Post by farmgal on Oct 20, 2012 20:44:00 GMT -5
October 21 is the 295th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar.
There are 72 days remaining until the end of the year.
Days left until November 06, 2012 16
Countdown until Obama leaves Office
www.obamaclock.org/
U.S. Debt Clock: www.usdebtclock.org/
2137 BC First recorded total eclipse of the sun China. There's a remarkable uniformity about the traditional response to them throughout prehistory: making as much noise as possible to scare away the cosmic intruder, and firing arrows at the Sun to slay the monster which seems to be devouring it. This strategy is recorded almost 4,000 years ago by the Hsia Dynasty Chinese during the eclipse of 22 October 2137 BC.
1096 People's Crusade: The Turkish army annihilates the People's Army of the West.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Crusade
1520 Ferdinand Magellan discovers a strait now known as Strait of Magellan.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Magellan
1692 William Penn was deposed as Governor of Pennsylvania. His overtures of gratefulness to James II for permitting religious freedom for dissenters of the Church of England led William and Mary to charge Penn with being a papist.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Penn
1751 The first Baptist association in the American South was organized at Charleston, SC. It was formed under the initiative of Oliver Hart, who had left the Philadelphia area to become pastor of the Charleston Baptist Church in 1749
1774 First display of the word "Liberty" on a flag, raised by colonists in Taunton, Massachusetts in defiance of British rule in Colonial America.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taunton,_Massachusetts
1779 Henry Laurens named minister to Holland. The Continental Congress of the United States elects former congressman Henry Laurens minister to Holland on this day in 1779. Laurens' first and most crucial duty as the new minister was to negotiate an alliance with Holland, which he did in 1780.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Laurens
During Laurens' return voyage from Holland in the fall of 1780, his ship was intercepted and captured by the British Navy off the coast of Newfoundland, and he was taken prisoner. During their search of the vessel, British sailors discovered Laurens' copy of the unofficial Patriot treaty with the Dutch, drafted by Congressional agent William Lee. The British went on to use the document as grounds for war against the Dutch and sent Laurens to London to stand trial before the privy council, a group of the king's closest advisors, on suspicion of high treason. He was subsequently imprisoned in the Tower of London for 15 months.
On December 31, 1781, the British finally released Laurens from prison in exchange for American-held prisoner General Charles Lord Cornwallis. Following his release, Congress appointed Laurens, along with John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, to negotiate a peace treaty with Great Britain.
In one of his final acts of public service, Laurens signed the preliminary Treaty of Paris on November 30, 1782, before returning to the United States, where he retired to his home near Charleston, South Carolina. Laurens was later elected to the Continental Congress, the state legislature and the federal Constitutional Convention, but declined each office, preferring to remain in retirement until his death on December 8, 1792.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Laurens
1797 The USS Constitution - nicknamed "Old Ironsides" - was launched in Boston, Mass. The oak-wood hulled, three-masted frigate was one of several 44-gun frigates authorized by Congress in 1794 to protect commerce at sea. The vessel was designed by for the U.S. Navy by Joshua Humphreys and built by George Claghorn. Its copper sheathing protecting the hull was manufactured by Paul Revere, along with the copper spikes and bolts securing the planks. In the over 200 years since it was built the USS Constiution has been refitted and restored, and it remains active in the U.S. Navy as a "ship of state." With its crew of 55 modern-day sailors, it remains the oldest commissioned warship afloat in the world.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Constitution
1861 American Civil War: Battle of Ball's Bluff - Union forces under Colonel Edward Baker are defeated by Confederate troops in the second major battle of the war. Baker, a close friend of Abraham Lincoln, is killed in the fighting.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Ball%27s_Bluff
1867 Manifest Destiny: Medicine Lodge Treaty – Near Medicine Lodge, Kansas a landmark treaty is signed by southern Great Plains Indian leaders. On this day in 1867, more than 7,000 Southern Plains Indians gather near Medicine Lodge Creek, Kansas, as their leaders sign one of the most important treaties in the history of U.S.-Indian relations.
For decades, Americans had viewed the arid Great Plains country west of the 100th meridian as unsuitable for white settlement; many maps even labeled the area as the Great American Desert. Because of this, policy makers since the days of the Jefferson administration had largely agreed that the territory should be used as one big reservation on which all American Indians could be relocated and left alone to continue their traditional ways of life. This plan was followed for decades. Unfortunately, by 1865, the Indians, roaming freely over the Great Plains, had become a threat to the increasingly important communication and transportation lines connecting the east and west coasts of the nation. At the same time, new dryland farming techniques had led a growing number of white Americans to settle in Kansas and Nebraska, and many others were now eager to move even farther west.
Departing from a half-century of precedent, a federal peace commission began negotiating with the Plains Indians in 1867 with the goal of removing them from the path of white settlement and establishing a new "system for civilizing the tribes." In the fall, the commission met with representatives from Commanche, Kiowa, Cheyenne, Arapahoe, and other tribes, most of which proved willing to accept the American proposal, although many may not have fully comprehended the implications.
With the treaties signed on October 21 and 28, the old idea of a giant continuous Great Plains reservation was abandoned forever and replaced with a new system in which the Plains Tribes were required to relocate to a clearly bounded reservation in Western Oklahoma. Any tribal member living outside of the reservation would thereafter be in violation of the treaty, and the U.S. would be justified in using whatever means necessary to force them onto the reservation. Likewise, the new policy of "civilizing the tribes" meant that the U.S. would no longer allow the Indians to preserve their traditional ways, but would instead use schools and agricultural education programs to try and eradicate the old customs and assimilate Indians into white culture.
Although most of the major Plains Indian chiefs agreed to the treaty provisions, they did not necessarily speak for all of their people. The authority of chiefs was always highly provisional, and many bands of Plains Indians considered themselves free to accept or reject such treaties regardless of the wishes of their chiefs. When the full import of the Medicine Lodge Treaty became clear to them, some of these bands refused to abandon their hunting grounds and traditional ways, causing decades of violent conflict all across the West.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicine_Lodge_Treaty
1869 First shipment of fresh oysters comes overland from Baltimore
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oysters
1879 Thomas A. Edison successfully demonstrated the first durable and commercially practical electric light bulb at his laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey. This model lasted 40 hours before burning out. The idea of electric lighting was not new; several people had worked on and even developed forms of electric lighting. However, nothing had been developed that was practical for home use. The difficulty was finding a suitable material for the filament. He tested over 6,000 vegetable growths (baywood, boxwood, hickory, cedar, flax, bamboo) as filament material. After one and a half years of work, after spending $40,000, and performing 1,200 experiments, success was achieved when an incandescent lamp with a filament of carbonized sewing thread.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_light_bulb
1892 Opening ceremonies for the World's Columbian Exposition are held in Chicago, though because construction was behind schedule, the exposition did not open until May 1, 1893.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_Columbian_Exposition
1902 In the United States, a five month strike by United Mine Workers ends.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Mine_Workers#Other_strikes
1908 A "Saturday Evening Post" advertises two-sided records. In May 1908, Columbia introduced a new label, a departure from the previous silver and black series. This is only the second in the new issue, a new numbering system having been introduced at the same time. An introductory advertising campaign featured the prominently-displayed musical notes (two notes for the newly-developed two-sided records) with the slogan "Note the Notes -- double value for your money!"
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_Records#Beginnings
1915 The first experimental transatlantic radiotelephone speech communication was made. Taking advantage of the recently developed vacuum-tube transmitters and receivers, AT&T conducted radiotelephony tests from NAA, the U.S. Navy station in Arlington. B. Webb of AT&T in Arlington, VA.Virginia talks to Lt. Col. Ferries of the French Government using relay points in Canada and at the Eiffel Tower in Paris.His voice was heard as far away as Honolulu, HI., which clearly showed how advanced the vacuum-tube equipment was, since the "somewhat over 10 miles" (16-km) range of Fessenden's groundbreaking alternator-transmitter tests (1906). President Vail announced that AT&T was planning to add radiotelephone links to the Bell system.
