TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON: MAY 21
0996 Sixteen year old Otto III is crowned the Roman Emperor
1471 King Henry VI is killed in the Tower of London. Edward IV takes the throne.
1536 The Reformation is officially adopted in Geneva, Switzerland
1790 Paris is divided into 48 zones.
1792 Mount Unzen on Japan’s Shimabara Peninsula, erupts creating a tsunami, killing about 15,000; Japan’s deadliest volcanic eruption
1832 The Democratic party holds its first national convention (Baltimore)
1881 The American Red Cross is founded by Clara Barton.
1924 Fourteen-year-old Bobby Franks was murdered in a “thrill killing” committed by Nathan Leopold Jr. and Richard Loeb. The killers were students at the University of Chicago.
1929 William Henry Storey registered the trademark for the board game Sorry! in the U.K. (U.K. number 502898)
1929 Automatic electric stock quotation board installed, NYC
1934 Oskaloosa, IA, became the first city in the U.S. to fingerprint all of its citizens.
1951 The U.S. Eighth Army counterattacks to drive the Communist Chinese and North Koreans out of South Korea.
1954 Amendment to give 18-year-olds right to vote is defeated
1956 The first hydrogen bomb to be dropped by air exploded over the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific.
1968 The nuclear-powered U.S. submarine Scorpion, with 99 men aboard, was last heard from. The remains of the sub were later found on the ocean floor 400 miles southwest of the Azores.
1970 The U.S. National Guard mobilizes to quell disturbances at Ohio State University.
1980 The movie “The Empire Strikes Back” was released.
1987 Military coup in Fiji Islands under Lieutenant Colonel Sitivani Rabuka
1989 In Hong Kong, approximately one million people took to the streets to show their support for students protesting for democratic reforms in China’s Tiananmen Square.
1991 In Madras, India, a suicide bomber kills the former Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi.
1991 Ethiopia’s Marxist president (Mengistu Haile Mariam) resigns
1998 An expelled student, Kipland Kinkel, in Springfield, OR, killed 2 people and wounded 25 others with a semi-automatic rifle. Police also discovered that the boy had killed his parents before the rampage.
1998 In Miami, FL, five abortion clinics were hit by an butyric acid-attacker.
REFERENCE: HISTORY.NET, ONTHISDAY.COM, TIMEANDDATE.COM, INFOPLEASE.COM, FACTMONSTER.COM, SCOPESYS.COM, ON-THIS-DAY.COM, THEPEOPLEHISTORY.COM
