On This Day for March 21 - Closing of Alcatraz prison, St. Angela Merici is featured, and more

Created: 2020-03-21 10:03 Updated: 2020-03-21 10:03 Notebook: On this Day in History

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March 21

FEATURED BIOGRAPHY

1470

St. Angela Merici

Alcatraz Island, in San Francisco Bay, California.

FEATURED EVENT

1963

Closing of Alcatraz prison

MORE EVENTS ON THIS DAY

2017: Irish politician Martin McGuinness—who, as a member of Sinn Féin, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), played an influential role in negotiating the Good Friday Agreement (Belfast Agreement) of 1998—died at age 66.

2006: Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey sent the first public tweet, which read “just setting up my twttr.” [ Test your knowledge of tech companies .]

1990: After 106 years of German and South African rule, Namibia became independent. [ Sort fact from fiction in our Africa quiz .]

1980: U.S. President Jimmy Carter announced that the United States was boycotting the Summer Olympics in Moscow to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. [ Take our Olympic history quiz .]

1965: American civil rights activists led by Martin Luther King, Jr., began a protest march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. [ Learn about 10 milestones in civil rights history .]

Hans Hofmann, photograph by Arnold Newman, 1960.

1880: German painter Hans Hofmann, an influential art teacher and a pioneer in the use of improvisatory techniques whose work paved the way for American painters to develop Abstract Expressionism, was born. [ Test your knowledge of artistic styles and techniques .]

SEE ALL EVENTS ON THIS DAY

ALSO BORN ON THIS DAY

1958

Gary Oldman
British actor

1685

Johann Sebastian Bach
German composer

1985

Adrian Peterson
American football player

1949

Slavoj Žižek
Slovene philosopher and cultural theorist

1962

Rosie O'Donnell
American entertainer