TODAY IN HISTORY
Today is the 294th day of 2021. There are 71 days left in the year.
Thursday, Oct. 21, Today’s Highlight
On Oct. 21, 1966, 144 people, 116 of them children, were killed when a coal waste landslide engulfed a school and some 20 houses in Aberfan, Wales.
On this date
the U.S. Navy frigate Constitution, also known as “Old Ironsides,” was christened in Boston’s harbor.
a British fleet commanded by Adm. Horatio Nelson defeated a French-Spanish fleet in the Battle of Trafalgar; Nelson, however, was killed.
Thomas Edison perfected a workable electric light at his laboratory in Menlo Park, N.J.
during World War II, U.S. troops captured the German city of Aachen.
women in France were allowed to vote in parliamentary elections for the first time.
the Israeli destroyer INS Eilat was sunk by Egyptian missile boats near Port Said; 47 Israeli crew members were lost. Tens of thousands of Vietnam War protesters began two days of demonstrations in Washington, D.C.
beat poet and author Jack Kerouac died in St. Petersburg, Fla., at age 47.
President Richard Nixon nominated Lewis F. Powell and William H. Rehnquist to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Washington, D.C., postal worker Thomas L. Morris Jr. died of inhalation anthrax as officials began testing thousands of postal employees.
In 2012, former senator and 1972 Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern, 90, died in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
North Korea abruptly freed Jeffrey Fowle, an American, nearly six months after he was arrested for leaving a Bible in a nightclub. Former Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee, 93, died in Washington.
Vice President Joe Biden announced he would not be a candidate in the 2016 White House campaign, solidifying Hillary Rodham Clinton’s status as the Democratic front-runner.
Ten years ago: President Barack Obama declared that America’s long and deeply unpopular war in Iraq would be over by the end of 2011 and that all U.S. troops “will definitely be home for the holidays.”
Five years ago: Cyberattacks on server farms of a key internet firm repeatedly disrupted access to major websites and online services including Twitter, Netflix and PayPal across the United States.
One year ago: Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, the party’s 2012 presidential nominee, told CNN that he had voted in the Nov. 3 election, but not for Donald Trump. The Justice Department said drugmaker Purdue Pharma, the company behind the powerful prescription painkiller OxyContin that experts said had helped touch off an opioid epidemic, would plead guilty to federal criminal charges as part of a settlement of more than $8 billion.