1917 First Americans to see action on the front lines of WW I
1918 Margaret Owen sets world typing speed record of 170 wpm for 1 min on a manual typewriter.
1925 The first U.S. photocell or tube which was publicly demonstrated was shown by the Westinghouse Electric and Mfg Co at the Electrical Show at Grand Central Palace in New York. The sensitivity of the photocell to light was used to count objects as they passed through and interrupted a beam of light. It was also shown applied to open doors as a person or car approached.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_burner#Photocell
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Warren G. Harding [/img][/center]
1921 President Warren G. Harding delivers the first speech by a sitting President against lynching in the deep south. On this day in 1921, President Warren G. Harding delivers a speech in Alabama in which he condemns lynchings—illegal hangings committed primarily by white supremacists against African Americans in the Deep South.
Although his administration was much maligned for scandal and corruption, Harding was a progressive Republican politician who advocated full civil rights for African Americans and suffrage for women. He supported the Dyer Anti-lynching Bill in 1920. As a presidential candidate that year, he gained support for his views on women's suffrage, but faced intense opposition on civil rights for blacks. The 1920s was a period of intense racism in the American South, characterized by frequent lynchings. In fact, the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) reported that, in 1920, lynching claimed, on average, the lives of two African Americans every week.
During the 1920 presidential campaign, Harding's ethnicity became a subject of debate and was used by his opponents to cast him in a negative light. Opponents claimed that one of Harding's great-great-grandfathers was a native of the West Indies. Harding rebuffed the rumors, saying he was from white "pioneer stock" and persisted in his support of anti-lynching laws. Although the anti-lynching bill made it through the House of Representatives, it died in the Senate. Several other attempts to pass similar laws in the first half of the 20th century failed. In fact, civil rights for blacks were not encoded into law until Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964.
Harding's public denunciation of lynching would appear insincere if one were to believe allegations that he had actually been inducted into the Ku Klux Klan while in office. In 1987, historian Wyn Wade published The Fiery Cross, in which a former Ku Klux Klan member claimed to have witnessed Harding's initiation into the Klan on the White House lawn. Scholars have since pored over Harding's papers, but have found no evidence to support this allegation.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_G._Harding#Anti-lynching_movement_and_immigration
1921 George Melford's silent film, The Sheik, starring Rudolph Valentino, premiers.
1925 The first U.S. photocell or tube which was publicly demonstrated was shown by the Westinghouse Electric and Mfg Co at the Electrical Show at Grand Central Palace in New York. The sensitivity of the photocell to light was used to count objects as they passed through and interrupted a beam of light. It was also shown applied to open doors as a person or car approached.
1925 The U.S. Treasury Department announced that it had fined 29,620 people for (alcohol) prohibition violations.
1933 Adolf Hitler withdraws Nazi Germany from the League of Nations
1934 A severe windstorm lashed the northern Pacific coast. In Washington State, the storm claimed the lives of 22 persons, and caused 1.7 million dollars damage, mostly to timber. Winds, gusting to 87 mph at North Head WA, produced waves twenty feet high. (David Ludlum)
1944 The first kamikaze attack: A Japanese plane carrying a 200 kilograms (440 lb) bomb attacks HMAS Australia off Leyte Island, as the Battle of Leyte Gulf began.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamikaze_attack
1945 Women in France allowed to vote for first time.
1948 Facsimile high-speed radio transmission demonstrated (Washington DC)
1950 "Goodnight Irene" by the Weavers with Gordon Jenkins topped the charts. The first result of their Decca contract was a collection of Christmas songs issued on a 10" LP, which didn't attract much attention. But their second session yielded a pair of songs, "Tzena Tzena Tzena," which got to number two, and "Goodnight Irene," which hit number one and stayed there for 13 weeks, and ended up selling two million copies as a double-sided hit single. Cut just before the group left the Vanguard in June of 1950, the two songs caught everyone by surprise with their sudden success.
1957 The second in a series of unusual October storms hit southern California causing widespread thunderstorms. Santa Maria was drenched with 1.13 inches of rain in two hours. Hail drifted to 18 inches in East Los Angeles. Waterspouts were sighted off Point Mugu and Oceanside. (20th-21st) (The Weather Channel)
1957 "Jailhouse Rock" by Elvis Presley shared #1. "Jailhouse Rock" was featured in the Elvis movie of the same name. It is considered one of the best of his 31 movies. Elvis joined the army shortly after this was released. It was #1 on the US pop charts for 7 weeks. It also reached #1 on the Country and R&B charts.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jailhouse_Rock_(song)
1957 "Chances Are" by Johnny Mathis shared the top spot. Columbia A&R executive Mitch Miller -- known for his desperately pop-slanted Sing Along albums and TV show -- decided to switch Mathis to Miller's brand of pop balladry, and the formula worked like a charm; the LP Wonderful, Wonderful didn't include but was named after a Top 20 hit later in 1957, which was followed by the number five "It's Not for Me to Say" and his first number one, "Chances Are." From that point on, Johnny Mathis concentrated strictly on lush ballads for adult contemporary listeners.
1958 Tater Tots were trademark registered. Tater Tots were first produced in 1953 by Golden and Nephi Grigg of the Ore-Ida company, now a subsidiary of H. J. Heinz Company, as a means of utilizing potato shreds remaining from french fry production. On their second try they mastered the "tots", the first attempt being a potato based beverage. They first became available in stores in 1954. Today Americans consume approximately 70 million pounds of "Tots" per year.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tater_Tots
1958 Orchestral strings were used for the first time in a rock and roll tune. Buddy Holly is perhaps the most anomalous legend of '50s rock & roll -- he had his share of hits, and he achieved major rock & roll stardom, but his importance transcends any sales figures or even the particulars of any one song (or group of songs) that he wrote or recorded. Holly was unique, his legendary status and his impact on popular music all the more extraordinary for having been achieved in barely 18 months. Buddy Holly recorded "It Doesn't Matter Anymore", written by Paul Anka.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Doesn%27t_Matter_Anymore
1959 Guggenheim Museum, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, opens (NYC). The first permanent home for the museum was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. He envisioned a building that not only broke the rectilinear grid of Manhattan but also shattered existing notions of what a museum could be. He conceived of its curving, continuous space as a "temple of spirit" where viewers could foster a new way of looking. Named the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in honor of its founder, the building opened in 1959, drawing huge crowds and stirring considerable controversy.
1959 President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs an executive order transferring Wernher von Braun and other German scientists from the United States Army to NASA.
1960 JFK & Nixon clashed in 4th & final presidential. debate (NYC) The first debate centered on domestic issues. The high point of the second debate, on October 7, was disagreement over U.S. involvement in two small islands off the coast of China, and on October 13, Nixon and Kennedy continued this dispute. On October 21, the final debate, the candidates focused on American relations with Cuba. Perhaps as no other single event, the Great Debates forced us to ponder the role of television in democratic life.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1960#Debates
1965 Comet Ikeya-Seki approaches perihelion, passing 450,000 kilometers from the sun.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_Ikeya-Seki
1967 "To Sir with Love" by Lulu topped the charts.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Sir_With_Love_(song)
1967 Vietnam War: More than 100,000 war protesters gather in Washington, D.C.. A peaceful rally at the Lincoln Memorial is followed by a march to The Pentagon and clashes with soldiers and United States Marshals protecting the facility. Similar demonstrations occurred simultaneously in Japan and Western Europe.
1972 "My Ding-a-Ling" by Chuck Berry topped the charts. Even though he wrote many Rock classics, this novelty song is Berry's only #1 hit. Although Berry is credited as the composer, Dave Bartholomew claimed authorship in the late '50s when he released a version of the song.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Ding-a-Ling
1972 Curtis Mayfield’s "Superfly" movie soundtrack album was #1.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfly_(Superfly_album)
1973 Fred Dryer of the then Los Angeles Rams becomes the first player in NFL history to score two safeties in the same game.
