On This Day: Tuesday October 21, 2014 Holidays Feast day of St. Hilarion, St. Fintan or Munnu of Taghmon, St. Condedus, St. Tuda, St. John of Bridlington, and St. Malchus. Marshall Islands: Compact Day. Somalia Democratic Republic: National Day. Taiwan: Overseas Chinese Day. Events 1797 - U.S. Navy frigate Constitution, nicknamed Old Ironsides, was launched in Bostons harbor. It was built to fight Barbary pirates off the coast of Tripoli. 1805 - British fleet commanded by Admiral Horatio Nelson defeated a French-Spanish fleet in the Battle of Trafalgar, but Nelson was killed. 1879 - Thomas A. Edison invented the first working electric (incandescent) light, in his Menlo Park, New Jersey laboratory. 1917 - The first American troops saw action in France during World War I. The U.S. Armys First Division was assigned to Allied trenches in the Luneville sector near Nancy, France. 1950 - Tibet was occupied by Chinese forces. 1959 - The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York opened; it was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. 1960 - The fourth and final debate between Vice President Richard M. Nixon, the Republican presidential candidate, and Senator John F. Kennedy, Democratic candidate, was televised. 1967 - More than 50,000 Vietnam War protesters marched in Washington, D.C. 1967 - Egyptian missiles sank the Israeli destroyer Eilat, killing more than 40. 1971 - President Richard Nixon nominated Lewis F. Powell and William H. Rehnquist to the U.S. Supreme Court. 1988 - A federal grand jury in New York indicted former Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos and his wife, Imelda Marcos, on charges of fraud and racketeering. 2003 - Florida Governor Jeb Bush ordered a feeding tube reinserted into Terry Schiavo, a brain-damaged woman at the center of a bitter right-to-die battle. Births 1760 - Katsushika Hokusai, Japanese artist and printmaker. 1772 - Samuel Taylor Coleridge, British poet. 1833 - Alfred Nobel, Swedish chemist (invented dynamite), engineer, businessman, and philanthropist (founded the Nobel Prizes). 1917 - Dizzy Gillespie, American Grammy Award-winning musician and creator of be-bop. 1928 - Whitey Ford, American baseball Hall-of-Famer. 1956 - Carrie Fisher, American actress, screenwriter and novelist, best known for her role as Princess Leia Organa in the original Star Wars trilogy. Deaths 1805 - Horatio Nelson, an English admiral famous for his participation in the Napoleonic Wars. 1969 - Jack Kerouac, American poet, novelist, and leader of the Beat movement. 1992 - Bob Todd, English comedy actor, primarily known for being a sidekick of Benny Hill and Spike Milligan.
Posted on: Wed, 22 Oct 2014 00:09:29 +0000