October 21
is the 294th day of the year (295th in
leap years) in the
Gregorian Calendar, with 71 days remaining.
*
686 -
Conon becomes
Pope.
*
1492 -
Christopher Columbus lands on the San Salvador Islands.
*
1512 -
Martin Luther joins the theological faculty of the University of Wittenberg
*
1600 -
Tokugawa Ieyasu defeats the leaders of rival
Japanese clans in the
Battle of Sekigahara, which marks the beginning of the
Tokugawa shogunate, who in effect rule Japan until the mid-Nineteenth century.
*
1774 - First display of the word "Liberty" on a flag, raised by colonists in
Taunton, Massachusetts and which was in defiance of British rule in
Colonial America.
*
1797 - In
Boston Harbor, the 44-gun
United States Navy frigate
USS Constitution is launched.
*
1805 -
Napoleonic Wars:
Battle of Trafalgar - a
British fleet led by Admiral
Lord Nelson defeats a combined
French and
Spanish fleet off the coast of Spain under
Admiral Villeneuve. It signalled the virtual end of French maritime power and left Britain navally unchallenged until the twentieth century.
* 1805 -
Napoleonic Wars: Austrian
General Mack surrenders his army to the
Grand Army of
Napoleon at
Ulm, reaping
Napoleon over 30,000 prisoners and inflicting 10,000 casualties on the losers. Ulm was considered to be one of Napoleon's finest hours.
*
1824 -
Joseph Aspdin patents
Portland cement.
*
1854 -
Florence Nightingale and a staff of 38
nurses were sent to the
Crimean War.
*
1861 -
American Civil War:
Battle of Ball's Bluff -
Union forces under Colonel
Edward Baker are defeated by
Confederate troops in the second major battle of the war. Baker, a close friend of
Abraham Lincoln, is killed in the fighting.
*
1867 -
Manifest Destiny:
Medicine Lodge Treaty - Near
Medicine Lodge, Kansas a landmark treaty is signed by southern
Great Plains Indian leaders. The treaty requires
Native American Plains tribes to relocate a reservation in western
Oklahoma.
*
1879 - Using a filament of
carbonized thread,
Thomas Edison tests the first practical electric
incandescent light bulb (it lasted 13 1/2 hours before burning out).
*
1895 - The
Republic of Formosa collapses as
Japanese forces invade.
*
1902 - In the
United States, a five month
strike by
United Mine Workers ends.
*
1921 - President
Warren G. Harding delivers the first speech by a sitting President against lynching in the deep south.
*
1941 -
World War II: massacre in
Kragujevac,
Yugoslavia. Thousands of civilians are killed in retaliation for an attack on
German soldiers.
*
1944 - The first
kamikaze attack:
HMAS Australia was hit by a
Japanese plane carrying a 200 kg (441 pound)
bomb off
Leyte Island, as the
Battle of Leyte Gulf began.
*
1945 -
Women's suffrage: Women are allowed to vote in
France for the first time.
* 1945 -
Argentine military officer and
politician Juan Perón married
actress Evita.
*
1947 - 21 die as a fire destroys an
asylum in
Hoff,
Germany.
*
1954 - The first part of
JRR Tolkien's
The Lord of the Rings, the
The Fellowship of the Ring is published in the
U.S.A.*
1957 - The movie
Jailhouse Rock, starring
Elvis Presley, opens.
*
1959 - In
New York City, the
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum opens to the public. It was designed by
Frank Lloyd Wright.
* 1959 - US President
Dwight D. Eisenhower signs an
executive order transferring
Wernher von Braun and other
German scientists from the
United States Army to
NASA.
*
1965 -
Helen Schucman commits the first lines of
A Course in Miracles to paper.
*
1966 -
Aberfan disaster: A coal tip falls on the village of
Aberfan in
Wales, killing 144 people, mostly schoolchildren
*
1967 -
Vietnam War: More than 100,000
war protesters gather in
Washington, DC. A peaceful rally at the
Lincoln Memorial is followed by a march to
The Pentagon and clashes with soldiers and
United States Marshals protecting the facility (event lasts until
October 23; 683 people were arrested). Similar demonstrations occurred simultaneously in
Japan and
Western Europe.
*
1969 - A coup d'état in
Somalia brings
Siad Barre to power.
