On This Day: January 21st

The RMS Tayleur sinks off Lambay Island on her maiden voyage from Liverpool to Australia with great loss of life.

The Ashantis defeat British forces in the Gold Coast during the First Anglo-Ashanti War.

After being found guilty of treason by the French National Convention, Louis XVI of France is executed by guillotine.

The first American novel, The Power of Sympathy or the Triumph of Nature Founded in Truth by William Hill Brown, is printed in Boston.

Abdul Hamid I becomes Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and Caliph of Islam.

The Teatro Filarmonico in Verona is destroyed by fire, as a result of a torch being left behind in the box of a nobleman after a performance. It is rebuilt in 1754.

Sweden and Prussia sign the Treaty of Stockholm.

Following the Affair of the Placards, the French king leads an anti-Protestant procession through Paris.

The Swiss Anabaptist Movement is founded when Conrad Grebel, Felix Manz, George Blaurock, and about a dozen others baptize each other in the home of Manz's mother in Zürich, breaking a thousand-year tradition of church-state union.

Following the Battle of Bakhamra between Alids and Abbasids near Kufa, the Alid rebellion ends with the death of Ibrahim, brother of Isa ibn Musa.