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

(Page last edited 10/12/2017)

1. 1520 - Ferdinand Magellan discovers a strait now known as Strait of Magellan.
2. 1797 - In Boston Harbor, the 44-gun United States Navy frigate USS Constitution is launched.
3. 1959 - In New York City, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, opens to the public.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.