TODAY IN HISTORY
TODAY IS MONDAY, OCT. 21, the 294th day of 2019. There are 71 days left in the year.
ON THIS DATE IN 1892,
schoolchildren across the U.S. observed Columbus Day (according to the Gregorian date) by reciting, for the first time, the original version of “the pledge of allegiance,” written by Francis Bellamy for the Youth’s Companion.
In 1797, the U.S. Navy frigate Constitution, also known as “Old Ironsides,” was christened in Boston’s harbor.
In 1879, Thomas Edison perfected a workable electric light at his laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey.
In 1917, members of the 1st division of the U.S. Army training in Luneville, France, became the first Americans to see action on the front lines of World War I. In 1944, during World War II, U.S. troops captured the German city of Aachen.
In 1966, 144 people, 116 of them children, were killed when a coal waste landslide engulfed a school and some 20 houses in Aberfan, Wales.
In 1967, the Israeli destroyer Ins Eilat was sunk by Egyptian missile boats near Port Said; 47 Israeli crew members were lost.
In 1976, Saul Bellow won the Nobel prize for literature, the first American honored since John Steinbeck in 1962.
In 1985, former San Francisco Supervisor Dan White — who’d served five years in prison for killing Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, a gay rights advocate — was found dead in a garage, a suicide.
In 1996, President Clinton’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on gays in the military survived its first Supreme Court test.
In 2001, Washington, D.C., postal worker Thomas L. Morris Jr. died of inhalation anthrax as officials began testing thousands of postal employees.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS: Actress Joyce Randolph is 95. Rock singer Manfred Mann is 79. Singer Elvin Bishop and TV’s Judge Judy Sheindlin are 77. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and actress LaTanya Richardson Jackson are 70. Musician Charlotte Caffey (The Go-Go’s) is 66. Movie director Catherine Hardwicke is 64. Singer Julian Cope and rock musician Steve Lukather (Toto) are 62. Actor Ken Watanabe is 60. Actress Melora Walters is 59. Rock musician Che Colovita Lemon is 49. Rock singer-musician Nick Oliveri (Mondo Generator) is 48. Christian rock musician Charlie Lowell (Jars of Clay) is 46. Actor Jeremy Miller is 43. Country singer Matthew Ramsey (Old Dominion) is 42. Actors Will Estes and Michael McMillian are 41. Reality TV star Kim Kardashian West is 39. Actor Matt Dallas is 37. Actor Glenn Powell is 31. Country singer Kane Brown is 26.