Today is Monday, Oct. 21, the 295th day of 2024.
There are 71 days left in the year.
Today in history:
On Oct. 21, 2014, Paralympic runner Oscar Pistorius was convicted of culpable homicide for shooting and killing his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp. The conviction was later upgraded to murder; Pistorius was released on parole in January 2024.
Also on this date:
In 1797, the U.S. Navy frigate Constitution, also known as “Old Ironsides,” was christened in Boston’s harbor.
In 1805, a British fleet commanded by Adm. Horatio Nelson defeated a French-Spanish fleet in the Battle of Trafalgar; Nelson, however, was killed.
In 1940, Ernest Hemingway’s novel “For Whom the Bell Tolls” was first published.
In 1944, U.S. troops captured the German city of Aachen (AH’-kuhn) — the first German city to fall to American forces in World War II.
In 1959, the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Guggenheim Museum opened in New York.
In 1966, 144 people, 116 of them children, were killed when a coal waste landslide engulfed a school and some 20 houses in Aberfan, Wales.
In 2013, a seventh grader at Sparks Middle School in Sparks, Nevada, shot and killed a teacher and wounded two classmates before taking his own life.
In 2021, Actor Alec Baldwin was pointing a gun on a movie set in New Mexico when it went off and killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and wounded director Joel Souza. Charges of involuntary manslaughter against Baldwin were dropped in July 2024.