1975 Red Sox Carlton Fisk's 12th inning HR beats Reds 7-6 in game 6 of WS
1976 The United States made a clean sweep of the Nobel Prizes, winning or sharing awards in chemistry, physics, medicine, economics, and literature. (No peace prize was awarded.)
1980 First (& only) time Phillies win the World Series (in 98 years).
1986 – In Lebanon, pro-Iranian kidnappers claim to have abducted American writer Edward Tracy (he is released in August 1991).
1987 Cold arctic air continued to invade the central U.S. Eleven record lows were reported in the Great Plains Region, including lows of 12 degrees at Valentine NE, and 9 degrees at Aberdeen SD. Temperatures warmed rapidly during the day in the Southern and Central Plains Region. Goodland KS warmed from a morning low of 24 degrees to an afternoon high of 75 degrees. (The National Weather Summary)
1989 Buck Helm found alive after being buried 4 days, in SF earthquake. Nearly four full days after the freeway structure had collapsed, and nearly all hope of finding another person alive had passed, one emergency worker saw the slight movement of a hand inside a vehicle and the whole area became alive with frenzied activity. Within hours, it was announced that a man named Buck Helm, a 57-year-old longshoreman, had been pulled from the wreckage and taken to Highland Hospital in critical condition.
1989 Unseasonably cold weather continued to grip the south central and southeastern U.S. Twenty cities reported record low temperatures for the date, including Calico AR with a reading of 26 degrees, and Daytona Beach FL with a low of 41 degrees. Squalls in the Great Lakes Region finally came to an end, but not before leaving Marquette MI buried under 12.7 inches of snow, a record 24 hour total for October. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data)
1989 Houston becomes first major college team to gain 1000 yards in a game
1997 “Candle in the Wind 1997" named biggest-selling single record of all time. Elton John's tribute to Princess Diana (a recycle of the song originally written for Marilyn Monroe), "Candle in the Wind 1997", was declared by "The Guinness Book of Records" to be the biggest-selling single record of all time. In 37 days, the single reached 31.8 million copies sold, eclipsing the previous record held by Bing Crosby's "White Christmas". The Crosby song sold an estimated 30 million copies worldwide -- in 55 years.
2003 Images of the dwarf planet Eris are taken and subsequently used in its discovery by the team of Michael E. Brown, Chad Trujillo, and David L. Rabinowitz.
Births
1736 William Shippen, Jr. (d 1808) First systematic teacher of anatomy, surgery, and obstetrics in the United States. In addition to pictures and casts of the human body, he was also one of the first to use dissected human bodies in the teaching of anatomy in America. This aroused the animosity of the populace - his dissecting rooms were mobbed on several occasions, and once he narrowly escaped with his life - but his courses were very successful, and the number of students increased year by year. He lectured on both anatomy and midwifery. In 1762 he established the first American maternity hospital in Philadelphia.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shippen,_Jr.
1785 Henry Miller Shreve (d 1851) American steamboat designer and builder who helped develop the commercial potential of the inland waterways of the Mississippi River system. Within a few years of Robert Fulton's successful steamboat experiment (1807), Shreve had built his own, the Enterprise (1813), which made the first complete upriver trip from New Orleans to Pittsburgh. He fought legal battles against Fulton's monopoly on river routes. By 1821, Shreve addressed the need to make navigation safer by clearing the river of obstructions. He created snag-boats with a jaw-like bow able to pull up snags (tree trunks), and put them through a sawmill on their deck. Shreve's work was a major contribution to the great era of steamboat traffic prior to the Civil War.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Miller_Shreve
1808 Samuel Francis Smith, Boston, Massachussets. A graduate of Andover Theological Seminary in 1834, he pastored the Baptist church at Waterville, Maine (1834-42) and the Baptist church of Newton, Massachussets (1842-1854). After that, he was editorial secretary of the American Baptist Missionary Union. Smith had a lifelong interest in hymnology and is credited with about 100 hymns, including "America," which he wrote at age 23 while in seminary. He felt the United States need a Christian patriotic song. In 1843, he helped compile The Psalmist, the most widely used Baptist hymnal of the day.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Francis_Smith
1833 Alfred Bernhard Nobel (d 1896) Swedish chemist and inventor of dynamite and other, more powerful explosives, was born in Stockholm. An explosives expert like his father, in 1866 he invented a safe and manageable form of nitroglycerin he called dynamite, and later, smokeless gunpowder and (1875) gelignite. He helped to create an industrial empire manufacturing many of his other inventions. Nobel amassed a huge fortune, much of which he left in a fund to endow the annual prizes that bear his name. First awarded in 1901, these prizes were for achievements in the areas of physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and peace. The sixth prize, for economics, was instituted in his honour in 1969.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Bernhard_Nobel
1845 William McKendree Carleton (d 1912) American poet. Carleton's poems were most often about his rural life.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_McKendree_Carleton
1873 Traugott Martin Wangerin, missionary to the deaf in Milwaukee, (d 9 Sep 1951).
1877 Oswald Theodore Avery (d 1955) Canadian-born American physician and medical researcher. The major part of his career was spent at the Rockefeller University Hospital in New York City. Avery was one of the first molecular biologists and a pioneer in immunochemistry, but he is best known for his discovery in 1944, with his co-workers Colin MacLeod and Maclyn McCarty, that DNA is the material of which genes and chromosomes are made. The Nobel laureate Arne Tiselius said that Avery was the most deserving scientist not to receive the Nobel Prize for his work.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oswald_Theodore_Avery
1879 Eugene Burton Ely (d 1911) aviation pioneer, credited with the first shipboard aircraft take off and landing.
1892 James L Kelso, American Presbyterian archaeologist. He participated in digs at the biblical sites of Debir, Bethel and Jericho, and authored the text "Ceramic Vocabulary of the O.T."
Whenever a professional archaeologist turns to a careful, detailed study of the gospels, only one thing dominates all his thinking. This is Jesus Christ himself. The personality of the Christ is unique and alone in all of human history. The archaeologist realizes more than anyone else the difference between B.C. and A.D."
Whether James L. Kelso, an American Presbyterian archaeologist, actually spoke for the majority archaeologists when he wrote those words is debatable, but there is no doubt he revealed his own mind. A Professor of Old Testament History and Biblical Archaeology at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, James was a top-notch teacher, who demanded high performance but also knew how to ease a student "over the hump" with hours of private assistance. He spent much of his life in expeditions to Palestine. The focus of these trips (as was the focus of his preaching and teaching) was to understand Christ better and illuminate Him for others.
Born on this day, October 21, 1892 in Duluth, Minnesota, James began teaching at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary in 1923 and participated in his first Palestine dig in 1926, at ancient Debir. After nine more expeditions, in which he undertook further exploration at Debir as well as at Bethel, Jericho and Nitla, James wrote a lively book, crystalizing years of research on his favorite theme.
That theme was Christ. In An Archaeologist Looks at the Gospels, James helped bring the world of Christ alive. Exclaiming over the crucifixion, he noted that "The cross was Christ's royal throne." This was because Christ lay down his life by choice and "died at his own appointed time." He was in sovereign control--on his throne--even on the cross.
James showed what he meant by the difference between B.C. and A.D. For example, he contrasted pre-Christian ethics with post-Christian. "With the coming of Christ, ethics suddenly became something completely different, something uniquely new. Now we have Christ himself and his own standards as par!" Christ taught--and lived--love whereas "...it was the duty of the Essenes to hate everyone whom God had rejected. They were also to hate the sons of darkness. And the hatred of which the Essenes spoke was eternal hatred."
James contributed other works to our knowledge of Bible archaeology, including his Ceramic Vocabulary of the Old Testament. Having spent many years in the mideast, he did not share the common evangelical admiration for the Jewish state of Israel, deploring its spiteful and ruthless treatment of Christian property and lives in the 1967 war.
