Today's 21 October Major Events in History

• 310 St. Eusebius ends his reign as Catholic Pope

• 681 Visigoth King Erwig of Hispania updates the law code "Liber Iudiciorum," inserting a number concerning Jews
• 686 Conon begins his reign as Catholic pope
• 1096 Sultan Kilij Arslan of Nicaea defeats the People's Crusade at the Battle of Civetot; only about 3,000 out of 20,000 Crusaders survive
• 1187 Alberto de Morra is elected as Pope Gregorius VIII (12/17/1187)

Luther Joins the Faculty

1512 Martin Luther joins the theological faculty of the University of Wittenberg

Magellan Transits the Magellan Strait

1520 Explorer Ferdinand Magellan and his fleet reach Cape Virgenes after transiting the Strait of Magellan between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, becoming the first Europeans to sail into the Pacific [1]

• 1555 English Parliament refuses to recognize Philip of Spain as king

Lord of Culemborg

1555 Holy Roman Emperor Charles V makes Erard of Pallandt the Lord of Culemborg

• 1568 Second Altenburg sermon: Philippists/Gnesio-Lutherans
• 1591 Dutch city of Nijmegen surrenders to Maurice, Prince of Orange during the Dutch Revolt against the Spanish
• 1601 Memorial service for Daitokuji's Shinju is held for Ikkyu Sojun in Kyoto

Battle of the Dunes

1639 Sea battle at Dunes: Dutch fleet under Maarten Tromp defeats Spanish armada under Antonio de Oquendo

• 1652 King Louis XIV returns to Paris
• 1708 Dutch and English troops occupy Lille (Rijsel)
• 1727 Russian and Chinese agree to correct boundaries
• 1774 First display of the word "Liberty" on a flag raised by colonists in Taunton, Massachusetts, in defiance of British rule in Colonial America
• 1789 French Revolution: The National Assembly declares martial law in France to prevent uprisings
• 1797 The USS Constitution (Old Ironsides) is launched in Boston

Absorption of Gases by Water

1803 English scientist John Dalton reads his paper "On the Absorption of Gases by Water and Other Liquids" to the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, outlining his atomic theory

1805 Battle of Trafalgar: British Admiral Horatio Nelson defeats the combined French and Spanish fleet. Nelson is shot and killed during the battle.

• 1816 Oldest English-language school in Southeast Asia, Penang Free School is founded in George Town, Penang, Malaysia, by English clergyman Rev. Hutchings
• 1824 Joseph Aspdin patents Portland cement in Yorkshire, England

• 1858 Jacques Offenbach's operetta "Orpheus in the Underworld" (Orphée aux Enfers) premieres in Paris and includes "Infernal Galop" (can-can tune)
• 1861 Battle of Ball's Bluff, Virginia, is fought in Leesburg, Loudoun County
• 1864 Battle of Westport, Missouri (Kansas City)
• 1868 Severe earthquake at 7:53 am, centered in Hayward, California
• 1869 First shipment of fresh oysters comes overland from Baltimore
• 1871 First US Amateur Outdoor Athletic Games in New York

• 1887 Detroit clinches the best-of-15 touring World Championship with its eighth victory in Game 11 in Baltimore, 13-3
• 1895 The Republic of Formosa collapses as Japanese forces invade
• 1897 Yerkes Observatory of the University of Chicago is dedicated
• 1899 Battle of Elandslaagte, Natal (Boers vs. British Army)
• 1902 A five-month strike by United Mine Workers ends in the US
• 1905 In early promotion of soccer in America, England Pilgrim Association XI beats All New York XI 7-1 at the Polo Grounds, New York
• 1911 Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta unions form the Western Canada Rugby Football Union
• 1911 R.S. Hichens and M. Hudson's "Garden of Allah" premieres in New York City
• 1913 Transvaal women satyagrahis begin defiance activities by hawking without licenses in Vereeniging and cross the Natal border to encourage the miners in Newcastle to strike
• 1914 Battle of Warsaw ends with German defeat
• 1915 First transatlantic radiotelephone message, Arlington, Virginia, to Paris

American Note to Britain

1915 William Jennings Bryan's successor as US Secretary of State, Robert Lansing, sends a note to Britain protesting interference with US shipping

• 1917 First Americans to see action on front lines of WWI: US troops enter front lines at Sommervillier under French command
• 1917 Petrograd's garrison accepts the Revolutionary Military Committee
• 1918 Margaret Owen sets a world typing speed record of 170 wpm for one minute
• 1921 Former Hungarian King Karl stages a second attempted coup and is arrested
• 1921 Tuschinski Theatre opens in Amsterdam
• 1925 Sidney Howard's "Lucky Sam McGarver" premieres in New York City

