This day in history

21 July

Events

• 905:  Berengar of Friuli, the deposed king of Italy, captures the emperor, Louis III, at Verona, blinds him, and expels him from Italy back to his kingdom of Provence.
• 971:  The Byzantine emperor John Tzimisces again defeats Prince Svjatoslav I of Kiev and compels him to evacuate the Balkans and the Crimea.
• 1242:  King Henry III of England retreats to Saintes after he is defeated by King Louis IX of France at Taillebourg, France. Louis suppresses the revolt of Raymond VII, Count of Toulouse, and the Lusignans.
• 1403:  King Henry IV of England defeats and kills Henry Hotspur, son of the Earl of Northumberland, at Shrewsbury, England, so ending his revolt and preventing him from joining forces with the Welsh rebels.
• 1425:  The Byzantine emperor Manuel II, who has ruled only Constantinople (modern Istanbul, Turkey) while his brothers have ruled other remaining fragments of the empire in Greece, dies. He is succeeded by his eldest son, John VIII.
• 1667:  The Peace of Breda ends the second Anglo-Dutch war. England makes a treaty with France to cede Acadia in North America and recover Antigua, Montserrat, and St Kitts in the West Indies. A second treaty between England and the United Netherlands allows the Dutch to retain Surinam in the West Indies and England the Dutch colonies of New Netherland, Cape Coast Castle, and Fort James.
• 1718:  The Peace of Passarowitz ends the war between the Habsburg Monarchy and the Ottoman Empire. By its terms, signed through British and Dutch mediation (the eastern trade of both states had been disrupted by the war), Austria completes its occupation of Hungary, and gains Belgrade and a strip of Serbia and Bosnia, the Banat of Temesvr (now part of Hungary), and Little Wallachia; Venice, in alliance with Austria since 1716, retains Corfu and its conquests in Albania and Dalmatia; the Ottoman Empire keeps the Morea (the Peloponnese) and the island of Aegina, in Greece. The parties agree to adhere to this agreement for at least 25 years.
• 1774:  Under the Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainardzhi, the Ottoman Empire cedes the Black Sea coast from the River Bug to the River Dnieper to Russia, and also the Crimean ports of Yenikale and Kertch. Moldavia and Wallachia are returned to the Ottoman Empire, and the Khanate of the Crimea is recognized as independent.
• 1798:  Napoleon Bonaparte's French army in Egypt, having occupied Alexandria, defeats Mameluke forces at the Battle of the Pyramids. French domination of Egypt is established.
• 1861:  The Confederates gain an indecisive victory over the Union army in the Battle of Bull Run in Virginia, the first major military engagement of the American Civil War.
• 1917:  Alexander Kerensky replaces Prince George Lvov as Russian prime minister.
• 1921:  Spanish troops under General Fernandez Silvestre waging a campaign against the Riffians in Morocco are defeated by troops led by Abd al-Karim; 12,000 are killed.
• 1959:  A US federal district court in New York City lifts the ban that the Postmaster General had placed on Lady Chatterley's Lover by English author D H Lawrence, ruling that the novel, which was privately published in Florence in 1928, is not obscene. A complete edition is published.
• 2002:  Germany's Michael Schumacher becomes world motor racing champion for the fifth time at the French grand prix, equalling the Argentinian Juan Manuel Fangio's record set in the 1950s. Driving for Ferrari, Schumacher secures the championship with six races still remaining.
• 2004:  In a significant change of policy towards designer babies, the UK Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority approves tissue-matching tests on embryos for the purposes of saving the life of a sick older brother or sister.

Births and Deaths

• Ernest Hemingway
  1899: Ernest Hemingway, US novelist who writes A Farewell to Arms (1929) and For Whom the Bell Tolls (1941), born in Oak Park, Illinois (1961).

Data provided by Helicon Publishing