May 21

1403 – Henry III of Castile sends Ruy González de Clavijo as ambassador to Tamerlane to discuss the possibility of an alliance between him and Castile against the moslem Ottoman Empire.

1758 – 10 year old Mary Campbell is abducted in Pennsylvania by Lenape indians during the French and Indian War. She is returned 6 1/2 years later.

1851 – The Colombian Congress enacts a law freeing all slaves on January 1, 1852.

1856 – Lawrence, Kansas, founded by abolitionists, is raided by pro slavery forces, with several buildings sacked and burned. The only casualty is one of the raiders who was accidentally killed. This begins the time of ‘Bleeding Kansas’.

1881 – The American Red Cross is established by Clara Barton in Washington, D.C.

1917 – The Great Atlanta Fire causes $5.5 million in damage, destroying 2,000 buildings, but causing only 1 fatality due to a heart attack.

1924 – University of Chicago students Nathan Leopold Jr. and Richard Loeb murder 14 year old Bobby Franks in a “thrill killing”.

1927 – Charles Lindbergh lands at Le Bourget Field in Paris, completing the world’s first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean from New York to Paris.

1932 – Amelia Earhart lands at Londonderry, Northern Ireland, completing  the first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean by a female pilot.

1934 – Oskaloosa, Iowa, becomes the first municipality in the United States to fingerprint all of its citizens. No reason can be found for this.

1946 – During an experiment with the plutonium core that would have been the 3rd nuclear bomb dropped on Japan, if needed, physicist Louis Slotin is the second man fatally irradiated in the second criticality incident with the ‘demon core’ at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

1972 – Michelangelo’s Pietà in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome is damaged by a  mentally disturbed vandal.

1976 – A chartered school bus transporting 52 members of the Yuba City High School a cappella choir, crashes after running off an elevated ramp on the I-680 highway in Martinez, California, killing 28 students and an adult adviser.

1981 – Transamerica Corporation agrees to sell United Artists to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for $380 million after the box office failure of the 1980 film Heaven’s Gate.

2000 – An East Coast Aviation Services chartered British Aerospace BAe-3101 Jetstream 3101, runs out of fuel and crashes into mountainous terrain in Bear Creek Township, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania after missing a landing approach to Scranton International Airport and circling to try again, killing all 19 passengers and crew aboard.

2005 – The tallest roller coaster in the world, the 456 feet tall, Kingda Ka opens at Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson Township, New Jersey.

2011 – Radio broadcaster Harold Camping’s prediction that the world would end on this date fails to come to pass.

2012 – A suicide bombing killing more than 120 people in Sana’a, the capital city of Yemen, causes certain U.S. counter terrorist advisors to decide to exercise the better part of valor and relocate a forward post back across the Red Sea.

2017 – Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus performs their final show at Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Uniondale, New York.