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October 21: Thomas Edison tests first lightbulb, Fisk hits winning Red Sox home run in Game 6
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Maine Fast Fact: The moose is Maine’s state animal and it is also Alaska’s state land mammal.
Births:
- 1772: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, English poet, literary critic and philosopher, one of the founders of the Romantic Movement and author of the poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Kahn
- 1808: Samuel F. Smith, American Baptist minister, writer of the hymns “America” and “My Country ‘Tis of Thee”
- 1883: Alfred Nobel, Swedish inventor, founder of the Nobel Prize
- 1886: Eugene Burton Ely, American aviation pioneer, credited with the first shipboard take off and landing
- 1906: Lillian Asplund, last American Titanic survivor
- 1917: Dizzy Gillespie, American musician, jazz trumpeter, bandleader, singer and composer
- 1942: Judy Sheindlin, American judge, known as Judge Judy
- 1950: Ronald McNair, American astronaut
- 1952: Brent Mydland, American musician, keyboardist for the rock band The Grateful Dead
- 1956: Carrie Fisher, American actress, screenwriter and novelist, known for her role as Princess Leia in the original Star Wars trilogy
- 1976: Jeremy Miller, American actor, known for his role as Ben Seaver on the television series Growing Pains
- 1982: Matt Dallas, American actor, known for his main role on the television series Kyle XY
- 1986: Natalee Holloway, American student, went missing on May 30, 2005 at a high school graduation trip to Aruba
Deaths:
- 1969: Jack Kerouac, American novelist
- 1995: Shannon Hoon, American musician, lead singer and frontman of the band Blind Melon
History:
- 1520: Ferdinand Magellan discovers the Strait of Magellan south of Chile.
- 1797: The USS Constitution is launched in Boston Harbor.
- 1879: Thomas Edison tests the first practical electric incandescent lightbulb using a filament of carbonized thread. The lightbulb lasts 13 and a half hours before burning out.
- 1917: American soldiers first see action on the front lines in France during World War I.
- 1921: President Warren G. Harding makes the first speech by a sitting president against lynching in the south.
- 1944: A Japanese plane carrying a 440 pound bomb attacks the HMAS Australia off Leyte Island in the Philippines, the first kamikaze attack.
- 1945: France allows women to vote for the first time.
- 1967: A protest against the Vietnam War takes place when more than 100,000 protesters gather in Washington, D.C., rally at the Lincoln Memorial, march to the Pentagon and clash with soldiers and U.S. Marshals when they arrive at the building. Similar demonstrations occur in Japan and Western Europe.
- 1971: President Richard Nixon nominates William H. Rehnquist and Lewis F. Powell to the U.S. Supreme Court.
- 1975: Boston Red Sox catcher Carlton “Pudge” Fisk hits a ball which strikes the left field foul pole in Fenway Park for a home run, giving the Red Sox a 7-6 victory in 12 innings against the Cincinnati Reds in Game 6 of the World Series.
- 1983: The meter is officially defined at the seventeenth General Conference on Weights and Measures as the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second.
- 1994: The United States and North Korea sign an agreement to require North Korea to stop its nuclear weapons program and agree to inspections.
- 2002: A car with explosives in it explodes next to a bus in northern Israel during rush hour, killing 14 people.
- 2003: Florida Governor Jeb Bush orders a feeding tube reinserted into Terry Schiavo, a brain-damaged woman, in a right-to-die legal battle.
October 21 is Apple Day in the United Kingdom. It is a day of celebration of apples and orchards with many local events and was first organized in 1990 by Common Ground, a UK charity and lobby group hoping to promote orchards the contributions they make to culture. It is also Overseas Chinese Day in China, a day to celebrate people of Chinese birth or decent living outside the People’s Republic of China.
Today in the British Empire is Trafalgar Day, a day that was held in the 19th and 20th centuries to celebrate the victory of the Royal Navy over the French and Spanish navies at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 during the Napoleonic Wars. Celebration declined after World War I when public perception of war changed from the feelings of victories to those of tragedies but the day is still marked as a public day each year. Today is also International Day of the Nacho in Mexico and the United States, a day to celebrate the life of Ignacio Anaya, inventor of the nachos during World War II in the city of Piedras Negras, Mexico.
