1. On September 21, 1791, President George Washington officially appointed Major Pierre Charles L'Enfant to design the layout and plan of the new capital city, which would later be named Washington, D.C.

2. In 1862, during the height of the Civil War, the Union Army under General George McClellan repelled the Confederate Army's attempts to invade the city of Washington, D.C., in what became known as the Battle of Shepherdstown.

3. On September 21, 1915, the French Ambassador to the United States, Jules Jusserand, presented a statue of French general and Revolutionary War hero Marquis de Lafayette to the people of Washington, D.C. The statue was placed in Lafayette Square, just north of the White House.

4. In 1964, the Washington Senators baseball team won their last game at D.C. Stadium (now known as RFK Stadium) before moving to Arlington, Texas, where they became the Texas Rangers.

5. September 21, 1987, marked the opening of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian, located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The museum's collection features over 800,000 artifacts and objects from Native American cultures across North and South America.