May 21
1502 – The island of Saint Helena is discovered by the Portuguese explorer João da Nova.
1758 – Ten-year-old
Mary Campbell is abducted in Pennsylvania by Lenape during the
French and Indian War. She is returned six and a half years later.
1863 – Organization of the
Seventh-day Adventist Church in Battle Creek, Michigan.
1871 – Opening of the first
rack railway in Europe, the
Rigi-Bahnen on
Mount Rigi.
1881 – The American Red Cross is established by
Clara Barton in Washington, D.C.
1917 – The
Great Atlanta fire of 1917 causes $5.5 million in damages, destroying some 300 acres including 2,000 homes, businesses and churches, displacing about 10,000 people but leading to only one fatality (due to heart attack).
1924 – University of Chicago students
Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold, Jr. murder 14-year-old Bobby Franks in a
"thrill killing".
1927 – Charles Lindbergh touches down at
Le Bourget Field in Paris, completing the world's first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean.
1932 – Bad weather forces Amelia Earhart to land in a pasture in Derry, Northern Ireland, and she thereby becomes the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.
1934 –
Oskaloosa, Iowa, becomes the first municipality in the United States to fingerprint all of its citizens.
1936 –
Sada Abe is arrested after wandering the streets of Tokyo for days with her dead lover's severed genitals in her handbag.
1946 – Physicist
Louis Slotin is fatally irradiated in a
criticality incident during an experiment with the
demon core at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
1976 – The
Yuba City bus disaster occurs in Martinez, California. Twenty-nine are killed making it the deadliest road accident in U.S. history.
1979 –
White Night riots in San Francisco following the manslaughter conviction of Dan White for the assassinations of
George Moscone and
Harvey Milk.
1980 –
Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back is released in theaters.
1981 – Irish Republican hunger strikers
Raymond McCreesh and
Patsy O'Hara die on hunger strike in
Maze prison.
1996 – The ferry
MV Bukoba sinks in Tanzanian waters on Lake Victoria, killing nearly 1,000.
2005 – The tallest roller coaster in the world,
Kingda Ka opens at
Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson Township, New Jersey.
2011 – Radio broadcaster
Harold Camping predicted that the
world would end on this date.
2014 – The
National September 11 Museum opens to the public.
Births
1878 – Glenn Curtiss; 1898 – Armand Hammer; 1901 – Sam Jaffe; 1904 – Robert Montgomery, Fats Waller; 1916 – Harold Robbins; 1917 – Raymond Burr; 1921 – Andrei Sakharov; 1923 – Ara Parseghian; 1924 – Peggy Cass; 1941 – Ronald Isley (The Isley Bros.); 1948 – Leo Sayer; 1951 – Al Franken; 1952 – Mr. T; 1959 – Nick Cassavetes; 1960 – Jeffrey Dahmer; 1966 – Lisa Edelstein (Dr. Cuddy on "House"); 1967 – Chris Benoit; 1972 – The Notorious B.I.G.
Deaths
1542 – Hernando de Soto; 1952 – John Garfield; 1965 – Geoffrey de Havilland (designed the
de Havilland Mosquito); 1988 – Sammy Davis, Sr.; 1995 – Les Aspin; 1996 – Lash LaRue; 2000 – Sir John Gielgud; 2003 –
Alejandro de Tomaso; 2013 – Leonard Marsh (co-founded
Snapple)