On October 21:
1520 Ferdinand Magellan discoversed what is now known as the Strait of Magellan.
1772 English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born.
1805 The Battle of Trafalgar took place.A British fleet led by Admiral Lord Nelson defeated a combined French and Spanish fleet off the coast of Spain under Admiral Villeneuve.
The Battle of Trafalgar, as seen from the mizzen
starboard shrouds of the Victory
by J. M. W. Turner (oil on canvas, 1806 to 1808)
1824 Joseph Aspdin patented Portland cement.
1833 Alfred Nobel, Swedish inventor and founder of the Nobel Prize was born.
1854 Florence Nightingale and a staff of 38 nurses were sent to the Crimean War.
1917 US musician Dizzy Gillespie was born.
1921 English composer Sir Malcolm Arnold was born.
1931 English actress Vivian Pickles was born.
1940 English cricketer Geoff Boycott was born.
1940 English musician Manfred Mann was born.
1942 Judy Sheindlin, American judge (“Judge Judy“) was born.
1945 Argentine military officer and politician Juan Perón married actress Evita (María Eva Duarte de Perón).
1952 Trevor Chappell, Australian cricketer, was born.
1953 British politician Peter Mandelson was born.
1956 US author and actress Carrie Fisher was born.
1959 The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York opened to the public.
1964 Peter Snell won his second gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics.
1966 A coal tip fellon the village of Aberfan in Wales, killing 144 people, mostly schoolchildren.
1983 The metre was defined at the seventeenth General Conference on Weights and Measures in terms of the speed of light as the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second.
Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia.