Two years later, a man tried to sell the Mona Lisa to the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. When the police were notified, the former Louvre employee Vincenzo Peruggia was arrested for stealing the painting. However, Peruggia served only a few months in jail after he claimed the painting belonged in Italy and that he had stolen it for patriotic reasons. The media sensation over the theft helped make the Mona Lisa one of the world's most famous paintings. Here are some of the other events that happened on this day that make August 21 a memorable day in history. (Image: Wikimedia Commons)
1831 | Black American slave Nat Turner launched an unsuccessful slave rebellion in the American South along with seven fellow slaves. About 60 white people were killed in the rebellion before it was crushed by a 3,000-man militia. (Image: Wikimedia Commons)
1858 | The famous Lincoln-Douglas debates, which was a series of seven debates between Democratic senator Stephen A. Douglas and Republican challenger Abraham Lincoln, started in Illinois. (Image: Wikimedia Commons)
1942 | The animated film Bambi was released in the US theatres. The film became a classic in the Disney canon. (Image: Disney UK YouTube)
1959 | US President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a proclamation that made Hawaii the 50th state in the country. (Image: Wikimedia Commons)
1986 | Usain Bolt, a Jamaican sprinter, who won gold medals in three straight Olympic Games, was born. (Image: Shutterstock)
1987 | Patrick Swayze-starred romantic film Dirty Dancing was released in the theatres in the US. The movie, which also featured Jennifer Grey, was a huge hit. (Image: Lionsgate)
1991 | The Baltic republic of Latvia announced independence from the Soviet Union, following similar action by neighbouring Estonia. (Image: Wikimedia Commons)
1993 | US space agency NASA lost communication with the Mars Observer spacecraft as it neared Mars. The Mars Observer was launched almost a year earlier. (Image: NASA)
2015 | After 108 years, a ‘message in a bottle’ washed up on a beach in Amrum, Germany. The message was released in the North Sea between 1904 and 1906 by the Marine Biological Association of the UK. (Image: Shutterstock)
2017 | For the first time in nearly 40 years, all of North America was treated to a total solar eclipse, which was viewed from Oregon, South Carolina, USA. (Image: Wikimedia Commons)
2018 | A team of scientists confirmed the presence of water ice on the surface of the Moon using data from a NASA instrument aboard India's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft. (Image: Wikimedia Commons)