1. On November 21, 1817, Mississippi officially became the 20th state in the United States, after being a U.S. territory for several years. The state's name comes from the Mississippi River, which flows along its western border.

2. In 1864, during the American Civil War, Union troops led by General William T. Sherman burned the city of Oxford, Mississippi to the ground. The city was considered a stronghold of Confederate support, and the destruction was a blow to the South's morale.

3. On November 21, 1934, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, notorious criminals and lovers who became infamous during the Great Depression, were ambushed and killed by law enforcement officers in Bienville Parish, Louisiana. The two had committed numerous robberies and murders throughout the South and Midwest, and had become folk heroes to some.

4. In 1960, the first television station in Jackson, Mississippi, WJTV, began broadcasting. The station quickly became a popular source of news and entertainment for local residents.

5. On November 21, 1991, former Ku Klux Klan leader Byron De La Beckwith was found guilty of the 1963 assassination of civil rights leader Medgar Evers. Evers, the Mississippi field secretary for the NAACP, had been working to challenge segregation and discrimination in the state when he was shot and killed outside his home in Jackson. It took over 30 years for Beckwith to be convicted for the crime, which many saw as a reflection of the deep-seated racism and injustice that still existed in Mississippi.