Today in History in 1957 the movie Jailhouse Rock, starring Elvis Presley, opens.

The On This Day In History archives at “Simple English Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia” contains over 200,000 events, birthdays and deaths from 6,000 years of history. Here is a roundup of a few of them:

October 21 is the 294th day of the year (295th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 71 days remaining until the end of the year.

EVENTS

686 – Conon becomes Pope.

1096 - People's Crusade: The Turkish army heavily defeats the People's Army of the West.

1097 - First Crusade: The Siege of Antioch begins.

1209 - Otto IV, Holy Roman Emperor is crowned by Pope Innocent III.

1392 - Emperor Kameyama of Japan abdicates the throne in favour of his arch-rival Emperor Go-Komatsu.

1512 - Martin Luther joins the theological faculty at the University of Wittenberg.

1520 - Ferdinand Magellan enters what is now known as the Magellan Strait.

1600 – Tokugawa Ieyasu defeats the leaders of rival Japanese clans in the Battle of Sekigahara, which marks the beginning of the Tokugawa shogunate, who in effect rule Japan until the mid-Nineteenth century.

1638 - In England, the church at Widecombe-on-the-Moor is struck by lightning during an afternoon service, leading to new scientific research on lightning strikes.

1797 – In Boston Harbor, the 44-gun United States Navy frigate USS Constitution is launched.

1805 – Napoleonic Wars: Battle of Trafalgar – a British fleet led by Admiral Lord Nelson defeats a combined French and Spanish fleet off the coast of Spain under Admiral Villeneuve. It signalled the virtual end of French maritime power and left Britain navally unchallenged until the twentieth century.

1805 – Napoleonic Wars: Austrian General Mack surrendurs his army to the Grand Armee of Napoleon at Ulm, reaping Napoleon over 30,000 prisoners and inflicting 10,000 casualties on the losers. Ulm was considered to be one of Napoleon's finest hours.

1816 - The Penang Free School is founded in George Town, Malaysia. It is the oldest English language school in Southeast Asia.

1824 – Joseph Aspdin patents Portland cement.

1854 – Florence Nightingale and a staff of 38 nurses were sent to the Crimean War.

1861 – American Civil War: Battle of Ball's Bluff – Union forces under Colonel Edward Baker are defeated by Confederate troops in the second major battle of the war. Baker, a close friend of Abraham Lincoln, is killed in the fighting.

1867 – Manifest Destiny: Medicine Lodge Treaty – Near Medicine Lodge Creek, Kansas a landmark treaty is signed by southern Great Plains Indian leaders. The treaty requires Native American Plains tribes to relocate a reservation in western Oklahoma.

1879 – Using a filament of carbonized thread, Thomas Edison tests the first practical electric light bulb (it lasted 13 1/2 hours before burning out).

1885 - In an assassination attempt, Danish Prime Minister Jacob Estrup is shot.

1888 - The Swiss Social Democratic Party is founded.

1895 – The Republic of Taiwan collapses as Japanese forces invade.

1902 – In the United States, a five-month strike by United Mine Workers ends.

1907 - A magnitude 8.1 earthquake hits Central Asia, killing 12,000.

1910 - HMS Niobe arrives at Halifax Harbour, Nova Scotia to become the first ship of the Royal Canadian Navy.

1921 – US President Warren G. Harding delivers the first speech by a sitting president against lynching in the deep south.

1930 - A mining disaster at Alsdorf, near Aachen, Germany, kills 271 people.

1941 – World War II: Germans rampage in Yugoslavia, killing thousands of civilians.

1943 - The Provisional Government of Free India is declared by Subhas Chandra Bose.

1944 – The first kamikaze attack: HMAS Australia was hit by a Japanese plane carrying a 200 kg (441 pound) bomb off Leyte Island, as the Battle of Leyte Gulf began.

1944 - World War II: Aachen becomes the first major German city to fall to the Allies.

1945 – Women's suffrage: Women are allowed to vote in France for the first time.

1945 – Argentine military officer and politician Juan Perón married actress Evita.

1947 – 21 die as a fire destroys an asylum in Hoff, Germany.

1948 - A Lockheed Constellation airplane crashes at Prestwick, Scotland, killing 39 people.

1957 – The movie Jailhouse Rock, starring Elvis Presley, opens.

1959 – In New York City, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum opens to the public. It was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

1959 – US President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs an executive order transferring Wernher von Braun and other German scientists from the United States Army to NASA.

1962 - Norwegian postal ship Sanct Svithun sinks, killing 41.

1965 - Comet Ikeya-Seki approaches Perihelion, passing 200,000 kilometers (279,617 miles) within Earth.

1966 – Aberfan disaster: A coal tip falls on the village of Aberfan in Wales, killing 144 people, mostly schoolchildren

1967 – Vietnam War: More than 100,000 war protesters gather in Washington, DC. A peaceful rally at the Lincoln Memorial is followed by a march to The Pentagon and clashes with soldiers and United States Marshals protecting the facility (event lasts until October 23; 683 people will be arrested). Similar demonstrations occurred simultaneously in Japan and Western Europe.

1969 - Willy Brandt is elected Chancellor of West Germany.

1971 - 22 people are killed in a gas explosion at a shopping centre in Clarkston, East Renfrewshire, near Glasgow, Scotland.

1973 – John Paul Getty III's ear is cut off by his kidnappers and sent to a newspaper in Rome; it does not arrive until November 8.

1977 - The European Patent Institute is founded.

1980 – 1980 World Series: In 6 games, the Philadelphia Phillies win their first World Series.

1981 - Andreas Papandreou becomes Prime Minister of Greece.

1986 – In Lebanon, pro-Iranian kidnappers claim to have abducted American writer Edward Tracy (he will be released in August 1991).

1986 - African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights enters into force.

1987 – Former Miss America Bess Myerson is arrested on charges of bribery, conspiracy, and mail fraud, all involving an alimony-fixing scandal. She is later found not guilty.

1994 – North Korea nuclear weapons program: North Korea and the United States sign an agreement that requires North Korea to stop its nuclear weapons program and agree to inspections.

1994 - In Seoul, South Korea, 32 people are killed when the Seongsu Bridge collapses.

1997 – Hotel owners from the Detroit area meet to discuss Jack Kevorkian's practice of leaving corpses in hotel rooms.

1997 – The government of Singapore announces in a widely publicized "toilet alert" that the drive for toilet cleanliness is a great success; five toilets were selected by citizens as toilet role models.

2004 – The Boston Red Sox win the American League pennant, defeating the New York Yankees 10-3 in Game 7 of the American League Championship Series, capping off a remarkable comeback from three games to none down to win.

2005 - Hurricane Wilma strikes the Yucatán, Mexico.

2007 - Kimi Raikkonen wins the Formula One World Championship.

2007 - Donald Tusk is elected Prime Minister of Poland.

2015 - This is the exact date that the main characters travel to in Back to the Future Part II.

2016 - A train crash in Eséka, Cameroon, kills at least 55 people.

2017 - The government of Spain begins moves to take direct control of the region of Catalonia after the region's disputed referendum on its independence on October 1.

2019 - The 2019 Canadian federal election is held, with Justin Trudeau's Liberal Party of Canada retaining power, but with a reduced number of seats and in second place in the popular vote behind Andrew Scheer's Conservative Party of Canada.