*
1973 -
John Paul Getty III's ear is cut off by his kidnappers and sent to a newspaper in
Rome; it doesn't arrive until
November 8.
*
1977 - The
European Patent Institute is founded
* 1977 -
Meat Loaf's hit album
Bat Out of Hell is released under Epic's Cleveland International Records
*
1978 -
Australian civilian pilot
Frederick Valentich vanishes in a
Cessna 182 over the
Bass Strait south of
Melbourne, after reporting contact with an unidentified aircraft.
*
1983 - The
metre is defined at the seventeenth General Conference on Weights and Measures in terms of the
speed of light as the distance light travels in a
vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second.
*
1986 - In
Lebanon, pro-
Iranian kidnappers claim to have abducted
American writer
Edward Tracy (he was released in August
1991).
*
1987 - Former
Miss America Bess Myerson is arrested on charges of bribery, conspiracy, and mail fraud, all involving an alimony-fixing scandal. She is later found not guilty.
*
1994 -
North Korea nuclear weapons program:
North Korea and the
United States sign an agreement that requires North Korea to stop its
nuclear weapons program and agree to inspections.
*
2002 - Violence in
Badlapur located in
Mumbai Conurbation created a tension in the city, with a lot of property damage which also injured 4 people.
*
2003 -
Trans-Neptunian object 2003 UB313 is discovered.
*
2004 - The
Boston Red Sox defeat the
New York Yankees 10-3 in Game 7 of the
American League Championship Series, becoming the first team to successfully overcome a three games to none deficit.
*
1328 -
Hongwu Emperor of China (d.
1398)
*
1449 -
George, Duke of Clarence, brother of
Edward IV of England and
Richard III of England (d.
1478)
*
1527 -
Louis I, Cardinal of Guise, French cardinal (d.
1578)
*
1581 -
Domenico Zampieri, Italian painter (d.
1641)
*
1650 -
Jean Bart, French admiral (d.
1702)
*
1660 -
Georg Ernst Stahl, German scientist (d.
1734)
*
1675 -
Emperor Higashiyama of Japan (d.
1710)
*
1687 -
Nicolaus I Bernoulli, Swiss mathematician (d.
1759)
*
1712 - Sir
James Denham Steuart, 4th Baronet, British economist (d.
1780)
*
1725 -
Franz Moritz Graf von Lacy, Austrian field marshal (d.
1801)
*
1757 -
Pierre François Charles Augereau, duc de Castiglione, French marshal (d.
1816)
*
1762 -
Herman Willem Daendels, Dutch statesman (d.
1818)
*
1772 -
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, British poet (d.
1834)
*
1775 -
Giuseppe Baini, Italian composer (d.
1844)
*
1790 -
Alphonse de Lamartine, French writer (d.
1869)
*
1833 -
Alfred Nobel, Swedish inventor and founder of the Nobel Prize (d.
1896)
*
1847 -
Giuseppe Giacosa, Italian writer (d.
1906)
*
1851 -
George Ulyett, British cricketer (d.
1898)
*
1895 -
Edna Purviance, American actress (d.
1958)
*
1904 -
Patrick Kavanagh, Irish poet (d.
1967)
*
1912 - Sir
Georg Solti, Hungarian conductor (d.
1997)
*
1914 -
Martin Gardner, American mathematician and writer
*
1917 -
Dizzy Gillespie, American musician (d.
1993)
*
1921 -
Malcolm Arnold, British composer
*
1924 -
Celia Cruz, Cuban singer (d.
2003)
*
1928 -
Whitey Ford, baseball player
*
1929 -
Ursula K. Le Guin, American author
*
1940 -
Geoff Boycott, British cricketer
* 1940 -
Manfred Mann, British musician
*
1941 -
Steve Cropper, American musician
*
1942 -
Elvin Bishop, American musician
* 1942 -
Judy Sheindlin, American judge and television host
*
1943 -
Brian Piccolo, American football player (d.
1970)
*
1949 -
Benjamin Netanyahu, 9th
Prime Minister of Israel* 1949 -
Mike Keenan, Canadian
hockey coach/GM
*
1952 -
Trevor Chappell, Australian Cricketer
*
1953 -
Peter Mandelson, British politician
* 1953 -
Keith Green, American musician (d.
1982)
*
1955 -
Rich Mullins, American musician (d.
