MAPS OF HISTORY · ON THIS DAY · August 21

THE DAY IN HISTORY · AUGUST 21

August 21 in history

1863 — Lawrence, Kansas

1856 & 21 Aug 1863 — Sacked by pro-slavery raiders in 1856; in 1863 Quantrill’s guerrillas murder some 180 men and boys here. The border war was a civil war before the Civil War. Remember it plainly.

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1968 — Prague Spring crushed

21 Aug 1968 — Half a million Warsaw Pact troops end Czechoslovakia’s “socialism with a human face.” The Brezhnev Doctrine is born: fraternal states may never leave. 1989 is its exact negation.

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1991 — The August Coup

19–21 Aug 1991 — Hardliners seize Gorbachev and send tanks into Moscow; Yeltsin climbs one outside the parliament. The army refuses to fire, the coup dissolves in 60 hours — and takes the union with it.

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