Beginning with his earliest explorations, James brought back artifacts to Pittsburgh. In 1964 these became the nucleus of the James L. Kelso Bible Lands Museum at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. These artifacts help us visualize what life was like in Bible times.
www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/1801-1900/archaeologist-james-l-kelso-dug-for-christ-11630637.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh_Theological_Seminary#Kelso_Bible_Lands_Museum
1906 Lillian Asplund, last American Titanic survivor (d. 2006)
1911 William A. Mitchell (d 2004) American food scientist who invented Pop Rocks candy, Cool Whip, the orange drink mix Tang, and quick-set Jell-O Gelatin. He developed a tapioca substitute during WW II since tapioca itself was limited in supply. For 35 years, he worked worked as a chemist for General Foods Corp, and held more than 70 patents. Pop Rocks - exploding candy - was patented in 1956, but not marketed until 1975. Its novelty quickly caught the public's attention. It was an accidental discovery while experimenting to produce an instant soft drink. It is a hard candy manufactured by pressurizing carbon dioxide at 600 psi in a candy syrup at 150 °C. When cooled and solidified it traps small pockets of carbon dioxide that "explode" in a person's mouth.
1914 Samuel W. Alderson (d 2005) American physicist and engineer who invented the crash-test dummy used to test the safety of cars, parachutes and other devices. From the 1930's, when safety of cars during a crash was tested, cadavers had been used. When he started a company in 1952, Alderson Research Laboratories, which designed an anthropomorphic dummy, the first application was for testing jet ejection seats. In 1968, he produced a dummy (called the V.I.P.) built specifically for automotive testing with built-in instruments for collecting data. It had articulated joints with dimensions and weight distribution like an average adult man. His company later also made medical phantoms for simulations such as synthetic wounds that oozed mock blood.
1914 Martin Gardner (d 2010) American mathematics and science writer specializing in recreational mathematics, but with interests encompassing micromagic, stage magic, literature (especially the writings of Lewis Carroll), philosophy, scientific skepticism, and religion. He wrote the Mathematical Games column in Scientific American from 1956 to 1981, the Notes of a Fringe-Watcher column in Skeptical Inquirer from 1983 to 2002, and published over 70 books.
1917 John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie (d 1993) American jazz trumpet player, bandleader, singer, and composer.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dizzy_Gillespie
1918 Milton Himmelfarb (d 2006) American sociographer of the American Jewish community, worked for four decades at the American Jewish Committee where he was director of information and research services. He edited various versions of the American Jewish Yearbook. He also was a contributing editor of Commentary, the monthly journal of opinion.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Himmelfarb
1928 Edward Charles "Whitey" Ford former Major League Baseball pitcher who spent his entire 18-year career with the New York Yankees. He was voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1974.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitey_Ford
1940 Frances FitzGerald American journalist and author, primarily known for her acclaimed journalistic account of the Vietnam War.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_FitzGerald_(journalist)
1942 Judith Sheindlin , better known as Judge Judy, American lawyer, judge, television personality and author. She passed the New York bar exam in 1965 and became a prosecutor in the family court system. In 1976, Mayor Ed Koch appointed her a judge, first in criminal court and later, in 1980, as Manhattan's supervising family court judge. She was featured on CBS's 60 Minutes in the 1990s as a result of her reputation as a tough judge. Since retiring in 1996, Sheindlin has garnered much fame for presiding over her own syndicated courtroom show, Judge Judy. The show's ratings have consistently ranked highly
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Sheindlin
1950 Ronald Erwin McNair (d 1986) American physicist and astronaut who was the second African American to fly in space.He had been fascinated by space since childhood, when as early as in elementary school he talked about the Sputnik satellite. McNair was nationally recognized for his work in the field of laser physics, including chemical and high-pressure lasers. In 1978, he was one of 35 applicants selected from a pool of 10,000 for NASA's space shuttle program. He was assigned as a mission specialist on the Feb 1984 flight of the shuttle Challenger, during which he orbited the earth 122 times. Sadly, on his second trip, on the morning of 28 Jan 1986, McNair with six other crew members died in an explosion shortly after launching aboard the Challenger.
ts2.mm.bing.net/th?id=I.4691367775110177&pid=15.1
Deaths
1940 William Gustavus Conley, Charleston, West Virginia (b 1866, Preston County, West Virginia)) was an American politician who served as the 18th Governor of West Virginia as a Republican from 1929 to 1933.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Gustavus_Conley
1969 Jean-Louis "Jack" Kerouac (b 1922) American novelist and poet. He is considered a literary iconoclast, and alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Kerouac is recognized for his spontaneous method of writing covering topics such as jazz, promiscuity, Buddhism, drugs, poverty, and travel. His writings have inspired other writers, including Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Robbins, Thomas Pynchon, Lester Bangs, Will Clarke, Richard Brautigan, Ken Kesey, Haruki Murakami, Jon Foreman, and Bob Dylan. Unsympathetic critics of his work have labeled it "slapdash", "grossly sentimental", and "immoral". Kerouac became an underground celebrity and, with other beats, a progenitor of the Hippie movement. At age 47 in 1969 Kerouac died from internal bleeding due to long-standing abuse of alcohol. Since his death Kerouac's literary prestige has grown and several previously unseen works have been published. All of his books are in print today, among them: On the Road, The Dharma Bums, Mexico City Blues, The Subterraneans, Desolation Angels, Visions of Cody and Big Sur.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Kerouac
1970 John T. Scopes (b. 3 Aug 1900). He was a Tennessee high school biology teacher who in 1925 went on trial for violating the Butler Act, which prohibited the teaching of evolution in Tennessee schools.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_T._Scopes
1985 Dan White, American politician, assailant in the Moscone-Milk assassinations (b. 1946)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_White
1995 Maxene Andrews, American singer (The Andrews Sisters) (b. 1916)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxene_Andrews
2003 Anna Louise Day Hicks (b 1916) was an American politician and lawyer from Boston, Massachusetts, best known for her staunch opposition to court-ordered busing in the 1960s and 1970s.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Louise_Day_Hicks
Holidays and observances
Christian Feast Day:
Hilarion
John of Bridlington
Leticia
Ursula
October 21 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
Saints
St. Hilarion the Great of Gaza (371)
Hieromartyr Priest Socrates and Martyr Theodote, of Ancyra (ca. 230)
Martyrs Dasius, Gaius, and Zoticus at Nicomedia (303)
Saints Theophilus and James, abbots of Omutch (Pskov) (ca 1412)
St. Hilarion, abbot of Gdov (Pskov) (1476)
St. Hilarion, Schemamonk of the Kiev Caves (1067)
St. Philotheus of Neapolis and of Mt. Athos (14th century)
Saints Vissarion (Bessarion) Sarai, hieromonk, and Sophronie of Ciorara, monk, confessors, and St. Oprea of Sălişte
New Martyr John of Monemvasia, Peloponnesus, at Larissa (1773)
Hiero-confessors John of Galeёs (Ioan din Galeş) and Moses (M˘acinic), priests of Sibiel (Transylvania) (18th century)
New Hieromartyrs Paulinus (Kroshechkin), archbishop of Mogilev; Damian (Voskresensky), archbishop of Kursk; Arcadius (Pavlovich), bishop of Ekaterinburg; priests Anatole and Nicander; and Martyr Cyprian (1937)
Other commemorations
Translation of the relics of St. Christodulus the Wonderworker of Patmos (1093)
Translation of the relics (1206) of St. Hilarion, bishop of Meglin, Bulgaria (1164)
Repose of Schema-archimandrite Herman (Bogdanov) (1938) and his fellow ascetic Archimandrite Sergius (Ozerov), of New Valaam in Siberia
International Day of the Nacho (Mexico and USA)
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www.todayinsci.com/10/10_21.htm
www.weatherforyou.com/cgi-bin/weather_history/today2S.pl
daysuntil.com/Election-Day/index.html
www.amug.org/~jpaul/oct21.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_21
www.scopesys.com/cgi-bin/today2.cgi
www.history.com/this-day-in-history/guggenheim-museum-opens-in-new-york-city
www.christianhistorytimeline.com/lives_events/birthday/index.php
www.lutheranhistory.org/history/tih1021.htm
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_21_(Eastern_Orthodox_liturgics)
www.christianity.com/church/church-history/
There are 72 days remaining until the end of the year.
