On August 21, 2004, American swimmer Michael Phelps wins his eighth medal of the 2004 Athens Olympics in spite of sitting out his eighth scheduled event, the final of the 4 x 100-meter medley relay.

Just three days after it began, the coup against Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev collapses.

On August 21, 1980, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is incorporated by animal rights advocates Ingrid Newkirk and Alex Pacheco.

The Equal Educational Opportunities Act is enacted on August 21, 1974.

Jomo Kenyatta, leader of the Kenyan independence movement, is released by British colonial authorities after nearly nine years of imprisonment and detention.

On August 21, 1944, representatives from the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union and China meet in the Dumbarton Oaks estate at Georgetown, Washington, D.

Daphne Milne, wife of writer A.

On August 21, 1897, Ransom Eli Olds of Lansing, Michigan, founds Olds Motor Vehicle Company, which will later become Olds Motor Werks and then Oldsmobile.

Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois and Abraham Lincoln, a Kentucky-born lawyer and one-time U.

Believing himself chosen by God to lead his people out of slavery, Nat Turner launches the largest-ever insurrection by enslaved people in the United States.