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.)
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.
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American novelist and short-story writer Ernest Hemingway is shown at his typewriter as he works on “For Whom the Bell Tolls” at Sun Valley lodge, Idaho, in 1939. (AP Photo)
In 1940, Ernest Hemingway’s novel “For Whom the Bell Tolls” was first published.
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American artillerymen move their gun into position on the corner of Bismarck Street, in Aachen, Germany on Oct. 21, 1944. (AP Photo)
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.
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Interiors of the new Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum on New York’s Fifth Avenue, shown Oct. 20, 1959. (AP Photo/Harry Harris)
In 1959, the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Guggenheim Museum opened in New York.
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Wales, Oct. 22, 1966. Many of the local schoolchildren were kiled when the rubble engulfed the village school. (AP Photo)
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.
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Hundreds of students and residents attend a candlelight vigil at Sparks Middle School in Sparks, Nev., on Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2013, in honor of slain teacher Michael Landsberry and two 12-year-old students who were injured after a fellow student open fire at the school on Monday, before turning the gun on himself. (AP Photo/Cathleen Allison)
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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.
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This aerial photo shows part of the Bonanza Creek Ranch film set in Santa Fe, N.M., on Saturday, Oct. 23, 2021, where cinematographer Halyna Hutchins died from a gun fired by actor Alec Baldwin. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)
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.)
