October 21st Events |
Read about how to open files in Open File Database. |
| October 21st, 2007 (October 21 2007) | Event | San Diego County has its worst wildfire disaster in San Diegan history as the Harris and Witch Fires blazed across the county. Together, they have burned at least 200,000 acres (810 km?) of landied in Only one casualty has been reported. | |
| October 21st, 2003 (October 21 2003) | Event | Images of the dwarf planet Eris are taken and subsequently used in its discovery by the team of Michael E. Brown, Chad Trujillo, and David L. Rabinowitz. | |
| October 21st, 2001 (October 21 2001) | Event | "United We Stand" benefit concert for September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks victims, held at RFK Stadium in Washington, DC. Event organized and headlined by Michael Jackson, also featuring pop stars Aerosmith, Mariah Carey, The Backstreet Boys, and others. | Michael Jackson Quotes |
| October 21st, 1995 (October 21 1995) | Event | Dayton Agreement The General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina. | |
| October 21st, 1994 (October 21 1994) | Event | 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. | |
| October 21st, 1994 (October 21 1994) | Event | In Seoul, 32 people are killed when the Seongsu Bridge collapses. | |
| October 21st, 1990 (October 21 1990) | Event | The first Apple Day, is held in Covent Garden, London. | |
| October 21st, 1987 (October 21 1987) | Event | 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. | |
| October 21st, 1986 (October 21 1986) | Event | In Lebanon, pro-Iranian kidnappers claim to have abducted American writer Edward Tracy (he was released in August 1991). | |
| October 21st, 1983 (October 21 1983) | Event | 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. | |
| October 21st, 1978 (October 21 1978) | Event | Australian civilian pilot Frederick Valentich vanishes in a Cessna 182 over the Bass Strait south of Melbourne, after reporting contact with an unidentified aircraft. | |
| October 21st, 1977 (October 21 1977) | Event | The European Patent Institute is founded. | |
| October 21st, 1973 (October 21 1973) | Event | 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. | |
| October 21st, 1973 (October 21 1973) | Event | Fred Dryer of the then Los Angeles Rams becomes the first player in NFL history to score two safeties in the same game. | |
| October 21st, 1969 (October 21 1969) | Event | A coup d etat in Somalia brings Siad Barre to power. | |
| October 21st, 1967 (October 21 1967) | Event | 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. | |
| October 21st, 1966 (October 21 1966) | Event | Aberfan disaster: A coal tip falls on the village of Aberfan in Wales, killing 144 people, mostly schoolchildren. | |
| October 21st, 1965 (October 21 1965) | Event | Comet Ikeya-Seki approaches perihelion, passing 450,000 kilometers from the sun. | |
| October 21st, 1959 (October 21 1959) | Event | In New York City, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum opens to the public. It was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. | Frank Lloyd Wright Quotes |
| October 21st, 1959 (October 21 1959) | Event | US President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs an executive order transferring Wernher von Braun and other German scientists from the United States Army to NASA. | Wernher von Braun Quotes |
| October 21st, 1945 (October 21 1945) | Event | Women s suffrage: Women are allowed to vote in France for the first time. | |
| October 21st, 1945 (October 21 1945) | Event | Argentine military officer and politician Juan Peron married actress Evita. | |
| October 21st, 1944 (October 21 1944) | Event | 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. | |
| October 21st, 1941 (October 21 1941) | Event | 7000 Serbs were shot in Kragujevac, Serbia by Nazi Germans. | |
| October 21st, 1921 (October 21 1921) | Event | President Warren G. Harding delivers the first speech by a sitting President against lynching in the deep south. | Warren G. Harding Quotes |
| October 21st, 1902 (October 21 1902) | Event | In the United States, a five month strike by United Mine Workers ends. | |
| October 21st, 1895 (October 21 1895) | Event | The Republic of Formosa collapses as Japanese forces invade. | |
| October 21st, 1892 (October 21 1892) | Event | Opening ceremonies for the World s Columbian Exposition were held in Chicago, though because construction was behind schedule, the exposition did not open until May 1, 1893. | |
| October 21st, 1879 (October 21 1879) | Event | Using a filament of carbonized thread, Thomas Edison tests the first practical electric incandescent light bulb (it lasted 13? hours before burning out). | |
| October 21st, 1867 (October 21 1867) | Event | Manifest Destiny: Medicine Lodge TreatyNear 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. | |
| October 21st, 1861 (October 21 1861) | Event | American Civil War: Battle of Ball s BluffUnion 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. | Abraham Lincoln Quotes |
| October 21st, 1854 (October 21 1854) | Event | Florence Nightingale and a staff of 38 nurses were sent to the Crimean War. | Florence Nightingale Quotes |
| October 21st, 1824 (October 21 1824) | Event | Joseph Aspdin patents Portland cement. | |
| October 21st, 1816 (October 21 1816) | Event | The Penang Free School is founded in George Town, Penang, Malaysia, by the Rev Hutchings. It is the oldest English-language school in Southeast Asia. | |
| October 21st, 1805 (October 21 1805) | Event | 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. | |
| October 21st, 1805 (October 21 1805) | Event | 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. | |
| October 21st, 1797 (October 21 1797) | Event | In Boston Harbor, the 44-gun United States Navy frigate USS Constitution is launched. | |
| October 21st, 1774 (October 21 1774) | Event | 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. | |
| October 21st, 1600 (October 21 1600) | Event | 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. | |
| October 21st, 1520 (October 21 1520) | Event | Ferdinand Magellan discovers a strait now known as Strait of Magellan. | |
| October 21st, 1512 (October 21 1512) | Event | Martin Luther joins the theological faculty of the University of Wittenberg. | Martin Luther Quotes |
