Shimla, Nov. 21
2017
After some 37 years as leader of Zimbabwe—first as prime minister and later as president—Robert Mugabe resigned from office as the parliament began impeachment proceedings against him.
2002
A North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit meeting in Prague extended an official invitation to become new alliance members to Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia.
2000
The United Farm Workers called off the boycott of California table grapes begun in 1984 by union organizer Cesar Chavez, saying the goals of the strike had been met.
1995
A peace agreement, known as the Dayton Accords, was reached by the presidents of Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia, ending the Bosnian War.
1964
The Verrazzano- (originally Verrazano-) Narrows Bridge, spanning New York Harbor from Brooklyn to Staten Island, opened to traffic.
1931
The horror classic Frankenstein, based on a stage adaptation of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s 1818 novel, was released in the United States, and it helped make the hulking monster, who was portrayed by Boris Karloff, one of the most recognizable characters in film history.
1922
Rebecca Ann Felton of Georgia was sworn into office, becoming the first woman seated in the U.S. Senate; Felton, who was appointed to the seat, served only two days.
1920
On Bloody Sunday, the Irish Republican Army killed 11 Englishmen suspected of being intelligence agents, and the Black and Tans took revenge the same afternoon, attacking spectators and players at a Gaelic football match in Croke Park, Dublin, killing 12 and wounding 60.
1920
American baseball player Stan Musial, who was considered one of the game’s greatest hitters, was born.
1898
Belgian artist René Magritte—one of the most prominent Surrealist painters, whose bizarre flights of fancy blended horror, peril, comedy, and mystery—was born.
1878
Lord Lytton, the viceroy of India, launched the Second Anglo-Afghan War.
1806
The Continental System, a blockade designed to close the entire European continent to British trade, was proclaimed when Napoleon issued the Berlin Decree.
1783
The first crewed hot-air balloon flight was made by Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent, marquis d’Arlandes, traveling from the Château de la Muette across the Bois de Boulogne on the edge of Paris in a balloon made by Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier.