Asturias Offensive

1937 Francisco Franco's nationalist troops occupy Gijón, ending the resistance in Asturias

• 1938 Japanese troops occupy Canton
• 1940 RAF drops first anti-Nazi pamphlets on Netherlands
• 1941 Nazi occupiers murder over 2,000 inhabitants of Kragujevac, Serbia in second day of retribution campaign for uprising in which 10 German soldiers were killed; total Serbian deaths estimated at over 2,700
• 1943 German occupiers liquidate the ghetto of Minsk, Belarus, transporting the last remaining 4,000 Jews to their deaths at the Nazi extermination camp Maly Trostinets
• 1944 Canadian troops occupy Breskens
• 1944 US troops capture Aachen, the first large German city to fall in World War II
• 1944 Walter Piston's "Fugue on a Victory Tune" premieres in New York City [1]
• 1945 Women in France are allowed to vote for the first time
• 1947 Dutch Dakota explodes near Copenhagen, killing 16 people
• 1948 Beersheba is liberated by the Israeli army
• 1948 Dutch Constellation crashes at Prestwick, Scotland, killing 40 people
• 1948 Facsimile high-speed radio transmission is demonstrated in Washington, D.C.
• 1948 UN rejects Russian proposal to destroy atomic weapons

Huxley Congratulates Orwell

1949 Aldous Huxley, author of "Brave New World," writes to congratulate George Orwell on his new novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four"

• 1950 Chinese Communist forces occupy Tibet
• 1950 Death penalty abolished in Belgium
• 1950 Tom Powers of Duke scores six touchdowns
• 1952 Dutch government refuses New Guinea (West Irian)
• 1954 Indonesian troops land in New Guinea
• 1957 Giants purchase Class-A Phoenix team
• 1958 First woman in British House of Lords
• 1959 Contra revolutionaries bomb Havana

• 1959 Players Association approves two All-Star Games in 1960 to be held in Kansas City and New York
• 1960 First British nuclear submarine HMS Dreadnought is launched

• 1961 Barbra Streisand opens Off-Broadway musical-comedy revue "Another Evening With Harry Stoones"
• 1961 USSR performs a nuclear test at Sary Shagan, USSR

Bikila First to Win Marathon Twice

1964 Abebe Bikila of Ethiopia runs a world record 2:12:11.2 to beat Briton Basil Heatley by more than 4 minutes and win the men's marathon at the Tokyo Olympics; he is the first athlete to win the Olympic marathon twice

• 1964 MLB Milwaukee Braves ask NL to allow them to move to Atlanta, Georgia
• 1964 New Zealand athlete Peter Snell wins the 1,500 m at the Tokyo Olympics, his second gold medal of the Games after winning the 800 m and his third career gold
• 1964 Polish 4×100m women's relay team of Teresa Ciepły, Irena Kirszenstein, Halina Górecka, and Ewa Kłobukowska runs a world record 43.6 to beat the US by 0.3 seconds and win the gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics

Society Hill Towers

1964 Society Hill Towers, a complex of three 31-story skyscrapers designed by I. M. Pei and Associates, is inaugurated in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

• 1964 The American men's 4×400 m relay team of Ollan Cassell, Mike Larrabee, Ulis Williams, and Henry Carr beats Great Britain by 0.9 seconds to set a world record of 3:00.7 and win the gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics

• 1964 US 4 x 100 m men's relay team of Paul Drayton, Gerry Ashworth, Richard Stebbins, and Bob Hayes runs a world record 39.0 to beat Poland by 0.3 seconds and win the gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics
• 1965 Comet Ikeya-Seki approaches perihelion, passing 450,000 kilometers from the Sun and becoming one of the brightest comets seen in a millennium
• 1965 KTWU TV channel 11 in Topeka, KS (PBS) begins broadcasting
• 1965 Nobel prize in chemistry is awarded to Robert B. Woodward
• 1965 Vivian Beaumont Theater opens in New York City

1966 116 children and 28 adults die as a coal waste heap slides and engulfs a school in Aberfan, South Wales

• 1967 Egypt sinks an Israeli torpedo boat
• 1967 Tens of thousands of anti-Vietnam War protesters march on the Pentagon, besieging the military headquarters for two days
• 1969 Bloodless coup in Somalia (National Day)

