138 things happened on 21 October, from 1094 to 2023. UK stories come first, then the rest of the world.
1854 · 172 years ago
Florence Nightingale and a team of 38 nurses and 15 nuns were sent to the Ottoman Empire. Their job was to care for British soldiers who had been injured in the Crimean War. Nightingale organised the care of the soldiers at Constantinople and improved cleanli…
UK history first: stories from England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
UK story
In the Hundred Years' War, an Anglo-Gascon army of 1,200 men beat a much larger French army of 7,000. Led by Henry, Earl of Derby, they fought near the village of Auberoche in Aquitaine, France. At the time, Gascony belonged to the English Crown. The victory shifted the balance of power in the region towards England.
UK story
During the Napoleonic Wars, a British fleet led by Lord Nelson defeated a combined French and Spanish fleet under Admiral Villeneuve. It became known as the Battle of Trafalgar. Nelson is widely seen as one of the greatest admirals in history. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, people across the British Empire marked the victory every year as Trafalgar Day.
UK story
Florence Nightingale and a team of 38 nurses and 15 nuns were sent to the Ottoman Empire. Their job was to care for British soldiers who had been injured in the Crimean War. Nightingale organised the care of the soldiers at Constantinople and improved cleanliness and living conditions, which saved many lives. She is remembered as the founder of modern nursing.
UK story
HMS Niobe arrived in Halifax Harbour to become the first large ship of the Royal Canadian Navy.
UK story
Korean War: Heavy fighting begins between British and Australian forces and North Koreans during the Battle of Yongju.
The samurai leader Tokugawa Ieyasu defeated rival Japanese clans at the Battle of Sekigahara. The victory helped him become shōgun, the military ruler of Japan, in 1603. He founded the Tokugawa shogunate, which ruled Japan until 1868. He is remembered as one of the three 'Great Unifiers' who brought Japan together.
The operetta Orpheus in the Underworld, by the composer Jacques Offenbach, was first performed in Paris. An operetta is a light, often funny show with songs, dances and spoken parts. This one includes the music that is most linked with the famous can-can dance. Offenbach wrote nearly 100 operettas.
American inventor Thomas Edison applied for a patent for his design of an incandescent light bulb. A patent protects an inventor's idea so others cannot copy it. This kind of bulb makes light by heating a thin wire, called a filament, until it glows. Edison registered 1,093 patents in the United States during his life.
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, designed by the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, opened in New York City. It is an art museum with works by Impressionist, early Modern and contemporary artists. Wright designed more than 1,000 buildings and other structures in about 70 years. He influenced architects all over the world.
US President Dwight D. Eisenhower approved moving all of the US Army's space activities to NASA, the American space agency. This included most of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency, which worked on rockets. Eisenhower had been a top general in the Second World War, leading the Allied forces on D-Day.
The metre, the basic unit of length, was given a new definition. It became the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second. A vacuum is a space with no air or anything else in it. Linking the metre to the speed of light makes it possible to measure lengths very precisely.
Astronomers took images of a far-off world that were later used to show the discovery of the dwarf planet Eris. A team led by Mike Brown discovered it in January 2005. Eris is the most massive dwarf planet known in our Solar System. It was named after the Greek and Roman goddess of strife and discord.
El Cid and his forces defeat a larger army of the Almoravids in the battle of Cuarte.
First Crusade: At the Battle of Civetot, the Seljuk forces of Kilij Arslan destroyed the army of the People's Crusade as it marched toward Nicaea.
First Crusade: Crusaders led by Godfrey of Bouillon, Bohemund of Taranto, and Raymond IV, Count of Toulouse, begin the Siege of Antioch.
Zengi, atabeg of Aleppo, takes Baalbek from the Burid dynasty.
Japanese Emperor Go-Kameyama abdicates in favor of rival claimant Go-Komatsu.
Martin Luther joins the theological faculty of the University of Wittenberg.
João Álvares Fagundes discovers the islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, bestowing them their original name of "Islands of the 11,000 Virgins".
The flag of Taunton, Massachusetts is the first to include the word "Liberty".
In Boston Harbor, the 44-gun United States Navy frigate USS Constitution is launched.
Portland cement is patented.
American Civil War: Union forces under Colonel Edward Baker are defeated by Confederate troops in the second major battle of the war.