Days left until November 06, 2012 16
Countdown until Obama leaves Office
www.obamaclock.org/
U.S. Debt Clock: www.usdebtclock.org/
2137 BC First recorded total eclipse of the sun China. There's a remarkable uniformity about the traditional response to them throughout prehistory: making as much noise as possible to scare away the cosmic intruder, and firing arrows at the Sun to slay the monster which seems to be devouring it. This strategy is recorded almost 4,000 years ago by the Hsia Dynasty Chinese during the eclipse of 22 October 2137 BC.
1096 People's Crusade: The Turkish army annihilates the People's Army of the West.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Crusade
1520 Ferdinand Magellan discovers a strait now known as Strait of Magellan.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Magellan
1692 William Penn was deposed as Governor of Pennsylvania. His overtures of gratefulness to James II for permitting religious freedom for dissenters of the Church of England led William and Mary to charge Penn with being a papist.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Penn
1751 The first Baptist association in the American South was organized at Charleston, SC. It was formed under the initiative of Oliver Hart, who had left the Philadelphia area to become pastor of the Charleston Baptist Church in 1749
1774 First display of the word "Liberty" on a flag, raised by colonists in Taunton, Massachusetts in defiance of British rule in Colonial America.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taunton,_Massachusetts
1779 Henry Laurens named minister to Holland. The Continental Congress of the United States elects former congressman Henry Laurens minister to Holland on this day in 1779. Laurens' first and most crucial duty as the new minister was to negotiate an alliance with Holland, which he did in 1780.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Laurens
During Laurens' return voyage from Holland in the fall of 1780, his ship was intercepted and captured by the British Navy off the coast of Newfoundland, and he was taken prisoner. During their search of the vessel, British sailors discovered Laurens' copy of the unofficial Patriot treaty with the Dutch, drafted by Congressional agent William Lee. The British went on to use the document as grounds for war against the Dutch and sent Laurens to London to stand trial before the privy council, a group of the king's closest advisors, on suspicion of high treason. He was subsequently imprisoned in the Tower of London for 15 months.
On December 31, 1781, the British finally released Laurens from prison in exchange for American-held prisoner General Charles Lord Cornwallis. Following his release, Congress appointed Laurens, along with John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, to negotiate a peace treaty with Great Britain.
In one of his final acts of public service, Laurens signed the preliminary Treaty of Paris on November 30, 1782, before returning to the United States, where he retired to his home near Charleston, South Carolina. Laurens was later elected to the Continental Congress, the state legislature and the federal Constitutional Convention, but declined each office, preferring to remain in retirement until his death on December 8, 1792.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Laurens
1797 The USS Constitution - nicknamed "Old Ironsides" - was launched in Boston, Mass. The oak-wood hulled, three-masted frigate was one of several 44-gun frigates authorized by Congress in 1794 to protect commerce at sea. The vessel was designed by for the U.S. Navy by Joshua Humphreys and built by George Claghorn. Its copper sheathing protecting the hull was manufactured by Paul Revere, along with the copper spikes and bolts securing the planks. In the over 200 years since it was built the USS Constiution has been refitted and restored, and it remains active in the U.S. Navy as a "ship of state." With its crew of 55 modern-day sailors, it remains the oldest commissioned warship afloat in the world.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Constitution
1861 American Civil War: Battle of Ball's Bluff - Union forces under Colonel Edward Baker are defeated by Confederate troops in the second major battle of the war. Baker, a close friend of Abraham Lincoln, is killed in the fighting.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Ball%27s_Bluff
1867 Manifest Destiny: Medicine Lodge Treaty – Near Medicine Lodge, Kansas a landmark treaty is signed by southern Great Plains Indian leaders. On this day in 1867, more than 7,000 Southern Plains Indians gather near Medicine Lodge Creek, Kansas, as their leaders sign one of the most important treaties in the history of U.S.-Indian relations.
For decades, Americans had viewed the arid Great Plains country west of the 100th meridian as unsuitable for white settlement; many maps even labeled the area as the Great American Desert. Because of this, policy makers since the days of the Jefferson administration had largely agreed that the territory should be used as one big reservation on which all American Indians could be relocated and left alone to continue their traditional ways of life. This plan was followed for decades. Unfortunately, by 1865, the Indians, roaming freely over the Great Plains, had become a threat to the increasingly important communication and transportation lines connecting the east and west coasts of the nation. At the same time, new dryland farming techniques had led a growing number of white Americans to settle in Kansas and Nebraska, and many others were now eager to move even farther west.
Departing from a half-century of precedent, a federal peace commission began negotiating with the Plains Indians in 1867 with the goal of removing them from the path of white settlement and establishing a new "system for civilizing the tribes." In the fall, the commission met with representatives from Commanche, Kiowa, Cheyenne, Arapahoe, and other tribes, most of which proved willing to accept the American proposal, although many may not have fully comprehended the implications.
With the treaties signed on October 21 and 28, the old idea of a giant continuous Great Plains reservation was abandoned forever and replaced with a new system in which the Plains Tribes were required to relocate to a clearly bounded reservation in Western Oklahoma. Any tribal member living outside of the reservation would thereafter be in violation of the treaty, and the U.S. would be justified in using whatever means necessary to force them onto the reservation. Likewise, the new policy of "civilizing the tribes" meant that the U.S. would no longer allow the Indians to preserve their traditional ways, but would instead use schools and agricultural education programs to try and eradicate the old customs and assimilate Indians into white culture.
Although most of the major Plains Indian chiefs agreed to the treaty provisions, they did not necessarily speak for all of their people. The authority of chiefs was always highly provisional, and many bands of Plains Indians considered themselves free to accept or reject such treaties regardless of the wishes of their chiefs. When the full import of the Medicine Lodge Treaty became clear to them, some of these bands refused to abandon their hunting grounds and traditional ways, causing decades of violent conflict all across the West.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicine_Lodge_Treaty
1869 First shipment of fresh oysters comes overland from Baltimore
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oysters
1879 Thomas A. Edison successfully demonstrated the first durable and commercially practical electric light bulb at his laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey. This model lasted 40 hours before burning out. The idea of electric lighting was not new; several people had worked on and even developed forms of electric lighting. However, nothing had been developed that was practical for home use. The difficulty was finding a suitable material for the filament. He tested over 6,000 vegetable growths (baywood, boxwood, hickory, cedar, flax, bamboo) as filament material. After one and a half years of work, after spending $40,000, and performing 1,200 experiments, success was achieved when an incandescent lamp with a filament of carbonized sewing thread.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_light_bulb
1892 Opening ceremonies for the World's Columbian Exposition are held in Chicago, though because construction was behind schedule, the exposition did not open until May 1, 1893.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_Columbian_Exposition
1902 In the United States, a five month strike by United Mine Workers ends.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Mine_Workers#Other_strikes
1908 A "Saturday Evening Post" advertises two-sided records. In May 1908, Columbia introduced a new label, a departure from the previous silver and black series. This is only the second in the new issue, a new numbering system having been introduced at the same time. An introductory advertising campaign featured the prominently-displayed musical notes (two notes for the newly-developed two-sided records) with the slogan "Note the Notes -- double value for your money!"
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_Records#Beginnings
1915 The first experimental transatlantic radiotelephone speech communication was made. Taking advantage of the recently developed vacuum-tube transmitters and receivers, AT&T conducted radiotelephony tests from NAA, the U.S. Navy station in Arlington. B. Webb of AT&T in Arlington, VA.Virginia talks to Lt. Col. Ferries of the French Government using relay points in Canada and at the Eiffel Tower in Paris.His voice was heard as far away as Honolulu, HI., which clearly showed how advanced the vacuum-tube equipment was, since the "somewhat over 10 miles" (16-km) range of Fessenden's groundbreaking alternator-transmitter tests (1906). President Vail announced that AT&T was planning to add radiotelephone links to the Bell system.
