| 21 June 1208 | Holy Roman Empire [political events] | Shortly after Pope Innocent III has recognized him as ‘king of the Romans’ and agreed to crown him Holy Roman Emperor, Philip, Duke of Swabia, is murdered by Otto of Wittelsbach, Count Palatine of Bavaria, over a personal grudge. |
| 21 June 1305 | Bohemia, Holy Roman Empire [administration] | King Wenceslas II of Bohemia dies. He is succeeded by his son, Wenceslas III, who makes peace with the Holy Roman Emperor Albert I. |
| 21 June 1377 | England [administration] | Richard II succeeds to the English throne following the death of his grandfather, King Edward III of England, and begins his rule with a council of regency. |
| 21 June 1527 | Florence [births and deaths] | Niccolò Machiavelli, Italian statesman, writer, and political theorist whose best-known work is Il principe/The Prince (1513), dies in Florence, Italy (58). |
| 21 June 1582 | Japan [births and deaths] | Oda Nobunaga, the Japanese dictator who overthrew the Ashikaga shogunate, ended feudal wars, and unified more than half of Japan, is wounded in battle and dies in Kyoto, Japan (c. 48). |
| 21–30 June 1582 | Japan [political events] | The forces of Akechi Mitsuhide undertake a treacherous assault on the lodgings of the Japanese military leader Oda Nobunaga, unifier of central Japan (southern Honshu), in the Honnoji monastery in Kyoto, resulting in the death of Oda Nobunaga. Mitsuhide hesitates after taking other strongholds, and, on 30 June, the forces of the military leader Hideyoshi (later known as Toyotomi Hideyoshi) defeat and kill him at Yamazaki. |
| 21 June 1631 | England [births and deaths] | John Smith, English explorer who founded Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in North America, dies in London, England (51). |
| 21 June 1661 | Russia, Sweden [treaties] | The Peace of Kardis is signed between Russia and Sweden, thereby ending the Northern War. By its terms, Russia recognizes the existing Russo-Swedish frontier, while Sweden undertakes not to intervene in the Russo-Polish war. |
| 21 June 1813 | UK, France, Spain [Napoleonic Wars (1803–15)] | British forces under the Duke of Wellington (Arthur Wellesley) completely rout the French army of Marshal Jean-Baptiste Jourdain at Vittoria in northern Spain, forcing Joseph Bonaparte to flee back to France. |
| 21 June 1885 | Anglo-Egyptian Sudan [political events] | The dervish Mahdi (prophet) Mohammed Ahmed of Dongola dies, probably of typhoid, in Omdurman, Sudan, and is succeeded by his son Abdullah. |
| 21 June 1905 | [births and deaths] | Jean-Paul Sartre, French existentialist philosopher, novelist, and playwright, born in Paris, France (–1980). |
| 21 June 1919 | Germany, United Kingdom [political events] | German sailors scuttle the ‘Grand Fleet’ in Scapa Flow, the British naval base in the Orkney Islands where the fleet has been quartered since the end of World War I, to prevent it falling into Allied hands following the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. |
| 21 June 1953 | Pakistan [births and deaths] | Benazir Bhutto, prime minister of Pakistan 1988–90 and from 1993, born in Karachi, Pakistan. |
| 21 June 1963 | Italy [Catholicism] | After the death of Pope John XXIII on 3 June, the Italian clergyman Giovanni Battista Montini is elected Pope Paul VI. |
| 21 June 1971 | South Africa, Namibia [law and government] | The International Court of Justice in The Hague, the Netherlands, rules South Africa's administration of Namibia (South West Africa) to be illegal. |
| 21 June 1996 | Europe, Italy, UK [international organizations] | At a European Union (EU) summit in Florence, Italy, a deal is made for the lifting of the export ban on British beef (involving the slaughter of 147,000 at-risk cattle); in return, Britain ends its obstruction of EU business. |
| 21 June 2003 | [fiction] | The English writer J K Rowling publishes her new book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the fifth in a hugely successful children's series. |
| 21 June 2004 | [space exploration] | SpaceShipOne (SS-1) becomes the world's first crewed commercial craft in space. Taking off from the Mojave desert in California, the privately-built SS-1 piloted by Mike Melvill breaks out of Earth's atmosphere to briefly touch the edge of space at an altitude of 100 km/62 mi. |
