40 Fun Facts About 21st Birthday

Which British singer named her 2011 album 21 after her age while she was making it?

Adele followed her debut 19 with 21, which topped charts in more than 30 countries and won the 2012 Grammy for Album of the Year.

Which casino card game, the most widely played banking game in the world, is also known as twenty-one?

Blackjack players try to get closer to 21 than the dealer without going over; its British cousin, pontoon, probably takes its name from a garbled vingt-et-un.

At which Arlington National Cemetery monument does a sentinel march exactly 21 steps, then pause for 21 seconds?

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier guards count in 21s to echo the 21-gun salute, the highest military honour, and the round-the-clock watch has not stopped since 1937, whatever the weather.

Which future queen marked her 21st birthday in 1947 with a radio pledge of lifelong service from southern Africa?

Elizabeth II was on her first overseas tour, travelling with her parents, when she promised the Commonwealth that her whole life would be given to its service.

In which city was Atlanta rapper 21 Savage born, years before US immigration agents detained him in 2019?

London is where he was born Shéyaa Bin Abraham-Joseph, to British parents, in the Plaistow district; he moved to Atlanta with his mother at the age of seven.

Which 21-year-old co-founded Apple on April Fools' Day 1976, alongside an engineer known to friends as Woz?

Steve Jobs had turned 21 just five weeks earlier; a third co-founder formally withdrew from the partnership after only twelve days.

Which 1930s child star gives her name to a non-alcoholic mix of ginger ale and grenadine, topped with a cherry?

Shirley Temple was no fan of her namesake drink: she told an interviewer in 1986 that it was far too sweet and that she had nothing to do with creating it.

Which gaming piece carries exactly 21 pips in total, with opposite sides that always add up to seven?

A standard die shows one to six pips on its faces, which total 21; a die with opposite sides adding up to seven was unearthed at Mohenjo-daro, about 4,000 years old.

Which famous whiskey is distilled in Lynchburg, Tennessee, a small town that sits in a dry county?

Jack Daniel's is made in Moore County, where Tennessee's own prohibition laws outlasted the national repeal of 1933 and kept the distillery shut until 1938.

Which war's draft of 18-year-olds drove the 1971 amendment that lowered the US voting age from 21?

Vietnam War conscripts could be sent to fight at 18 yet could not vote until 21; the states ratified the Twenty-sixth Amendment little more than three months after Congress proposed it.

Which president signed the law that cut highway funding for any state letting under-21s buy alcohol?

Ronald Reagan signed the National Minimum Drinking Age Act in July 1984; a state that held out stood to lose 10 percent of its federal highway money.

In which country is downing a yardie, a yard-long glass of beer, a traditional 21st birthday challenge?

New Zealand party guests watch the birthday boy or girl take on a glass about a yard long, whose bulb at the bottom can send a sudden rush of beer over the drinker.

In British bingo, callers name 21 after which object, a nod to the traditional age of majority?

A door key stands for coming of age, because 21 was long the age of majority in Britain; bingo's other nickname for the number is the royal salute.

Which actor became a teen idol as an undercover police officer in the Fox series 21 Jump Street?

Johnny Depp found the teen-idol status irritating but stayed on under contract, and he came back for a cameo in the 2012 film version.

Which punk trio released the 2009 power ballad 21 Guns on the album 21st Century Breakdown?

Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong said the title nods both to the album and to the 21-gun salute fired for someone who has fallen.

Which golfer won the 1997 Masters by 12 strokes at the age of 21, his first major title?

Tiger Woods played his first nine holes in a shaky 40, then pulled clear of runner-up Tom Kite to become the youngest winner the tournament had seen.

Which Jamaican sprinter was 21 when he won the 100 and 200 metres in world-record times at the 2008 Olympics?

Usain Bolt won the 200 metres in Beijing just hours before turning 22, and the stadium played Happy Birthday over its sound system after the race.

Which Cambridge physicist was diagnosed with motor neurone disease at 21 and given only two years to live?

Stephen Hawking lived for more than 50 years after the diagnosis, long enough to write A Brief History of Time and to reach the age of 76.

Which Mexican spirit must be made from blue agave, mostly grown around a Jalisco town of the same name?

Tequila is set apart from mezcal, the wider family of agave spirits, by that single permitted plant; the agave fields around the town became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2006.

Which cocktail, whose name is Spanish for daisy, is often served in a glass rimmed with salt?

Margarita's first known printed recipe under that name ran in a 1953 issue of Esquire, though a newspaper editor had described finding such a drink in Tijuana back in 1936.

Which country gave the world the mojito, a mix of white rum, lime juice, sugar, soda water and mint?