1917 First Americans to see action on the front lines of WW I
1918 Margaret Owen sets world typing speed record of 170 wpm for 1 min on a manual typewriter.
1925 The first U.S. photocell or tube which was publicly demonstrated was shown by the Westinghouse Electric and Mfg Co at the Electrical Show at Grand Central Palace in New York. The sensitivity of the photocell to light was used to count objects as they passed through and interrupted a beam of light. It was also shown applied to open doors as a person or car approached.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_burner#Photocell
1921 President Warren G. Harding delivers the first speech by a sitting President against lynching in the deep south. On this day in 1921, President Warren G. Harding delivers a speech in Alabama in which he condemns lynchings—illegal hangings committed primarily by white supremacists against African Americans in the Deep South.
Although his administration was much maligned for scandal and corruption, Harding was a progressive Republican politician who advocated full civil rights for African Americans and suffrage for women. He supported the Dyer Anti-lynching Bill in 1920. As a presidential candidate that year, he gained support for his views on women's suffrage, but faced intense opposition on civil rights for blacks. The 1920s was a period of intense racism in the American South, characterized by frequent lynchings. In fact, the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) reported that, in 1920, lynching claimed, on average, the lives of two African Americans every week.
During the 1920 presidential campaign, Harding's ethnicity became a subject of debate and was used by his opponents to cast him in a negative light. Opponents claimed that one of Harding's great-great-grandfathers was a native of the West Indies. Harding rebuffed the rumors, saying he was from white "pioneer stock" and persisted in his support of anti-lynching laws. Although the anti-lynching bill made it through the House of Representatives, it died in the Senate. Several other attempts to pass similar laws in the first half of the 20th century failed. In fact, civil rights for blacks were not encoded into law until Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964.
Harding's public denunciation of lynching would appear insincere if one were to believe allegations that he had actually been inducted into the Ku Klux Klan while in office. In 1987, historian Wyn Wade published The Fiery Cross, in which a former Ku Klux Klan member claimed to have witnessed Harding's initiation into the Klan on the White House lawn. Scholars have since pored over Harding's papers, but have found no evidence to support this allegation.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_G._Harding#Anti-lynching_movement_and_immigration
1921 George Melford's silent film, The Sheik, starring Rudolph Valentino, premiers.
1925 The first U.S. photocell or tube which was publicly demonstrated was shown by the Westinghouse Electric and Mfg Co at the Electrical Show at Grand Central Palace in New York. The sensitivity of the photocell to light was used to count objects as they passed through and interrupted a beam of light. It was also shown applied to open doors as a person or car approached.
1925 The U.S. Treasury Department announced that it had fined 29,620 people for (alcohol) prohibition violations.
1933 Adolf Hitler withdraws Nazi Germany from the League of Nations
1934 A severe windstorm lashed the northern Pacific coast. In Washington State, the storm claimed the lives of 22 persons, and caused 1.7 million dollars damage, mostly to timber. Winds, gusting to 87 mph at North Head WA, produced waves twenty feet high. (David Ludlum)
1944 The first kamikaze attack: A Japanese plane carrying a 200 kilograms (440 lb) bomb attacks HMAS Australia off Leyte Island, as the Battle of Leyte Gulf began.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamikaze_attack
1945 Women in France allowed to vote for first time.
1948 Facsimile high-speed radio transmission demonstrated (Washington DC)
1950 "Goodnight Irene" by the Weavers with Gordon Jenkins topped the charts. The first result of their Decca contract was a collection of Christmas songs issued on a 10" LP, which didn't attract much attention. But their second session yielded a pair of songs, "Tzena Tzena Tzena," which got to number two, and "Goodnight Irene," which hit number one and stayed there for 13 weeks, and ended up selling two million copies as a double-sided hit single. Cut just before the group left the Vanguard in June of 1950, the two songs caught everyone by surprise with their sudden success.
1957 The second in a series of unusual October storms hit southern California causing widespread thunderstorms. Santa Maria was drenched with 1.13 inches of rain in two hours. Hail drifted to 18 inches in East Los Angeles. Waterspouts were sighted off Point Mugu and Oceanside. (20th-21st) (The Weather Channel)
1957 "Jailhouse Rock" by Elvis Presley shared #1. "Jailhouse Rock" was featured in the Elvis movie of the same name. It is considered one of the best of his 31 movies. Elvis joined the army shortly after this was released. It was #1 on the US pop charts for 7 weeks. It also reached #1 on the Country and R&B charts.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jailhouse_Rock_(song)
1957 "Chances Are" by Johnny Mathis shared the top spot. Columbia A&R executive Mitch Miller -- known for his desperately pop-slanted Sing Along albums and TV show -- decided to switch Mathis to Miller's brand of pop balladry, and the formula worked like a charm; the LP Wonderful, Wonderful didn't include but was named after a Top 20 hit later in 1957, which was followed by the number five "It's Not for Me to Say" and his first number one, "Chances Are." From that point on, Johnny Mathis concentrated strictly on lush ballads for adult contemporary listeners.
1958 Tater Tots were trademark registered. Tater Tots were first produced in 1953 by Golden and Nephi Grigg of the Ore-Ida company, now a subsidiary of H. J. Heinz Company, as a means of utilizing potato shreds remaining from french fry production. On their second try they mastered the "tots", the first attempt being a potato based beverage. They first became available in stores in 1954. Today Americans consume approximately 70 million pounds of "Tots" per year.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tater_Tots
1958 Orchestral strings were used for the first time in a rock and roll tune. Buddy Holly is perhaps the most anomalous legend of '50s rock & roll -- he had his share of hits, and he achieved major rock & roll stardom, but his importance transcends any sales figures or even the particulars of any one song (or group of songs) that he wrote or recorded. Holly was unique, his legendary status and his impact on popular music all the more extraordinary for having been achieved in barely 18 months. Buddy Holly recorded "It Doesn't Matter Anymore", written by Paul Anka.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Doesn%27t_Matter_Anymore
1959 Guggenheim Museum, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, opens (NYC). The first permanent home for the museum was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. He envisioned a building that not only broke the rectilinear grid of Manhattan but also shattered existing notions of what a museum could be. He conceived of its curving, continuous space as a "temple of spirit" where viewers could foster a new way of looking. Named the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in honor of its founder, the building opened in 1959, drawing huge crowds and stirring considerable controversy.
1959 President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs an executive order transferring Wernher von Braun and other German scientists from the United States Army to NASA.
1960 JFK & Nixon clashed in 4th & final presidential. debate (NYC) The first debate centered on domestic issues. The high point of the second debate, on October 7, was disagreement over U.S. involvement in two small islands off the coast of China, and on October 13, Nixon and Kennedy continued this dispute. On October 21, the final debate, the candidates focused on American relations with Cuba. Perhaps as no other single event, the Great Debates forced us to ponder the role of television in democratic life.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1960#Debates
1965 Comet Ikeya-Seki approaches perihelion, passing 450,000 kilometers from the sun.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_Ikeya-Seki
1967 "To Sir with Love" by Lulu topped the charts.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Sir_With_Love_(song)
1967 Vietnam War: More than 100,000 war protesters gather in Washington, D.C.. A peaceful rally at the Lincoln Memorial is followed by a march to The Pentagon and clashes with soldiers and United States Marshals protecting the facility. Similar demonstrations occurred simultaneously in Japan and Western Europe.
1972 "My Ding-a-Ling" by Chuck Berry topped the charts. Even though he wrote many Rock classics, this novelty song is Berry's only #1 hit. Although Berry is credited as the composer, Dave Bartholomew claimed authorship in the late '50s when he released a version of the song.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Ding-a-Ling
1972 Curtis Mayfield’s "Superfly" movie soundtrack album was #1.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfly_(Superfly_album)
1973 Fred Dryer of the then Los Angeles Rams becomes the first player in NFL history to score two safeties in the same game.
1975 Red Sox Carlton Fisk's 12th inning HR beats Reds 7-6 in game 6 of WS
1976 The United States made a clean sweep of the Nobel Prizes, winning or sharing awards in chemistry, physics, medicine, economics, and literature. (No peace prize was awarded.)
