On this day

October 21 in History

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It Is Not an Aircraft

October 21, 1978

It Is Not an Aircraft

When a twenty-year-old aviator vanished over the waters of Bass Strait after reporting an uncanny craft above him, the radio transcript sparked global headlines. Behind the haunting seventeen seconds of static lies a poignant clash between extraterrestrial myth and the merciless physics of night flight.

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Also on this day

More that happened on October 21

Pick any event and Historai will make it an episode.

  1. 1096Sultan Kilij Arslan of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum decimated the invading forces of the People's Crusade near Nicaea.
  2. 1600Tokugawa Ieyasu defeated rival Japanese factions at the Battle of Sekigahara, clearing the path to establish his long-ruling shogunate.
  3. 1797The United States Navy launched the heavy wooden frigate USS Constitution into Boston Harbor.
  4. 1824English bricklayer Joseph Aspdin obtained a patent for Portland cement, laying the foundation for modern concrete construction.
  5. 1858Composer Jacques Offenbach staged the Paris premiere of his satirical operetta Orpheus in the Underworld, featuring the famous can-can melody.
  6. 1895Japanese imperial troops occupied Tainan, bringing an end to the short-lived Republic of Formosa on the island of Taiwan.
  7. 1915Engineers successfully transmitted the first human voice across the Atlantic Ocean by radiotelephone from Virginia to Paris.
  8. 1943Nazi occupation forces liquidated the Jewish ghetto in Minsk, deporting its remaining inhabitants to be murdered at Maly Trostinets.
  9. 1950Troops of the Chinese People's Liberation Army marched into Tibet, incorporating the region under communist rule.
  10. 1960The Royal Navy launched HMS Dreadnought, the first nuclear-powered submarine constructed in the United Kingdom.
  11. 1965Comet Ikeya-Seki swung remarkably close to the Sun, becoming visible to observers across the globe in broad daylight.
  12. 1993Soldiers assassinated Melchior Ndadaye during an attempted military coup in Burundi, triggering widespread ethnic bloodshed and mass displacement.

Chosen from the October 21 pages of OnThisDay.com, retold in our own words.