Events on October 21 48
Year 1096
People's Crusade: A Seljuk Turkish army successfully fight off the People's Army of the West.
Year 1097
First Crusade: Crusaders led by Godfrey of Bouillon, Bohemund of Taranto, and Raymond IV, Count of Toulouse, begin the Siege of Antioch.
Year 1392
Nanboku-chō, Japan: Emperor Go-Kameyama abdicates in favor of rival claimant Go-Komatsu.
Year 1520
João Álvares Fagundes discovers the islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, bestowing them their original name of "Islands of the 11,000 Virgins".
Year 1600
Tokugawa Ieyasu defeats the leaders of rival Japanese clans in the Battle of Sekigahara, which marks the beginning of the Tokugawa shogunate.
Year 1774
First display of the word "Liberty" on a flag, raised by colonists in Taunton, Massachusetts in defiance of British rule in Colonial America.
Year 1797
In Boston Harbor, the 44-gun United States Navy frigate USS Constitution is launched.
Year 1805
Napoleonic Wars: Battle of Trafalgar: A British fleet led by Vice Admiral Lord Nelson defeats a combined French and Spanish fleet under Admiral Villeneuve.
Year 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.
Year 1867
The Medicine Lodge Treaty is signed by southern Great Plains Indian leaders. The treaty requires Native American Plains tribes to relocate to a reservation in western Oklahoma.
Year 1879
Thomas Edison applies for a patent for his design for an incandescent light bulb.
Year 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.
Year 1910
HMS Niobe arrives in Halifax Harbour to become the first ship of the Royal Canadian Navy.
Year 1921
President Warren G. Harding delivers the first speech by a sitting U.S. President against lynching in the deep South.
Year 1931
The Sakurakai, a secret society in the Imperial Japanese Army, launches an abortive coup d'état attempt.
Year 1940
The first edition of the Ernest Hemingway novel For Whom the Bell Tolls is published.
Year 1943
The Provisional Government of Free India is formally declared by Subhas Chandra Bose.
Year 1944
World War II: The first kamikaze attack. A Japanese fighter plane carrying a 200-kilogram (440 lb) bomb attacks HMAS Australia off Leyte Island, as the Battle of Leyte Gulf began.
Year 1944
World War II: Battle of Aachen: The city of Aachen falls to American forces after three weeks of fighting, making it the first German city to fall to the Allies.
Year 1950
Korean War: Heavy fighting begins between British and Australian forces from the 27th British Commonwealth Brigade and the North Korean 239th Regiment during the Battle of Yongju.
Year 1956
Mau Mau Uprising: Kenyan rebel leader Dedan Kimathi is captured by the British Army, signalling the ultimate defeat of the rebellion, and essentially ending the British military campaign.
Year 1959
In New York City, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, opens to the public.
Year 1959
U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs an executive order transferring Wernher von Braun and other German scientists from the United States Army to NASA.
Year 1965
Comet Ikeya-Seki approaches perihelion, passing 450,000 kilometers (279,617 miles) from the sun.
Year 1966
Aberfan disaster: A colliery spoil tip collapses on the village of Aberfan in Wales, killing 144 people, mostly schoolchildren.
Year 1967
Vietnam War: More than 100,000 war protesters gather in Washington, D.C.. Similar demonstrations occur simultaneously in Japan and Western Europe.
Year 1969
A coup d'état in Somalia brings Siad Barre to power and establishes a socialist republic in Somalia.
Year 1971
A gas explosion kills 22 people at a shopping center in Clarkston, East Renfrewshire, near Glasgow, Scotland.
Year 1973
Fred Dryer of the Los Angeles Rams becomes the first player in NFL history to score two safeties in the same game.
Year 1978
Australian civilian pilot Frederick Valentich vanishes in a Cessna 182 over the Bass Strait south of Melbourne, after reporting contact with an unidentified aircraft.
Year 1979
Moshe Dayan resigns from the Israeli government because of strong disagreements with Prime Minister Menachem Begin over policy towards the Arabs.
Year 1981
Andreas Papandreou becomes Prime Minister of Greece, ending an almost 50-year-long system of power dominated by conservative forces.
Year 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.
Year 1986
In Lebanon, pro-Iran kidnappers claim to have abducted American writer Edward Tracy (he is released in August 1991).
Year 1987
Jaffna hospital massacre is carried out by Indian Peace Keeping Force in Sri Lanka killing 70 ethnic Tamil patients, doctors and nurses.
Year 1994
North Korea nuclear weapons program: North Korea and the United States sign an Agreed Framework that requires North Korea to stop its nuclear weapons program and agree to inspections.
Year 2005
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.