On July 21, 365, a powerful earthquake off the coast of Greece causes a tsunami that devastates the city of Alexandria, Egypt. Although there were no measuring tools at the time, scientists now estimate that the quake was actually two tremors in succession, the largest of which is thought to have had a magnitude of 8.0.

In what may be the first true western showdown, Wild Bill Hickok shoots Dave Tutt dead in the market square of Springfield, Missouri.

On the final day of the so-called "Trial of the Century," July 21, 1925, schoolteacher John T. Scopes is convicted of violating Tennessee’s law against teaching evolution in public schools. The case debated was never really in doubt; the jury only conferred for a few moments in the hallway before returning to the courtroom with a guilty verdict. Nevertheless, the supporters of evolution won the public relations battle that was really at stake.

On July 21, 1944, Adolf Hitler takes to the airwaves to announce that the attempt on his life—code-named Operation Valkyrie—has failed and that “accounts will be settled.”

On July 21, 1960, the German government passes the “Law Concerning the Transfer of the Share Rights in Volkswagenwerk Limited Liability Company into Private Hands,” known informally as the “Volkswagen Law.”

On July 21, 2005, terrorists attempt to attack the London transit system by planting bombs on three subways and on one bus; none of the bombs detonate completely. The attempted attack came exactly two weeks after terrorists killed 56 people, including themselves, and wounded 700 others in the largest attack on Great Britain since World War II. The previous attack also targeted three subways and one bus.

On July 21, 2011, NASA’s space shuttle program completes its final, and 135th, mission, when the shuttle Atlantis lands at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. During the program’s 30-year history, its five orbiters—Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour—carried more than 350 people into space and flew more than 500 million miles, and shuttle crews conducted important research, serviced the Hubble Space Telescope and helped in the construction of the International Space Station, among other activities. NASA retired the shuttles to focus on a deep-space exploration program that could one day send astronauts to asteroids and Mars.