21st June

EVENTS:

• 1788 – New Hampshire ratifies the Constitution of the United States and is admitted as the 9th state in the United States.
• 1854 – The first Victoria Cross is awarded during the bombardment of Bomarsund in the Åland Islands.
• 1952 – The Philippine School of Commerce, through a republic act, is converted to Philippine College of Commerce, later to be the Polytechnic University of the Philippines.
• 2004 – SpaceShipOne becomes the first privately funded spaceplane to achieve spaceflight.
• 2006 – Pluto’s newly discovered moons are officially named Nix & Hydra.
• 2009 – Greenland assumes self-rule.
• 2013 – A suicide bomber kills 15 and injures 20 in a Shi’ite mosque in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar.

BIRTHS:

• 1912 – Vishnu Prabhakar, Indian author (d. 2009)
• 1914 – William Vickrey, Canadian economist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1996)
• 1941 – Aloysius Paul D’Souza, Indian bishop
• 1942 – Dan Henning, American football player and coach
• 1947 – Shirin Ebadi, Iranian lawyer, judge, and activist, Nobel Prize laureate
• 1952 – Jeremy Coney, New Zealand-English cricketer and sportscaster
• 1955 – Tim Bray, Canadian software developer, co-founded the Open Text Corporation
• 1967 – Pierre Omidyar, French-American businessman, founded eBay
• 1974 – Rob Kelly, American football player
• 1976 – Nigel Lappin, Australian footballer and coach
• 1987 – Sebastian Prödl, Austrian footballer
• 1987 – Dale Thomas, Australian footballer
• 1999 – Ky Rodwell, Australian rugby league player
• 2001 – Alexandra Obolentseva, Russian chess player

HOLIDAYS and OBSERVANCES:

• Day of the Martyrs (Togo)
• Father’s Day (Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and Uganda)
• Go Skateboarding Day
• World Humanist Day (Humanism)
• World Hydrography Day
• National Day (Greenland)