October 21: What Happened on This Day in History (High_school Level)?

(Page last edited 10/12/2017)

1. 1520 - Ferdinand Magellan discovers a strait now known as Strait of Magellan.
2. 1774 - First display of the word "Liberty" on a flag, raised by colonists in Taunton, Massachusetts in defiance of British rule in Colonial America.
3. 1797 - In Boston Harbor, the 44-gun United States Navy frigate USS Constitution is launched.
4. 1867 - Manifest Destiny: Medicine Lodge Treaty - Near Medicine Lodge, Kansas a landmark treaty is signed by southern Great Plains Indian leaders. The treaty requires Native AmericanPlains tribes to relocate a reservation in western Oklahoma.
5. 1921 - President Warren G. Harding delivers the first speech by a sitting President against lynching in the deep south.
6. 1959 - In New York City, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, opens to the public.
7. 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.
8. 1983 - The metre is defined at the seventeenth General Conference on Weights and Measures as the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second.
9. 1994 - North Korea nuclear weapons program: North Korea and the United States sign an agreement that requires North Korea to stop its nuclear weapons program and agree to inspections.
10. 2003 - Images of the dwarf planet Eris are taken and subsequently used in documenting its discovery by the team of Michael E. Brown, Chad Trujillo, and David L. Rabinowitz.
11. Famous Birthdays: Alfred Nobel (Swedish inventor and founder of the Nobel Prize), Mary Blair (American artist and illustrator), Domenico Zampieri (Italian painter), Ronald McNair (American astronaut), Fred Hersch (American jazz pianist)

For famous birthdays and other daily events in history, visit our Daily Dose Activities.

Click Here for Yesterday in History: October 20

Click Here for Tomorrow in History: October 22

For more history resources on Internet 4 Classrooms, visit our Social Studies and History index. For Pre K-8th Grade Level History and Social Studies Resources, visit our Grade Level Index.