What Happened on October 21
Significant Events
- 1805 Battle of Trafalgar: British Admiral Horatio Nelson defeats combined French and Spanish fleet. Nelson shot and killed during battle.
- 1854 Florence Nightingale with a staff of 38 nurses is sent to the Crimean War
- 1944 World War II: US troops capture Aachen, 1st large German city to fall
- 1948 UN rejects Russian proposal to destroy atomic weapons
- 1950 Chinese forces occupy Tibet
- 1993 Military coup by Burundi President Ndadaye; 525,000 Hutus flee
Did You Know?
Explorer Ferdinand Magellan and his fleet reach Cape Virgenes and become the first Europeans to sail into the Pacific Ocean
On October 21, 1520
Famous Birthdays
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(1772 - 1834)
Alfred Nobel
(1833 - 1896)
Whitey Ford
89 Years Old
Benjamin Netanyahu
68 Years Old
Carrie Fisher
(1956 - 2016)
Kim Kardashian
37 Years Old
Would You Believe?
Margaret Owen sets world typing speed record of 170 wpm for 1 min
On October 21, 1918
Famous Weddings
- 1917 Irish poet and playwright William Butler Yeats (52) weds Georgie Hyde-Lees (25)
- 1929 Bank robber Willie Sutton (28) weds Louise Leudemann
- 1948 Science fiction pioneering author "Stranger in a Strange Land" Robert A. Heinlein marries 3rd wife Virginia "Ginny" Gerstenfeld
- 1977 Actor Peter Boyle (42) weds Loraine Alterman at the United Nations chapel in Manhattan
- 1995 "Family Ties" actress Meredith Baxter (48) weds screenwriter Michael Blodgett (56) in Los Angeles
Horatio Nelson
Jack Kerouac
Ben BradleeOctober in History
Grim History of London's Speakers' Corner
Nowhere in England is the principal of free speech embodied more than at Speakers’ Corner in London’s Hyde Park. But this right was won through death and protest.
October 14, 1855
Hurricane on the Way? Don't Worry
A cosy assurance from a BBC weather forecaster for viewers not to worry about an impending storm has gone down as the most spectacular mis-forecast in history.
October 15, 1987
Test of Time for the Date of Creation
The assertion by a 17th Century bishop that the universe was created on this day in the year 4004 BC was put to the test in a famous trial in the United States.
October 23, 4004 BC
The Charge of the Light Brigade, a Brave and Foolish Tale
The Charge of the Light Brigade is infamous as an act of bravery in the face all insurmountable odds. An event immortalized in poetry by Alfred Tennyson.
October 25, 1854