Oct 21
1836
Sam Houston becomes the George Washington of Texas
On this day in 1836, Sam Houston became the first elected president of the Republic of Texas, a position he held from 1836–38 and then again from 1841–44. Houston was instrumental in Texas’s becoming a U.S. state in 1845.
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© Kean Collection—Archive Photos/Getty Images; Photo Illustration Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Featured Event
© Archive Photos
Cuban missile crisis
On this day in 1962, President John F. Kennedy alerted Americans to the Cuban missile crisis, declaring a naval blockade to prevent further missile shipments to the island country 90 miles (145 km) off the coast of the U.S.
Featured Biography
G. Dagli Orti—De Agostini/age fotostock
Hungarian composer Franz Liszt, born this day in 1811, was not only the greatest piano virtuoso of his time but also a composer of enormous originality and a principal figure in the Romantic Movement.
More on October 22
Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images News
2010
WikiLeaks, a website founded by Julian Assange that functioned as a clearinghouse for classified or otherwise privileged information, released thousands of U.S. documents relating to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Doug Ellison
2008
Chandrayaan-1, India’s first lunar space probe, was launched, and it later found water in the Moon’s atmosphere. [Take our quiz about space exploration.]
Gisele Freund
1964
French philosopher and writer Jean-Paul Sartre was announced the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature; however, he became the first person to decline the award. [Test your knowledge of Nobel laureates in literature.]
© Denis Makarenko/Dreamstime.com
1943
French actress Catherine Deneuve, who was noted for her archetypal Gallic beauty as well as for her roles in films by some of the world’s greatest directors, was born. [Sort fact from fiction in our quiz about A-list actors.]
© Bettmann/Getty Images
1934
Infamous criminal Charles (“Pretty Boy”) Floyd was fatally shot in a field near East Liverpool, Ohio, by FBI agents. [Test your knowledge of mobster names.]
George Grantham Bain Collection/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. ( LC-DIG-ggbain-08612)
1910
In one of the most notorious criminal cases of the 20th century, American physician Hawley Harvey Crippen (widely known as Dr. Crippen) was found guilty of murdering his wife; he was executed in a British prison the following month. [Read about 10 “trials of the century.”]
Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.
1906
French artist Paul Cézanne, considered one of the greatest of the Post-Impressionists, died at the age of 67. [Sort fact from fiction in our quiz about artists and painters.]
Hulton Archive/Getty Images
1797
André-Jacques Garnerin, an inspector in the French army who encouraged the use of balloons for military purposes, made a balloon ascent in order to give his first exhibition of parachuting, when he jumped from a height of about 3,200 feet (1,000 metres). [Test your knowledge of French history.]