Willy Brand Elected Chancellor

1969 German statesman Willy Brandt is elected chancellor of West Germany (1969-1974)

• 1969 Leonard Gersh's "Butterflies are Free" premieres in New York City
• 1969 Major General Mohamed Siad Barre becomes President of Somalia
• 1970 777 couples from around the world wed in a mass wedding ceremony hosted by the Unification Church in Seoul, South Korea
• 1970 Bernadette Devlin is released from prison after serving four months of her six-month sentence for riotous behavior
• 1970 Caledonian Airways takes over British United Airways
• 1970 Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to Norman E. Borlaug

Nobel Prize in Literature

1971 Nobel prize in literature is awarded to Pablo Neruda

• 1971 USSR performs a nuclear test at the Semipalatinsk Test Site in northeastern Kazakhstan
• 1971 William H. Rehnquist and Lewis F. Powell are nominated to the US Supreme Court by Nixon following the resignations of Justices Hugo Black and John Harlan
• 1973 Fred Dryer of the Los Angeles Rams becomes the first player in NFL history to score two safeties in the same game
• 1974 NHL New York Islanders and goaltender Billy Smith achieve their first shutout win, 5-0, against the Washington Capitals

Nighthawks at the Diner

1975 Asylum Records releases "Nighthawks at the Diner," the third studio album by singer-songwriter Tom Waits; the double LP was recorded with a live audience in a simulated nightclub setting

• 1975 Coast Guard Academy first allows women to enroll
• 1975 Mexico City's first major subway accident takes 26 lives
• 1975 Red Sox Carlton Fisk's 12th-inning HR beats Reds 7-6 in Game 6 of the World Series
• 1975 USSR performs a nuclear test at Novaya Zemlya, USSR

Nobel Prize in Literature

1976 Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded to American Saul Bellow

NY Knicks Retire #19

1976 The NY Knicks retire their first number, #19, for Willis Reed

• 1977 The European Patent Institute is founded
• 1977 US recalls William Bowdler, ambassador to South Africa
• 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

Moshe Dayan Resigns

1979 Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Moshe Dayan resigns

• 1979 Ozzie Newsome begins an NFL streak of 150 consecutive games with receptions

• 1980 Phillies win their first World Championship in their 98-year history

Funeral of Bess Truman

1982 Private funeral service held for Bess Truman, former First Lady of the United States

1984 Austrian Ferrari driver Niki Lauda becomes a three-time Formula 1 World Drivers' Champion when he finishes second in the season-ending Portuguese Grand Prix at Estoril; wins the title by just 0.5 points from Alain Prost

• 1984 Cleveland Browns' Steve Cox sets a club record with a 60-yard field goal
• 1984 Steve Jones runs the Chicago Marathon in a world record time of 2:08:05
• 1985 Qasim Omar (206) and Javed Miandad (203*) make a 397-run stand against Sri Lanka
• 1986 American writer Edward Tracy is kidnapped in Beirut
• 1986 Hugh Whitemore's "Breaking the Code" premieres in London
• 1986 IBM reforms in South Africa
• 1986 Republic of the Marshall Islands signs Compact of Free Association with the US
• 1987 Full US Senate debate begins on Robert Bork's nomination to the Supreme Court

Nobel Prize for Economics

1987 Nobel Prize in Economics is awarded to American Robert Solow for his theory of economic growth

• 1987 Seventh Belgian government of Martens forms
• 1988 Bat*21, an American war film, is released
• 1988 Boston Celtics beat Yugoslavia 113-85 in Madrid

• 1989 Bertram Lee and Peter Bynoe purchase the Denver Nuggets for $65 million, becoming the first African American owners of a major sports team
• 1989 Buck Helm is found alive after being buried for four days in the San Francisco earthquake
• 1989 Houston becomes the first major college team to gain 1000 yards in a game

1990 Ayrton Senna of Brazil crashes his McLaren during the Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka but clinches his second Formula 1 World Drivers' Championship

• 1990 First Apple Day is held in Covent Garden, London
• 1991 24 people die in a fire in Oakland, California

Jerry Brown Runs for President

1991 Former California Governor Jerry Brown announces his run for the US Presidency

• 1991 US hostage Jesse Turner is released after 5 years in captivity in Beirut
• 1992 Madonna's book "Sex" goes on sale
• 1993 Garry Kasparov defeats Nigel Short for the chess championship
• 1993 In a failed military coup in Burundi led by ex-President Jean-Baptiste Bagaza, 525,000 Hutus flee and President Melchior Ndadaye is assassinated
• 1994 Hana Bridge in Seoul, Korea, collapses, killing over 32 people
• 1994 North Korea signs a pact to end its nuclear projects
• 1995 Addison Vance, 18, of Hickory, North Carolina, is crowned the 7th Ms. Venus Swimwear
• 1995 Mario Tremblay is selected as the 22nd head coach of the Montreal Canadiens

