July 21

Pope Clement XIV promulgated the brief Dominus ac Redemptor, suppressing the Society of Jesus; the order was restored in 1814.

Nyanaponika Thera, a German-born Theravada monk, scholar and co-founder of the Buddhist Publication Society, was born Siegmund Feniger in Hanau, Germany.

Swami Turiyananda, a direct monastic disciple of Ramakrishna who helped establish Vedanta work in America, died at the Ramakrishna Mission Sevashrama in Varanasi.

A. Leo Oppenheim, editor-in-charge of the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary and author of 'Ancient Mesopotamia', died at the age of 70.

On 21 July 2000, the DONUT collaboration at Fermilab announced the first direct detection of the tau neutrino, filling in the last of the Standard Model's directly observed leptons.