Lead Story
1881American Red Cross founded
In Washington, D.C., humanitarians Clara Barton and Adolphus Solomons found the American National Red Cross, an organization established to provide humanitarian aid to victims of wars and natural disasters in congruence with the International Red Cross.
Barton, born in Massachusetts in 1821, worked with the sick and wounded during the American Civil War and became known as the “Angel of the Battlefield” for her tireless dedication. In 1865, President Abraham Lincoln commissioned her to search for lost prisoners of war, and with the extensive records she had compiled during the war she succeeded in identifying thousands of the Union dead at the Andersonville prisoner-of-war camp.
She was in Europe in 1870 when the Franco-Prussian War broke out, and she went behind the German lines to work for the International Red Cross. In 1873, she returned to the United States, and four years later she organized an American branch of the International Red Cross. The American Red Cross received its first U.S. federal charter in 1900. Barton headed the organization into her 80s and died in 1912.
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ALSO ON THIS DAY
American Revolution
1758
On this day in 1758, 10-year-old Mary Campbell is abducted from her home in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, by Lenape Indians; she becomes an icon of the French and Indian War and backcountry experience. After her abduction, Campbell lived among the family of Chief Netawatwees in the Ohio Valley. In October...
Automotive
1901
On this day in 1901, Connecticut becomes the first state to pass a law regulating motor vehicles, limiting their speed to 12 mph in cities and 15 mph on country roads. Speed limits had been set earlier in the United States for non-motorized vehicles: In 1652, the colony of New...
Civil War
1863
Nathaniel Banks, commander of the Union Department of the Gulf, surrounds the Confederate stronghold at Port Hudson, Louisiana, and attacks. Fortifications were built at Port Hudson in 1863 to protect New Orleans from a Union attack down the Mississippi River. On April 25, 1862, New Orleans had fallen into Union...
Cold War
1988
In an attempt to consolidate his own power and ease political and ethnic tensions in the Soviet republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan, Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev dismisses the Communist Party leaders in those two republics. Since coming to power in 1985, Gorbachev had faced numerous problems with his efforts to bring...
Crime
1924
Fourteen-year-old Bobbie Franks is abducted from a Chicago, Illinois, street and killed in what later proves to be one of the most fascinating murders in American history. The killers, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, were extremely wealthy and intelligent teenagers whose sole motive for killing Franks was the desire to...
1992
Amy Fisher, the so-called “Long Island Lolita,” is arrested for shooting Mary Jo Buttafuoco on the front porch of her Massapequa, New York, home. Fisher, only 17 at the time of the shooting, was having an affair with 38-year-old Joey Buttafuoco, Mary Jo’s husband. The tawdry story soon became a...
1996
Seventy-six-year-old Richard Keech shoots his son-in-law, Nicholas Candy, to death outside his Long Beach, California, home. Candy, in the midst of a divorce and custody battle with Keech’s daughter Nancy, had arrived to pick up his son. As he staggered away down the street yelling, “Help me, help me,” Keech...
Disaster
1960
On this day in 1960, the first tremor of a series hits Valdivia, Chile. By the time they end, the quakes and their aftereffects kill 5,000 people and leave another 2 million homeless. Registering a magnitude of 7.6, the first earthquake was powerful and killed several people. ...
General Interest
1542
On the banks of the Mississippi River in present-day Louisiana, Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto dies, ending a three-year journey for gold that took him halfway across what is now the United States. In order that Indians would not learn of his death, and thus disprove de Soto’s claims of...
1927
American pilot Charles A. Lindbergh lands at Le Bourget Field in Paris, successfully completing the first solo, nonstop transatlantic flight and the first ever nonstop flight between New York to Paris. His single-engine monoplane, The Spirit of St. Louis, had lifted off from Roosevelt Field in New York 33 1/2...
1932
Five years to the day that American aviator Charles Lindbergh became the first pilot to accomplish a solo, nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean, female aviator Amelia Earhart becomes the first pilot to repeat the feat, landing her plane in Ireland after flying across the North Atlantic. Earhart traveled over...