Contra la Corriente

1997 Marc Anthony releases his third studio album "Contra la Corriente," the first salsa album to top the Latin album chart, and wins a Grammy for Best Tropical Latin Performance

United We Stand

2001 "United We Stand" benefit concert for September 11, 2001, terrorist attack victims is held at RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C., organized and headlined by Michael Jackson and featuring Aerosmith, Mariah Carey, and The Backstreet Boys

• 2003 Images of Eris are taken by the team of Michael E. Brown, Chad Trujillo, and David L. Rabinowitz, leading to the discovery of the dwarf planet

• 2007 Tennessee Titans kicker Rob Bironas sets an NFL record for the most points scored in a game (no touchdowns) with 26 in a 38-36 win over the Texans at Reliant Stadium, Houston

First Native American Saint

2012 Kateri Tekakwitha is canonized by Pope Benedict XVI, becoming the first Native American saint

Canada Honors Malala

2013 The Parliament of Canada confers Honorary Canadian citizenship on women's rights and education activist Malala Yousafzai

• 2014 Oscar Pistorius is sentenced to five years in prison for killing his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp
• 2015 Alex Puccio ascends Free Range in Boulder Canyon, Colorado, climbing V13 (8B) after recovering from a knee injury
• 2015 German Chancellor Angela Merkel states that Germany's view of the Holocaust will not change after Benjamin Netanyahu claims the idea came from the Mufti of Jerusalem

Spain Suspends Catalonia's Autonomy

2017 Spanish government suspends Catalonia's autonomy in the face of a deepening political crisis over the region's push for independence

Mark Twain Prize for American Humor

2018 Julia Louis-Dreyfus is presented with the Mark Twain Prize, comedy's top honor, at a ceremony in Washington, D.C.

• 2018 Sectarian fighting between Muslim and Christian youths kills 55 in Kasuwan Magani, Nigeria
• 2018 Train derails in Yilan County, Taiwan, killing 18 and injuring 178
• 2019 Australia's biggest newspapers all blank out their front pages in protest against press restrictions

Liberals Form Minority Government

2019 Canadian Federal Election: Justin Trudeau's Liberal Party loses its majority but wins the most seats, 157, to form a minority government

• 2019 Facebook announces it has taken down four state-backed disinformation campaigns: three from Iran and one from Russia, in addition to dozens earlier this year
• 2019 Lebanese government approves economic reforms after five days of protests, the largest in a decade
• 2019 Thailand's King Vajiralongkorn strips his royal consort Sineenat Wongvajirapakdi of her titles for "misbehavior and disloyalty against the monarch" two months after she is appointed to them
• 2019 World's oldest natural pearl, 8,000 years old, is discovered during excavations at Marawah Island near Abu Dhabi, UAE
• 2020 FBI says Iran and Russia have US voter information and are trying to influence the outcome of the US election
• 2020 NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft lands briefly on asteroid Bennu on a mission to collect dust, the largest sample from space since Apollo
• 2020 Parents of 545 children cannot be found after being separated at the US-Mexico border, according to the American Civil Liberties Union

Francesco

2020 Pope Francis backs same-sex civil unions in interview in documentary film "Francesco"

• 2020 Spain becomes the first European country to record more than 1 million COVID-19 cases, with the death toll at 34,366
• 2021 Actor Alec Baldwin shoots cinematographer Halyna Hutchins dead and injures director Joel Souza with a prop gun during a rehearsal on a film set at Bonanza Creek Ranch, New Mexico
• 2021 Syria's government says it has executed 24 people for starting devastating wildfires in 2020 that killed three people [1]
• 2024 Australian independent indigenous senator Lidia Thorpe shouts at King Charles, "You are not our king" and "This is not your land" during the king's visit to the Australian Parliament in Canberra [1]
• 2024 Findings are published of a massive collision of Earth with a large meteorite, four times the size of Mt. Everest, 3.26 billion years ago, so big it boiled the oceans and may have kickstarted early life [1]
• 2024 The "Great Cheese Robbery": A scam is reported to police involving the theft of rare English Cheddar worth about 300,000 pounds from Neal’s Yard Dairy in London [1]