1980 First (& only) time Phillies win the World Series (in 98 years).
1986 – In Lebanon, pro-Iranian kidnappers claim to have abducted American writer Edward Tracy (he is released in August 1991).
1987 Cold arctic air continued to invade the central U.S. Eleven record lows were reported in the Great Plains Region, including lows of 12 degrees at Valentine NE, and 9 degrees at Aberdeen SD. Temperatures warmed rapidly during the day in the Southern and Central Plains Region. Goodland KS warmed from a morning low of 24 degrees to an afternoon high of 75 degrees. (The National Weather Summary)
1989 Buck Helm found alive after being buried 4 days, in SF earthquake. Nearly four full days after the freeway structure had collapsed, and nearly all hope of finding another person alive had passed, one emergency worker saw the slight movement of a hand inside a vehicle and the whole area became alive with frenzied activity. Within hours, it was announced that a man named Buck Helm, a 57-year-old longshoreman, had been pulled from the wreckage and taken to Highland Hospital in critical condition.
1989 Unseasonably cold weather continued to grip the south central and southeastern U.S. Twenty cities reported record low temperatures for the date, including Calico AR with a reading of 26 degrees, and Daytona Beach FL with a low of 41 degrees. Squalls in the Great Lakes Region finally came to an end, but not before leaving Marquette MI buried under 12.7 inches of snow, a record 24 hour total for October. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data)
1989 Houston becomes first major college team to gain 1000 yards in a game
1997 “Candle in the Wind 1997" named biggest-selling single record of all time. Elton John's tribute to Princess Diana (a recycle of the song originally written for Marilyn Monroe), "Candle in the Wind 1997", was declared by "The Guinness Book of Records" to be the biggest-selling single record of all time. In 37 days, the single reached 31.8 million copies sold, eclipsing the previous record held by Bing Crosby's "White Christmas". The Crosby song sold an estimated 30 million copies worldwide -- in 55 years.
2003 Images of the dwarf planet Eris are taken and subsequently used in its discovery by the team of Michael E. Brown, Chad Trujillo, and David L. Rabinowitz.
Births
1736 William Shippen, Jr. (d 1808) First systematic teacher of anatomy, surgery, and obstetrics in the United States. In addition to pictures and casts of the human body, he was also one of the first to use dissected human bodies in the teaching of anatomy in America. This aroused the animosity of the populace - his dissecting rooms were mobbed on several occasions, and once he narrowly escaped with his life - but his courses were very successful, and the number of students increased year by year. He lectured on both anatomy and midwifery. In 1762 he established the first American maternity hospital in Philadelphia.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shippen,_Jr.
1785 Henry Miller Shreve (d 1851) American steamboat designer and builder who helped develop the commercial potential of the inland waterways of the Mississippi River system. Within a few years of Robert Fulton's successful steamboat experiment (1807), Shreve had built his own, the Enterprise (1813), which made the first complete upriver trip from New Orleans to Pittsburgh. He fought legal battles against Fulton's monopoly on river routes. By 1821, Shreve addressed the need to make navigation safer by clearing the river of obstructions. He created snag-boats with a jaw-like bow able to pull up snags (tree trunks), and put them through a sawmill on their deck. Shreve's work was a major contribution to the great era of steamboat traffic prior to the Civil War.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Miller_Shreve
1808 Samuel Francis Smith, Boston, Massachussets. A graduate of Andover Theological Seminary in 1834, he pastored the Baptist church at Waterville, Maine (1834-42) and the Baptist church of Newton, Massachussets (1842-1854). After that, he was editorial secretary of the American Baptist Missionary Union. Smith had a lifelong interest in hymnology and is credited with about 100 hymns, including "America," which he wrote at age 23 while in seminary. He felt the United States need a Christian patriotic song. In 1843, he helped compile The Psalmist, the most widely used Baptist hymnal of the day.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Francis_Smith
1833 Alfred Bernhard Nobel (d 1896) Swedish chemist and inventor of dynamite and other, more powerful explosives, was born in Stockholm. An explosives expert like his father, in 1866 he invented a safe and manageable form of nitroglycerin he called dynamite, and later, smokeless gunpowder and (1875) gelignite. He helped to create an industrial empire manufacturing many of his other inventions. Nobel amassed a huge fortune, much of which he left in a fund to endow the annual prizes that bear his name. First awarded in 1901, these prizes were for achievements in the areas of physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and peace. The sixth prize, for economics, was instituted in his honour in 1969.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Bernhard_Nobel
1845 William McKendree Carleton (d 1912) American poet. Carleton's poems were most often about his rural life.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_McKendree_Carleton
1873 Traugott Martin Wangerin, missionary to the deaf in Milwaukee, (d 9 Sep 1951).
1877 Oswald Theodore Avery (d 1955) Canadian-born American physician and medical researcher. The major part of his career was spent at the Rockefeller University Hospital in New York City. Avery was one of the first molecular biologists and a pioneer in immunochemistry, but he is best known for his discovery in 1944, with his co-workers Colin MacLeod and Maclyn McCarty, that DNA is the material of which genes and chromosomes are made. The Nobel laureate Arne Tiselius said that Avery was the most deserving scientist not to receive the Nobel Prize for his work.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oswald_Theodore_Avery
1879 Eugene Burton Ely (d 1911) aviation pioneer, credited with the first shipboard aircraft take off and landing.
1892 James L Kelso, American Presbyterian archaeologist. He participated in digs at the biblical sites of Debir, Bethel and Jericho, and authored the text "Ceramic Vocabulary of the O.T."
Whenever a professional archaeologist turns to a careful, detailed study of the gospels, only one thing dominates all his thinking. This is Jesus Christ himself. The personality of the Christ is unique and alone in all of human history. The archaeologist realizes more than anyone else the difference between B.C. and A.D."
Whether James L. Kelso, an American Presbyterian archaeologist, actually spoke for the majority archaeologists when he wrote those words is debatable, but there is no doubt he revealed his own mind. A Professor of Old Testament History and Biblical Archaeology at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, James was a top-notch teacher, who demanded high performance but also knew how to ease a student "over the hump" with hours of private assistance. He spent much of his life in expeditions to Palestine. The focus of these trips (as was the focus of his preaching and teaching) was to understand Christ better and illuminate Him for others.
Born on this day, October 21, 1892 in Duluth, Minnesota, James began teaching at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary in 1923 and participated in his first Palestine dig in 1926, at ancient Debir. After nine more expeditions, in which he undertook further exploration at Debir as well as at Bethel, Jericho and Nitla, James wrote a lively book, crystalizing years of research on his favorite theme.
That theme was Christ. In An Archaeologist Looks at the Gospels, James helped bring the world of Christ alive. Exclaiming over the crucifixion, he noted that "The cross was Christ's royal throne." This was because Christ lay down his life by choice and "died at his own appointed time." He was in sovereign control--on his throne--even on the cross.
James showed what he meant by the difference between B.C. and A.D. For example, he contrasted pre-Christian ethics with post-Christian. "With the coming of Christ, ethics suddenly became something completely different, something uniquely new. Now we have Christ himself and his own standards as par!" Christ taught--and lived--love whereas "...it was the duty of the Essenes to hate everyone whom God had rejected. They were also to hate the sons of darkness. And the hatred of which the Essenes spoke was eternal hatred."
James contributed other works to our knowledge of Bible archaeology, including his Ceramic Vocabulary of the Old Testament. Having spent many years in the mideast, he did not share the common evangelical admiration for the Jewish state of Israel, deploring its spiteful and ruthless treatment of Christian property and lives in the 1967 war.