The first and second of three treaties were signed near Medicine Lodge, Kansas, between the United States federal government and several Native American tribes in the Great Plains, requiring them to relocate to areas in present-day western Oklahoma.
The Swiss Social Democratic Party is founded.
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.
The capitulation of Tainan completes the Japanese conquest of Taiwan.
First Balkan War: The Greek navy completes the capture of the island of Lemnos for use as a forward base against the Dardanelles.
A secret society in the Imperial Japanese Army launches an abortive coup d'état attempt.
The first edition of the Ernest Hemingway novel For Whom the Bell Tolls is published.
World War II: The Provisional Government of Free India is formally established in Japanese-occupied Singapore.
World War II: The three-week-long Battle of Aachen concluded, making the city the first on German soil to be captured by the Allies.
In the 1945 French legislative election French women vote for the first time.
Comet Ikeya–Seki approaches perihelion, passing 450,000 kilometers (279,617 miles) from the sun.
The National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam organizes a march of fifty thousand people from the Lincoln Memorial to the Pentagon.
At the height of the Japanese university protests, protesters occupied Shinjuku Station in Tokyo and clashed violently with police.
The 1969 Somali coup d'état establishes a Marxist–Leninist administration.
Fred Dryer of the Los Angeles Rams becomes the first player in NFL history to score two safeties in the same game.
Moshe Dayan resigns from the Israeli government because of strong disagreements with Prime Minister Menachem Begin over policy towards the Arabs.
Andreas Papandreou becomes Prime Minister of Greece, ending an almost 50-year-long system of power dominated by conservative forces.
Niki Lauda claims his third and final Formula One Drivers' Championship Title by half a point ahead of McLaren team-mate Alain Prost at the Portuguese Grand Prix.
North Korea and the United States signed the Agreed Framework to limit the former's nuclear weapons program and to normalize relations between the two countries.
Finnish race drivers Kimi Räikkönen of Scuderia Ferrari won the Brazilian Grand Prix in Formula One. With this result, Räikkönen became world champion, surpassing McLaren drivers Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso by one point in the drivers' standings.
Iraq War: President Barack Obama announces that the withdrawal of United States troops from Iraq will be complete by the end of the year.
In Canada, the 2019 Canadian federal election ends, resulting in incumbent Prime Minister Justin Trudeau remaining in office, albeit with the Liberal Party in a minority government.
Every answer is somewhere on this page. Have a go, then check!
In which year did this happen: “Florence Nightingale sets off to nurse soldiers in the Crimean War”?
B: 1854. 1854 — that’s 172 years ago. Find it on the page
In which year did this happen: “A small English army wins the Battle of Auberoche”?
B: 1345. 1345 — that’s 681 years ago. Find it on the page
Which of these happened first?
C: A small English army wins the Battle of Auberoche. 1805: Nelson's fleet wins the Battle of Trafalgar · 1854: Florence Nightingale sets off to nurse soldiers in the Crimean War · 1345: A small English army wins the Battle of Auberoche Find it on the page
“Nelson's fleet wins the Battle of Trafalgar” happened in 1805. How many years ago was that?
B: 221 years. 2026 − 1805 = 221. Find it on the page
Famous people whose birthday is 21 October.
UK story
The English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born. He helped to found the Romantic Movement in English poetry. He was one of the Lake Poets, along with his friend William Wordsworth. He was also a critic and philosopher, who wrote about poetry and ideas.
UK story
The physicist Andre Geim was born in Russia and later worked at the University of Manchester. In 2010 he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on a material called graphene. Ten years earlier, he won an Ig Nobel Prize for making a frog float in the air using magnetism. He is the only person to have won both prizes.
Well-known people who died on 21 October.
Festivals, holidays and saints’ days celebrated on 21 October somewhere in the world.
Content note: these entries mention things like war, violence, deaths, disasters or crime. They are part of history, but they can be upsetting. Grown-ups and teachers: you may want to read them first. They come straight from Wikipedia and have not been rewritten for children.
Stories with a heading have been written for young readers by A Day in the Past, using the linked articles as sources. Other entries show text from Wikipedia’s “October 21” page and its “On this day” feed, written by Wikipedia contributors and shared under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. Each “Read more” link goes to the article an entry is based on. Photos are credited under each picture. Spotted a mistake? Please tell us.