Hollywood
1999
“The streak is over…Susan Lucci!” announces Shemar Moore of The Young and the Restless on this night in 1999, right before presenting the Daytime Emmy Award for Best Actress to the tearful star of ABC’s All My Children. The award was Lucci’s first win in 19 straight years of being...
Literary
1910
French author Colette (born Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette) begins to publish her novel The Vagabond in serial form. Colette had already achieved success as a writer with her racy and popular series of novels about a young girl named Claudine, starting with Claudine at School (1900). However, she published these works under the...
Music
1955
John Lennon once famously said that “if you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it ‘Chuck Berry.'” That’s how foundational Berry’s contributions were to the music that changed America and the world beginning in the mid-1950s. Even more than Elvis Presley, who was an incomparable...
Old West
1539
Word reaches Fray Marcos that Indians have killed his guide Estevan, a black slave who was the first non-Indian to visit the pueblo lands of the American Southwest. Thought to have been born sometime around 1500 on the west coast of Morocco, Estevan was sold to the Spanish as a slave....
Presidential
2000
On this day in 2000, the bones of President James Garfield’s spine are on display for a final day as part of the Out of the Blue Closets exhibit at the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington, D.C. The exhibit featured medical oddities from the museum’s archives. The...
Sports
1978
On May 21, 1978, 21-year-old rookie golfer Nancy Lopez defeats her childhood hero, JoAnne Carner, on the first hole of a sudden death playoff to win the Coca-Cola-Classic in Jamesburg, New Jersey. The next year Lopez beat out 44-year-old Mickey Wright, again in a playoff, to repeat as Coca-Cola champion....
Vietnam War
1969
A U.S. military command spokesman in Saigon defends the battle for Ap Bia Mountain as having been necessary to stop enemy infiltration and protect the city of Hue. The spokesman stated that the battle was an integral part of the policy of “maximum pressure” that U.S. forces had been pursuing...
World War I
1911
Six years after the First Moroccan Crisis, during which Kaiser Wilhelm’s sensational appearance in Morocco provoked international outrage and led to a strengthening of the bonds between Britain and France against Germany, French troops occupy the Moroccan city of Fez on May 21, 1911, sparking German wrath and a second...
World War II
1940
On this day in 1940, a “special unit” carries out its mission-and murders more than 1,500 hospital patients in East Prussia. Mentally ill patients from throughout East Prussia had been transferred to the district of Soldau, also in East Prussia. A special military unit, basically a hit squad, carried out its...
1942
On this day in 1942, 4,300 Jews are deported from the Polish town of Chelm to the Nazi extermination camp at Sobibor, where all are gassed to death. On the same day, the German firm IG Farben sets up a factory just outside Auschwitz, in order to take advantage of...
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ALSO ON THIS DAY
Lead Story
- 1881 American Red Cross founded
American Revolution
- 1758 Lenape Indians abduct Mary Campbell from western Pennsylvania
Automotive
- 1901 Connecticut enacts first speed-limit law
Civil War
- 1863 The Siege of Port Hudson begins
Cold War
- 1988 Gorbachev consolidates power
Crime
- 1924 Leopold and Loeb gain national attention
- 1992 Long Island Lolita is arrested
- 1996 A veteran’s flashback defense doesn’t hold up in court
Disaster
- 1960 Huge earthquake hits Chile
General Interest
- 1542 De Soto dies in the American wilderness
- 1927 Lindbergh lands in Paris
- 1932 Earhart completes transatlantic flight
Hollywood
- 1999 Soap star Susan Lucci wins first Emmy after 19 nominations
Literary
- 1910 Serialization of Colette’s The Vagabond begins
Music
- 1955 Chuck Berry records “Maybellene”
Old West
- 1539 Black Spanish explorer Estevan is reported killed
Presidential
- 2000 Garfield’s spine on display at museum
Sports
- 1978 Nancy Lopez wins her first Coca-Cola Classic
Vietnam War
- 1969 Military spokesman defends “Hamburger Hill”
World War I
- 1911 Second Moroccan Crisis
World War II
- 1940 Nazis kill “unfit” people in East Prussia
- 1942 Thousands of Jews die in Nazi gas chambers; IG Farber sets up factory
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