Updated May 21, 2014, 10:57 am
On May 21, 1927, Charles A. Lindbergh landed his Spirit of St. Louis near Paris, completing the first solo airplane flight across the Atlantic Ocean
On May 21, 1921, Andrei Sakharov, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Soviet scientist and dissident, was born. Following his death on Dec. 14, 1989, his obituary appeared in The Times.
Go to obituary » | Other birthdays »
On This Date
| 1832 | The first Democratic National Convention got under way, in Baltimore. |
|---|---|
| 1840 | New Zealand was declared a British colony. |
| 1881 | Clara Barton founded the American Red Cross. |
| 1892 | The opera "I Pagliacci" by Ruggiero Leoncavallo was first performed, in Milan, Italy. |
| 1924 | Nathan Leopold Jr. and Richard Loeb, two students at the University of Chicago, killed a 14-year-old boy in a "thrill killing." |
| 1956 | The United States exploded the first airborne hydrogen bomb, over Bikini Atoll in the Pacific. |
| 1959 | The musical "Gypsy" starring Ethel Merman opened on Broadway. |
| 1979 | Former San Francisco City Supervisor Dan White was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in the shooting deaths of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk. |
| 1980 | "The Empire Strikes Back," the second movie in the "Star Wars" series, was released. |
| 1991 | Former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by a suicide bomber. |
| 1998 | A 15-year-old student open fired inside Thurston High School in Springfield, Ore., killing two students and wounding 23, one day after killing his parents. |
| 1999 | Susan Lucci, star of the ABC soap opera "All My Children," won her first Daytime Emmy Award for best actress in the 19th straight year she was nominated. |
| 2008 | David Cook won the seventh season of "American Idol." |
Historic Birthdays
Andrey Sakharov
5/21/1921 - 12/14/1989
Soviet physicist and advocate of human rights; awarded Nobel Prize for Peace in 1975.Go to obituary »
| 56 |
Alexander Pope 5/21/1688 - 5/30/1744 English poet and satirist |
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| 65 |
Elizabeth Fry 5/21/1780 - 10/12/1845 English philanthropist and social reformer |
| 47 |
Edwin Christy 5/21/1815 - 5/21/1862 American minstrel show performer |
| 66 |
Henri Rousseau 5/21/1844 - 9/2/1910 French painter |
| 85 |
Gustav Lindenthal 5/21/1850 - 7/31/1935 Austrian-born American civil engineer; designed the Hell Gate Bridge |
| 74 |
Leon Bourgeois 5/21/1851 - 9/29/1925 French statesman and promoter of the League of Nations; awared Nobel Prize for Peace (1920) |
| 58 |
Grace Hoadley Dodge 5/21/1856 - 12/27/1914 American philanthropist |
| 67 |
Willem Einthoven 5/21/1860 - 9/29/1927 Dutch physiologist and developer of the electrocardiograph; won Nobel Prize (1924) |
| 52 |
Glenn Curtiss 5/21/1878 - 7/23/1930 American aviation pioneer |
| 79 |
Marcel Breuer 5/21/1902 - 7/1/1981 Hungarian-born American architect |
| 39 |
Fats Waller 5/21/1904 - 12/15/1943 American pianist and composer |