporary duty with the initial occupation force for Tokyo, Japan. 
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21 Aug 1945 WW2 The Oka Prisoners of War Camp in northern Taiwan was closed. 
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21 Aug 1945 WW2 At Los Alamos, New Mexico, United States, American physicist Harry Daghlian, Jr. of the Manhattan Project accidentally dropped a tungsten carbide brick onto a plutonium bomb core and received a fatal dose of 510 rems of radiation. 
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20th August 22nd August
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