October 21 is the 294th day of the year (295th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 71 days remaining until the end of the year. This date is slightly more likely to fall on a Wednesday, Friday or Sunday (58 in 400 years each) than on Monday or Tuesday (57), and slightly less likely to occur on a Thursday or Saturday (56).
NATIONAL PUMPKIN CHEESECAKE DAY
NATIONAL PUMPKIN CHEESECAKE DAY
1520 – Explorer Ferdinand Magellen and his fleet reach Cape Virgenes and become first Europeans to sail into the Pacific Ocean.
1774 – First display of the word "Liberty" on a flag, raised by colonists in Taunton, Massachusetts and which was in defiance of British rule in Colonial America.
1797 – The USS Constitution, a 44-gun U.S. Navy frigate built to fight Barbary pirates off the coast of Tripoli, is launched in Boston Harbor. The vessel performed commendably during the Barbary conflicts, and in 1805 a peace treaty with Tripoli was signed on the Constitution's deck.
1854 – Florence Nightingale and a staff of 38 nurses were sent to the Crimean War.
1867 – 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.
1867 – 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.
1910 – A massive explosion destroys the Los Angeles Times building in the city's downtown area, killing 21 and injuring many more. Since Los Angeles Times publisher Harrison Otis, a virulent opponent of unions, believed that the bomb was directed at him, he hired the nation's premier private detective, William J. Burns, to crack the case. In addition to printing numerous editorials against unions, Otis was the leader of the Merchants and Manufacturing Association, a powerful group of business owners with extensive political connections.
1772 – Samuel Taylor Coleridge, English poet, philosopher, and critic (d. 1834)
1918 – A German U-boat submarine fires the last torpedo of World War I, as Germany ceases its policy of unrestricted submarine warfare.
1929 – On the 50th birthday of the incandescent light bulb, Henry Ford throws a big party to celebrate the dedication of his new Thomas Edison Institute in Dearborn, Michigan. Everybody who was anybody was there: John D. Rockefeller Jr., Charles Schwab, Otto H. Kahn, Walter Chrysler, Marie Curie, Will Rogers, President Herbert Hoover—and, of course, the guest of honor, Thomas Edison himself.
1941 – German soldiers go on a rampage, killing thousands of Yugoslavian civilians, including whole classes of schoolboys.
1941 – German soldiers go on a rampage, killing thousands of Yugoslavian civilians, including whole classes of schoolboys.
1959 – President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs an executive order transferring the brilliant rocket designer Wernher von Braun and his team from the U.S. Army to the newly created National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Von Braun, the mastermind of the U.S. space program, had developed the lethal V-2 rocket for Nazi Germany during World War II.
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.
Eris (minor-planet designation 136199 Eris) is the most massive known dwarf planet in the Solar System and the ninth most massive body known to directly orbit the Sun. It is estimated to be 2,326 ± 12 kilometers (1,445.3 ± 7.5 mi) in diameter, and 27% more massive than Pluto, or about 0.27% of the Earth's mass.
Because Eris appeared to be larger than Pluto, NASA initially described it as the Solar System's tenth planet. This, along with the prospect of other objects of similar size being discovered in the future, motivated the International Astronomical Union (IAU) to define the term planet for the first time. Under the IAU definition approved on August 24, 2006, Eris is a "dwarf planet", along with objects such as Pluto, Ceres, Haumea and Makemake, thereby reducing the number of known planets in the Solar System to eight, the same as before Pluto's discovery in 1930. Observations of a stellar occultation by Eris in 2010 showed that its diameter was 2,326 ± 12 kilometers (1,445.3 ± 7.5 mi), very slightly less than Pluto, which was measured by New Horizons as 2,372 ± 4 kilometers (1,473.9 ± 2.5 mi) in July 2015.
Because Eris appeared to be larger than Pluto, NASA initially described it as the Solar System's tenth planet. This, along with the prospect of other objects of similar size being discovered in the future, motivated the International Astronomical Union (IAU) to define the term planet for the first time. Under the IAU definition approved on August 24, 2006, Eris is a "dwarf planet", along with objects such as Pluto, Ceres, Haumea and Makemake, thereby reducing the number of known planets in the Solar System to eight, the same as before Pluto's discovery in 1930. Observations of a stellar occultation by Eris in 2010 showed that its diameter was 2,326 ± 12 kilometers (1,445.3 ± 7.5 mi), very slightly less than Pluto, which was measured by New Horizons as 2,372 ± 4 kilometers (1,473.9 ± 2.5 mi) in July 2015.
It was calculated that a flyby mission to Eris could take 24.66 years using a Jupiter gravity assist, based on launch dates of 3 April 2032 or 7 April 2044. Eris would be 92.03 or 90.19 AU (8.47B to 8.23B miles) from the Sun when the spacecraft arrives.
TODAY'S BIRTHS
TODAY'S BIRTHS
1772 – Samuel Taylor Coleridge, English poet, philosopher, and critic (d. 1834)
1833 – Alfred Nobel, Swedish chemist and engineer, invented dynamite and founded the Nobel Prize (d. 1896)
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