September 21 in History

Richard de Clare — 'Strongbow' — had been promised the Kingdom of Leinster and the hand of its king's daughter if he helped Diarmait Mac Murchada retake his throne. He delivered. Norse-Gaelic Dublin fell in September 1170 after a surprise assault that caught the defenders mid-negotiation. Ascall mac Ragnaill fled by ship. But the English king Henry II grew alarmed that Strongbow was becoming too powerful in Ireland and sailed over with an army to assert control. The private military deal that took Dublin ended up importing the English crown into Ireland. It never really left.

Lembitu was the only Estonian leader who'd managed to unite multiple Estonian tribes against the Livonian crusaders — a coalition that had held for years. Kaupo, by contrast, had converted to Christianity and fought alongside the crusaders, making him one of history's more complicated figures: a Livonian chief who took the Pope's side against his own people. Both men died in the same battle on September 21, 1217. The Estonian resistance effectively died with Lembitu. German and Danish control over the Baltic solidified within years. The two enemies who defined an era ended on the same field.

Philip the Good of Burgundy had been England's ally in the Hundred Years' War partly because Henry V's men had murdered his father John the Fearless on a bridge in 1419 — and he'd been waiting ever since for the right moment to switch sides. The Treaty of Arras in 1435 gave him that moment, along with territorial concessions from France and a formal apology. England's negotiators walked out rather than accept the terms. The English lost their most powerful continental ally and, within 18 years, lost France entirely. A two-decade grudge reshaped the map of Europe.

Jacobite highlanders under Bonnie Prince Charlie overran Sir John Cope's government army in just ten minutes at Prestonpans, routing the professional soldiers with a devastating dawn charge. The stunning victory electrified Stuart supporters across Britain and convinced Charles to launch the march south into England that would define the 1745 uprising.

British Secretary of War Lord Castlereagh and Foreign Secretary George Canning traded pistol fire on Putney Heath, leaving Canning wounded in the thigh. This violent clash between two towering political figures forced a temporary reshuffle of the British war cabinet during the Napoleonic Wars, altering how Britain coordinated its military strategy against Napoleon.

Joseph Smith was 21 years old and had reportedly been told four years earlier, by the angel Moroni, exactly where the gold plates were buried — on a hillside in Manchester, New York. On September 22, 1827, he was finally allowed to take them. He translated what he said he couldn't read, using a seer stone placed in a hat, dictating to a scribe with a curtain between them and the plates. The Book of Mormon was published three years later, in 1830. Within a generation, it had become the founding scripture of a new American religion.

British forces under Horatio Kitchener seize Dongola, crushing Mahdist resistance and securing the Nile Valley for imperial control. This victory directly led to for the 1898 Battle of Omdurman, which cemented Anglo-Egyptian rule over Sudan for decades to come.

Eight-year-old Virginia O'Hanlon wrote to the New York Sun because her father told her if it was in the paper, it was true. Editor Francis Pharcellus Church wrote the reply himself — an agnostic who'd covered Civil War battlefields and found himself, unexpectedly, defending the existence of Santa Claus. The editorial ran September 21, 1897. Church never signed it, never claimed it publicly. The Sun reprinted it every year until the paper folded in 1950. Church died in 1906 not knowing his 500-word response to a child's letter would outlast everything else he'd ever written.

Salvador Lutteroth had seen professional wrestling promoted in Texas and imported the model to Mexico City in 1933, renting the Coliseo and running the first Empresa Mexicana de Lucha Libre show on September 21. He invented nothing physical — but he built the infrastructure, the promotion, the touring circuit, and eventually the masked-wrestler culture that made Lucha Libre a distinct form. El Santo, Mil Máscaras, Blue Demon — all fought under the promotional structure Lutteroth built. A businessman who liked Texas wrestling accidentally created one of Mexico's most durable cultural exports.

J.R.R. Tolkien unleashed The Hobbit upon readers on September 21, 1937, instantly birthing a literary universe that redefined fantasy fiction. This single volume spawned an enduring global phenomenon where fans celebrate the author's birthday on September 22 as Hobbit Day to honor his creation of Middle-earth.