November 21

1495 John Bale was born on November 21, 1495. A one-time Carmelite monk, he became a playwright, who in 1538 wrote a drama, King Johan, which is considered the first English historical play. Of his mysteries and miracle plays only five have been preserved.

John Bale

1676 On November 21, 1676, the Danish astronomer Ole Rømer announced to the Academy of Sciences in Paris the first quantitative measurements of the speed of light. Romer used Io’s eclipse of Jupiter to calculate it. The eclipse occurred ten minutes after the expectation, allowing the speed of light to be estimated at 220,000km/s.

1694 The French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher Voltaire was born François-Marie Arouet in Paris on November 21, 1694 to François Arouet and Marie-Marguerite Daumart or D'Aumard. Voltaire was a nom de plume. an anagram of Arovet L(e) I(eune), the Latinized spelling of his surname. François adopted the name Voltaire after his first spell in prison in 1718.

1695 English composer Henry Purcell died at his home in Marsham Street, London on November 21, 1695, at the height of his career. He is believed to have been 35 or 36 years old at the time. The cause of his death is unclear, but was possibly tuberculosis. His wife and two of his six children survived him.

1783 The first passengers in the history of aviation were a cockerel, a sheep and a duck, transported by a hot-air balloon developed by Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier in September 1783 at Versailles. It lasted approximately eight minutes, covering two miles.The first manned flight was by Pilâtre de Rozier and Marquis d'Arlandes at Paris on November 21, 1783 in a hot-air balloon designed by the Montgolfier brothers. They were airborne for 20 minutes and it flew five miles.

1787 Sir Samuel Cunard was born Halifax, Nova Scotia on November 21, 1787. Cunard succeeded early as a merchant and shipowner, before emigrating to Britain in 1838. Two years later, he joined with George Burns in Glasgow and David McIver in Liverpool to found the British and North American Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, later known as the Cunard Line. Within 30 years, Cunard was employing 11,500 people and owned 46 vessels. 

1840 Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom and Prince Albert's first child, named Victoria, was born on November 21, 1840. Princess Victoria married Prince Frederick William of Prussia (the future Frederick III) and gave her mother her first grandson, the future Wilhelm II, German Emperor. Eight more children would be born during the exceptionally happy marriage between the royal couple (four sons and five daughters).

1902 The first ever professional football night game was played at Maple Avenue Driving Park in Emira, New York on November 21, 1902. The Philadelphia Athletics football team, of the first National Football League, defeated the Kanaweola Athletic Club, 39-0.

1905 In 1905 Albert Einstein published in the physics journal Annalen de Physik (Annals of Physics) four papers on the production and transformation of light and on the electro dynamics of moving bodies. His fourth paper Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content?, which revealed the relationship between energy and mass, was published on November 21, 1905. This led to the equation E=mc².

1906 On the morning of November 21, 1906, one of the Glasgow-located Loch Katrine (Adelphi) Distillery’s massive washback vats collapsed. A tidal wave of of over 150,000 gallons of red hot whisky smashed into people in the street outside throwing men and horses across the street where they struggled to wade through the waist deep alcoholic mixture.

1914 The Yale Bowl is a college football stadium located about 1½ miles (2½ km) west of the main campus of Yale University. It is the home of the Yale Bulldogs of the Ivy League. When it opened on November 21, 1914 with 70,896 seats, it was the first bowl-shaped stadium in the country.

1918 The German High Seas Fleet surrendered to the Royal Navy on November 21, 1918, ten days after World War I had ended. 70 German warships met well over 100 allied warships and sailed into captivity. It was the largest gathering of warships in close company in history.

1922 Rebecca Latimer Felton was the first woman US Senator. The most prominent woman in Georgia in the Progressive Era, she was honored by appointment to the Senate. Felton was sworn in November 21, 1922, and served just 24 hours. At 87 years, nine months, and 22 days old, she was also the oldest freshman senator to enter the Senate.

1936 The world's first TV gardening program was broadcast by the BBC on November 21, 1936. In Your Garden was presented by Mr C.H. Middleton, a knowledgeable and charismatic horticulturalist who quickly became a popular figure among viewers. 

1941 Juanita Spinnelli became the first woman to be enter the gas chamber in California on November 21, 1941. She was also the first woman ever to be officially executed in that state. A gangster and ex-wrestler, Spinnelli took young delinquent homeless men into her house, where she would train them to be professional criminals.

1945 Details of Adolf Hitler, gleaned from Eva Braun’s diary, were revealed by the American Intelligence Corps on November 21, 1945. The Fuhrer is pictured as a man who made promises he never kept. He also forgot Eva’s birthday when she had hoped for a dachshund gift. "He was here — but no dog," she wrote.

1953 In 1912 amateur archaeologist Charles Dawson claimed that he had discovered the "missing link" between ape and man at Piltdown, East Sussex, England. A collection of fossilized skull remains, for years they were believed to belong to a human ancestor from 500,000 years ago. On November 21, 1953, the Piltdown Man skull was revealed to be a hoax.

1976 Rocky, starring Sylvester Stallone as the underdog prizefighter Rocky Balboa, debuted on November 21, 1976 in New York City. It was a huge box-office hit and received 10 Academy Awards. Just before Sylvester Stallone sold the script for Rocky, he was homeless and sold his dog for $50. A week later, he bought his dog back for $3000.

1980  76% of all U.S. television viewers in the United States watched Dallas to find out who shot J.R. on November 21, 1980. More than 83 million people tuned in making it the U.S.'s second most-watched non-sports program of all time, after the M*A*S*H finale in 1983.

1987 The actor Bruce Willis proposed to actress Demi Moore at Pink's Hot Dog Stand in Hollywood. They married on November 21, 1987 but divorced twelve years later. Willis and Moore had three daughters together - Rumer, Tallulah and Scout. 

1989 House of Commons proceedings were televised live for the first time in the United Kingdom on November 21, 1989. The first televised speech was by Ian Gow, a Conservative opponent of televising the MPs debates.

2015 The bill for the U.S. Navy’s futuristic new ‘supership’ USS Milwaukee, commissioned on November 21, 2015, came to $362 million. Designed to be difficult to detect on radar, the ship was there for all to see when it had to be towed back to port just 20 days after coming into service, after the vessel experienced a "complete loss of propulsion."