21 October History


Month:                           Date:     

  • 1096    -    Seljuk Turks at Chivitot slaughter thousands of German crusaders.
  • 1529    -    The Pope names Henry VIII of England Defender of the Faith after defending the seven sacraments against Luther.
  • 1600    -    Tokugawa Ieyasu defeats his enemies in battle and affirms his position as Japan's most powerful warlord.
  • 1790    -    The Tricolor is chosen as the official flag of France.
  • 1805    -    Vice Admiral and Viscount Horatio Nelson wins his greatest victory over a Franco-Spanish fleet in the Battle of Trafalgar, fought off Cape Trafalgar, Spain. Nelson is fatally wounded in the battle, but lives long enough to see victory.
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  • 1837    -    Under a flag of truce during peace talks, U.S. troops siege the Indian Seminole Chief Osceola in Florida.
  • 1861    -    The Battle of Ball's Bluff, Va. begins, a disastrous Union defeat which sparks Congressional investigations.
  • 1867    -    Many leaders of the Kiowa, Comanche and Kiowa-Apache sign a peace treaty at Medicine Lodge, Kan. Comanche Chief Quanah Parker refused to accept the treaty terms.
  • 1872    -    The U.S. Naval Academy admits John H. Conyers, the first African American to be accepted.
  • 1879    -    After 14 months of testing, Thomas Edison first demonstrates his electric lamp, hoping to one day compete with gaslight.
  • 1904    -    Panamanians clash with U.S. Marines in Panama in a brief uprising.
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  • 1917    -    The first U.S. troops enter the front lines at Sommerviller under French command.
  • 1939    -    As war heats up with Germany, the British war cabinet holds its first meeting in the underground war room in London.
  • 1940    -    Ernest Hemingway's novel For Whom the Bell Tolls is published.
  • 1942    -    Eight American and British officers land from a submarine on an Algerian beach to take measure of Vichy French to the Operation Torch landings.
  • 1950    -    North Korean Premier Kim Il-Sung establishes a new capital at Sinuiju on the Yalu River opposite the Chinese City of Antung.
  • 1959    -    The Guggenheim Museum, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, opens in Manhattan.
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  • 1961    -    Bob Dylan records his first album in a single day at a cost of $400.
  • 1967    -    The "March on the Pentagon," protesting American involvement in Vietnam , draws 50,000 protesters.
  • 1983    -    The United States sends a ten-ship task force to Grenada.

  • 21 October Birthdays

  • 1760    -    Katsushika Hokusai, Japanese printmaker.
  • 1772    -    Samuel Taylor Coleridge, English poet ("The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," "Kubla Khan").
  • 1833    -    Alfred Nobel, inventor of dynamite and founder of the Nobel Prizes.
  • 1917    -    Dizzy Gillespie, jazz trumpeter.
  • 1929    -    Ursula K. Le Guin, science fiction writer (The Left Hand of Darkness).