Reuters
Following are some of the major events to have occurred on March 21:
1917 - Russian revolutionary forces arrested Tsar Nicholas II and his family.
1919 - Short-lived Communist government established in Hungary.
1960 - South African police fired on peaceful demonstrators in Sharpeville in the Transvaal, killing 69 unarmed black protesters.
1963 - Alcatraz Prison in San Francisco Bay closed when the last 27 prisoners were transferred.
1990 - Namibia, formerly known as South West Africa, became independent from South Africa.
1999 - Breitling Orbiter 3 balloon lands after record flight around the world.
2003 - Eight British soldiers and four U.S. airmen were killed in a helicopter crash on the Iraqi border, the first known allied casualties of the Iraq war.
2004 - Afghanistan's civil aviation minister Mirwais Sadiq, son of the governor of Herat province, was killed in an ambush in Herat.
2005 - A U.S. high school student shot dead nine people and then killed himself at Minnesota's Red Lake Indian Reservation.
2008 - Alain Bernard breaks men's 100m freestyle swimming world record.
2016 - U.S. President Barack Obama, Cuban President Raul Castro hold historic joint news conference in Havana.