Cuba's classic recipe calls for the mint leaves to be bruised, never shredded, which is enough to release their essential oils into the drink.

Which cocktail of vodka, ginger beer and lime juice is properly served in a copper mug?

Moscow mule is an American drink: by the best-known account it was devised in Manhattan in 1941 by a Smirnoff boss and a Hollywood restaurateur with ginger beer to sell.

Which pink cocktail of vodka, Cointreau, cranberry and lime did Carrie Bradshaw regularly order on Sex and the City?

Cosmopolitan has rival origin stories; in one, a bartender splashed cranberry juice into a Kamikaze and the first taster's reaction gave the drink its name.

Which Irish stout's founder signed a 9,000-year lease on a disused Dublin brewery on the last day of 1759?

Guinness paid just 45 pounds a year under that lease for the St James's Gate site, which went on to become one of the largest breweries in the British Empire.

Which spirit, descended from the Dutch drink jenever, takes its main flavour from juniper berries?

Gin caught on in England after Dutch jenever arrived, and juniper drinks go back further still: monks were making a juniper tonic wine by around 1055.

In which country do drinkers raise a glass with the toast kanpai, which literally means empty the glass?

Japan shares the toast's two written characters with its neighbours: Mandarin speakers read them as ganbei, and Koreans say geonbae.

Card-counting students from which university inspired the 2008 film 21, which could not be shot on its campus?

MIT refused to allow filming on campus, so its classrooms, dorm rooms and gymnasium were all played by Boston University.

Which playwright's drama All My Sons, about faulty warplane parts, inspired the band name Twenty One Pilots?

Arthur Miller's 1947 play turns on cracked engine parts sold to the Air Force, which cause the deaths of 21 airmen; singer Tyler Joseph took the name from it.

Which band's 1978 hit September opens by asking listeners whether they recall the 21st of that month?

Earth, Wind & Fire singer Maurice White said he picked the 21st simply for how it sounded when sung, though his wife later said it was their son's due date.

In which Gilbert and Sullivan opera must leap-day baby Frederic serve as an apprentice until his 21st birthday?

The Pirates of Penzance hero was born on 29 February, so by the letter of his contract he will not reach that birthday until he is in his eighties.

Which western state cast the ratifying vote that completed the Twenty-first Amendment, ending Prohibition, in 1933?

Utah's convention voted unanimously on 5 December 1933, completing the only amendment ever ratified by specially chosen state conventions instead of legislatures.

Which old British gold coin was worth 21 shillings, a unit still used to price racehorses at auction?

Guinea bids at the Tattersalls sales hide the auctioneer's cut: the buyer pays in guineas, but the seller receives only the same number of pounds.

Which Midwestern state became the 21st to join the Union in 1818, with its first capital at Kaskaskia?

Illinois still includes Kaskaskia, but the old capital now lies west of the Mississippi River and can be reached by road only from Missouri.

Which metal with atomic number 21 was predicted by Mendeleev as ekaboron before Lars Nilson found it in 1879?

Scandium turned up in the minerals euxenite and gadolinite; Nilson was apparently unaware of the prediction, and it was a fellow chemist who spotted the match and told Mendeleev.

Which Yale undergraduate was 21 when her design for a Washington war memorial beat over 1,400 rival entries in 1981?

Maya Lin proposed a V-shaped wall of black granite, with one arm pointing toward the Lincoln Memorial and the other toward the Washington Monument.

Which actress won the Best Actress Oscar at 21 for her screen debut in Children of a Lesser God?

Marlee Matlin was spotted by Henry Winkler in a stage production, and her win made her the first deaf performer to receive an Academy Award.

Which baseball star wore number 21 and died in 1972 while flying earthquake relief supplies to Nicaragua?

Roberto Clemente chose 21 because his full name, Roberto Clemente Walker, has that many letters, and his team retired the number the season after his death.

Which New Mexico outlaw, born Henry McCarty, was shot dead by Sheriff Pat Garrett in 1881 at the age of 21?

Billy the Kid had been sentenced to hang but broke out of jail that April, killing two deputies, and stayed on the run for more than two months.

Which famous sequence, in which each term is the sum of the previous two, runs 8, 13, 21, 34?

Fibonacci numbers take their name from Leonardo of Pisa, who brought the sequence to Europe in a 1202 book through a puzzle about breeding rabbits.

Which San Antonio Spurs great wore number 21 for his entire 19-year career, winning five NBA championships?

Tim Duncan first wore 21 at college to honour the brother-in-law who taught him the game; he had been a swimmer until a hurricane wrecked his island's pool.