1997)
*
1956 -
Carrie Fisher, American actress and writer
*
1957 -
Wolfgang Ketterle, German physicist,
Nobel Prize laueate
* 1957 -
Steve Lukather, American musician
*
1959 -
Ken Watanabe, Japanese actor
*
1962 -
David Campese, Australian rugby player
*
1964 -
Jon Carin, American musician (
Pink Floyd,
The Who)
*
1967 -
Paul Ince, British footballer
*
1971 -
Nick Oliveri, American musician
*
1972 -
Felicity Andersen, Australian actress
*
1973 -
Lera Auerbach, Russian composer
*
1976 -
Lavinia Miloşovici, Romanian gymnast
*
1978 -
Joey Harrington, American football player
*
1980 -
Brian Pittman, American musician (Inhale Exhale, formerly of
Relient K)
*
1981 -
Nemanja Vidic. Serbian footballer
*
1984 -
Kieran Richardson, British footballer
*
1986 -
Alex Kew, British child actor
*
310 -
Pope Eusebius*
1125 -
Cosmas of Prague, Bohemian writer
*
1221 -
Alix of Thouars, Duchess of Brittany (b.
1201)
*
1266 -
Birger jarl, Swedish statesman and founder of Stockholm (b.
1210)
*
1422 - King
Charles VI of France (b.
1368)
*
1500 -
Emperor Go-Tsuchimikado of Japan (b.
1442)
*
1558 -
Julius Caesar Scaliger, Italian humanist scholar (b.
1484)
*
1600 -
Toda Katsushige, Japanese warlord (b.
1557)
*
1623 -
William Wade, English statesman and diplomat (b.
1546)
*
1662 -
Henry Lawes, English composer (b.
1595)
*
1687 - Sir
Edmund Waller, English poet (b.
1606)
*
1765 -
Giovanni Paolo Pannini, Italian painter and architect (b.
1691)
*
1775 -
Peyton Randolph, American president of the Continental Congress (b.
1721)
*
1777 -
Samuel Foote, English dramatist and actor (b.
1720)
*
1805 -
Horatio Nelson, British admiral (mortally wounded in battle) (b.
1758)
*
1872 -
Jacques Babinet, French physicist (b.
1794)
*
1873 -
Johann Sebastian Welhaven, Norwegian poet (b.
1807)
*
1896 -
James Henry Greathead, British engineer (b.
1844)
*
1904 -
Isabelle Eberhardt, explorer and writer who spent a lot of time in North Africa (b.
1877)
*
1931 -
Arthur Schnitzler, Austrian writer (b.
1862)
*
1944 -
Alois Kayser, German missionary to Nauru (b.
1877)
*
1969 -
Jack Kerouac, American novelist (b.
1922)
* 1969 -
Waclaw Sierpinski, Polish mathematician (b.
1882)
*
1975 -
Charles Reidpath, American athlete (b.
1887)
*
1980 -
Hans Asperger, Austrian psychologist (b.
1906)
*
1984 -
François Truffaut, French film director (b.
1932)
*
1986 -
Lionel Murphy, Australian politician and judge (b.
1922)
*
1995 -
Shannon Hoon, American singer (
Blind Melon) (b.
1967)
* 1995 -
Jesús Blasco, Spanish comic book author (b.
1919)
*
2003 -
Fred Berry, American actor (b.
1951)
* 2003 -
Luis A. Ferré, Governor of Puerto Rico (b.
1940)
* 2003 -
Louise Day Hicks, American politician (b.
1916)
* 2003 -
Elliott Smith, American musician (b.
1969)
*
R.C. saints -
Saint Ursula and her 11 (or 11000) virgins; Saint
Hilarion* Also see
October 21 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)*
Republic of China -
Overseas Chinese Day
*
Trafalgar Day — celebrated throughout much of the
British Empire in the
19th and early
20th Century.
*
International Day of the Nacho — celebrated in the
United States and
Mexico since the early
1990s.
*
Diwali in
India (
2006)
*
French Republican Calendar -
Tonneau (Barrel) Day, thirtieth day in the
Month of Vendémiaire* In the comic novel
Good Omens by
Neil Gaiman and
Terry Pratchett, the
Earth was born on this day in
4004 BC, within a quarter of an hour of 9 in the morning. This was supposedly because God liked to get things over with early.
*
BBC: On This DayOctober 20 -
October 22 -
September 21 -
November 21 – more
historical anniversaries
