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Today in History, January 21st

On January 21, 1793, King Louis XVI of France was executed by guillotine in Paris. Plus Concorde's first passenger flights and the Women's March.

By Today in History Updated November 10, 2026 3 min read Sources checked

Published January 21, 2026 · Last updated November 10, 2026

January 21 is best known for 1793, when King Louis XVI of France was executed by guillotine in Paris during the French Revolution. The date also saw the first passenger flights of the supersonic Concorde in 1976 and the Women’s March, one of the largest single-day protests in U.S. history, in 2017.

The big story: Louis XVI goes to the guillotine (1793)

Louis XVI came to the throne in 1774 and ended up as the last Bourbon king before the Revolution swept the old order away. By late 1792 he had already lost his crown. France abolished the monarchy on September 21, 1792. In November, evidence surfaced of his secret dealings with Austria and other foreign powers, and the National Convention put him on trial for treason. In January 1793, a narrow majority voted to send him to his death. On the morning of January 21, he was taken to the Place de la Révolution in Paris, where he walked to the guillotine with notable calm. For a revolution that had begun by trying to limit the king’s power, it was a point of no return. His wife, Marie Antoinette, followed him to the same fate nine months later, on October 16, 1793.

More events on January 21

Year	What happened
1525	Followers of Conrad Grebel near Zurich performed the first adult baptism of the Anabaptist movement, an event traditionally dated to this day.
1910	The immigration station on Angel Island in San Francisco Bay opened. Over the next 30 years it processed an estimated 100,000 Chinese and 70,000 Japanese immigrants.
1924	Vladimir Lenin, founder of the Soviet state, died at 53 after a brain hemorrhage.
1950	Former State Department official Alger Hiss was convicted of perjury for lying about passing government documents to former communist Whittaker Chambers.
1954	The USS Nautilus, the world’s first nuclear-powered submarine, was launched.
1968	North Vietnamese forces began attacking the U.S. Marine base at Khe Sanh, opening a siege that lasted until April.
1976	Concorde began commercial service, with simultaneous departures from London to Bahrain and from Paris to Rio de Janeiro.
1977	President Jimmy Carter pardoned hundreds of thousands of men who had evaded the draft during the Vietnam War.
2009	Toyota passed General Motors in yearly sales, ending GM’s run of more than seven decades as the world’s biggest automaker.
2017	The Women’s March drew as many as 500,000 people in Washington, D.C., and millions more at sister marches across the country and abroad.

Born on January 21

1738: Ethan Allen, leader of the Green Mountain Boys and a founder of Vermont, born in Litchfield, Connecticut.
1824: Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, Confederate general, born in Clarksburg, Virginia (now West Virginia).
1940: Jack Nicklaus, golfer who won a record 18 major championships, born in Columbus, Ohio.
1941: Plácido Domingo, Spanish opera tenor, born in Madrid.