Beginning with his earliest explorations, James brought back artifacts to Pittsburgh. In 1964 these became the nucleus of the James L. Kelso Bible Lands Museum at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. These artifacts help us visualize what life was like in Bible times.
www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/1801-1900/archaeologist-james-l-kelso-dug-for-christ-11630637.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh_Theological_Seminary#Kelso_Bible_Lands_Museum
1906 Lillian Asplund, last American Titanic survivor (d. 2006)
1911 William A. Mitchell (d 2004) American food scientist who invented Pop Rocks candy, Cool Whip, the orange drink mix Tang, and quick-set Jell-O Gelatin. He developed a tapioca substitute during WW II since tapioca itself was limited in supply. For 35 years, he worked worked as a chemist for General Foods Corp, and held more than 70 patents. Pop Rocks - exploding candy - was patented in 1956, but not marketed until 1975. Its novelty quickly caught the public's attention. It was an accidental discovery while experimenting to produce an instant soft drink. It is a hard candy manufactured by pressurizing carbon dioxide at 600 psi in a candy syrup at 150 °C. When cooled and solidified it traps small pockets of carbon dioxide that "explode" in a person's mouth.
1914 Samuel W. Alderson (d 2005) American physicist and engineer who invented the crash-test dummy used to test the safety of cars, parachutes and other devices. From the 1930's, when safety of cars during a crash was tested, cadavers had been used. When he started a company in 1952, Alderson Research Laboratories, which designed an anthropomorphic dummy, the first application was for testing jet ejection seats. In 1968, he produced a dummy (called the V.I.P.) built specifically for automotive testing with built-in instruments for collecting data. It had articulated joints with dimensions and weight distribution like an average adult man. His company later also made medical phantoms for simulations such as synthetic wounds that oozed mock blood.
1914 Martin Gardner (d 2010) American mathematics and science writer specializing in recreational mathematics, but with interests encompassing micromagic, stage magic, literature (especially the writings of Lewis Carroll), philosophy, scientific skepticism, and religion. He wrote the Mathematical Games column in Scientific American from 1956 to 1981, the Notes of a Fringe-Watcher column in Skeptical Inquirer from 1983 to 2002, and published over 70 books.
1917 John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie (d 1993) American jazz trumpet player, bandleader, singer, and composer.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dizzy_Gillespie
1918 Milton Himmelfarb (d 2006) American sociographer of the American Jewish community, worked for four decades at the American Jewish Committee where he was director of information and research services. He edited various versions of the American Jewish Yearbook. He also was a contributing editor of Commentary, the monthly journal of opinion.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Himmelfarb
1928 Edward Charles "Whitey" Ford former Major League Baseball pitcher who spent his entire 18-year career with the New York Yankees. He was voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1974.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitey_Ford
1940 Frances FitzGerald American journalist and author, primarily known for her acclaimed journalistic account of the Vietnam War.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_FitzGerald_(journalist)
1942 Judith Sheindlin , better known as Judge Judy, American lawyer, judge, television personality and author. She passed the New York bar exam in 1965 and became a prosecutor in the family court system. In 1976, Mayor Ed Koch appointed her a judge, first in criminal court and later, in 1980, as Manhattan's supervising family court judge. She was featured on CBS's 60 Minutes in the 1990s as a result of her reputation as a tough judge. Since retiring in 1996, Sheindlin has garnered much fame for presiding over her own syndicated courtroom show, Judge Judy. The show's ratings have consistently ranked highly
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Sheindlin
1950 Ronald Erwin McNair (d 1986) American physicist and astronaut who was the second African American to fly in space.He had been fascinated by space since childhood, when as early as in elementary school he talked about the Sputnik satellite. McNair was nationally recognized for his work in the field of laser physics, including chemical and high-pressure lasers. In 1978, he was one of 35 applicants selected from a pool of 10,000 for NASA's space shuttle program. He was assigned as a mission specialist on the Feb 1984 flight of the shuttle Challenger, during which he orbited the earth 122 times. Sadly, on his second trip, on the morning of 28 Jan 1986, McNair with six other crew members died in an explosion shortly after launching aboard the Challenger.
ts2.mm.bing.net/th?id=I.4691367775110177&pid=15.1
Deaths
1940 William Gustavus Conley, Charleston, West Virginia (b 1866, Preston County, West Virginia)) was an American politician who served as the 18th Governor of West Virginia as a Republican from 1929 to 1933.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Gustavus_Conley
1969 Jean-Louis "Jack" Kerouac (b 1922) American novelist and poet. He is considered a literary iconoclast, and alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Kerouac is recognized for his spontaneous method of writing covering topics such as jazz, promiscuity, Buddhism, drugs, poverty, and travel. His writings have inspired other writers, including Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Robbins, Thomas Pynchon, Lester Bangs, Will Clarke, Richard Brautigan, Ken Kesey, Haruki Murakami, Jon Foreman, and Bob Dylan. Unsympathetic critics of his work have labeled it "slapdash", "grossly sentimental", and "immoral". Kerouac became an underground celebrity and, with other beats, a progenitor of the Hippie movement. At age 47 in 1969 Kerouac died from internal bleeding due to long-standing abuse of alcohol. Since his death Kerouac's literary prestige has grown and several previously unseen works have been published. All of his books are in print today, among them: On the Road, The Dharma Bums, Mexico City Blues, The Subterraneans, Desolation Angels, Visions of Cody and Big Sur.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Kerouac
1970 John T. Scopes (b. 3 Aug 1900). He was a Tennessee high school biology teacher who in 1925 went on trial for violating the Butler Act, which prohibited the teaching of evolution in Tennessee schools.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_T._Scopes
1985 Dan White, American politician, assailant in the Moscone-Milk assassinations (b. 1946)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_White
1995 Maxene Andrews, American singer (The Andrews Sisters) (b. 1916)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxene_Andrews
2003 Anna Louise Day Hicks (b 1916) was an American politician and lawyer from Boston, Massachusetts, best known for her staunch opposition to court-ordered busing in the 1960s and 1970s.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Louise_Day_Hicks
Holidays and observances
Christian Feast Day:
Hilarion
John of Bridlington
Leticia
Ursula
October 21 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
Saints
St. Hilarion the Great of Gaza (371)
Hieromartyr Priest Socrates and Martyr Theodote, of Ancyra (ca. 230)
Martyrs Dasius, Gaius, and Zoticus at Nicomedia (303)
Saints Theophilus and James, abbots of Omutch (Pskov) (ca 1412)
St. Hilarion, abbot of Gdov (Pskov) (1476)
St. Hilarion, Schemamonk of the Kiev Caves (1067)
St. Philotheus of Neapolis and of Mt. Athos (14th century)
Saints Vissarion (Bessarion) Sarai, hieromonk, and Sophronie of Ciorara, monk, confessors, and St. Oprea of Sălişte
New Martyr John of Monemvasia, Peloponnesus, at Larissa (1773)
Hiero-confessors John of Galeёs (Ioan din Galeş) and Moses (M˘acinic), priests of Sibiel (Transylvania) (18th century)
New Hieromartyrs Paulinus (Kroshechkin), archbishop of Mogilev; Damian (Voskresensky), archbishop of Kursk; Arcadius (Pavlovich), bishop of Ekaterinburg; priests Anatole and Nicander; and Martyr Cyprian (1937)
Other commemorations
Translation of the relics of St. Christodulus the Wonderworker of Patmos (1093)
Translation of the relics (1206) of St. Hilarion, bishop of Meglin, Bulgaria (1164)
Repose of Schema-archimandrite Herman (Bogdanov) (1938) and his fellow ascetic Archimandrite Sergius (Ozerov), of New Valaam in Siberia
International Day of the Nacho (Mexico and USA)
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www.todayinsci.com/10/10_21.htm
www.weatherforyou.com/cgi-bin/weather_history/today2S.pl
daysuntil.com/Election-Day/index.html
www.amug.org/~jpaul/oct21.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_21
www.scopesys.com/cgi-bin/today2.cgi
www.history.com/this-day-in-history/guggenheim-museum-opens-in-new-york-city
www.christianhistorytimeline.com/lives_events/birthday/index.php
www.lutheranhistory.org/history/tih1021.htm
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_21_(Eastern_Orthodox_liturgics)
www.christianity.com/church/church-history/