October 21 - Mirror, Mirror

Mirror, Mirror

Overheard

M: Finish your supper, there's a surprise.
E: Ooh! What?
M: C-o-o-k-i-e. Do you know what that spells?
E: Um... Watermelon?

Family Birthdays

Uncle Gregory Parsons

This Day In History

1512

Martin Luther joins the theological faculty of the University of Wittenberg.

1520

Ferdinand Magellan discovers a strait now known as Strait of Magellan.
João Álvares Fagundes discovers the islands of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, bestowing them their original name of "Islands of the 11,000 Virgins."

1797

In Boston Harbor, the 44-gun United States Navy frigate USS Constitution is launched.

1805

A British fleet led by Vice Admiral Lord Nelson defeats a combined French and Spanish fleet off the coast of Spain under Admiral Villeneuve

1854

Florence Nightingale and a staff of 38 nurses are sent to the Crimean War.

1910

HMS Niobe arrives in Halifax Harbour to become the first ship of the Royal Canadian Navy.

1921

George Melford's silent film, The Sheik, starring Rudolph Valentino, premiers.

1959

In New York City, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, opens to the public.

1973

Fred Dryer of the then Los Angeles Rams becomes the first player in NFL history to score two safeties in the same game.

1983

The metre is defined at the seventeenth General Conference on Weights and Measures as the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second.

2003

Images of the dwarf planet Eris are taken and subsequently used in documenting its discovery by the team of Michael E. Brown, Chad Trujillo, and David L. Rabinowitz.

Famous Birthdays

1581

Domenico Zampieri, Italian painter (d. 1641)

1650

Jean Bart, French admiral (d. 1702)

1772

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, British poet (d. 1834)

1833

Alfred Nobel, Swedish inventor and founder of the Nobel Prize (d. 1896)

1886

Eugene Burton Ely, American aviation pioneer (d. 1911)

1911

Mary Blair, American artist and illustrator, best remembered for her Disney work (d. 1978)

1912

Sir Georg Solti, Hungarian conductor (d. 1997)

1917

Dizzy Gillespie, American jazz musician (d. 1993)

1929

Ursula K. Le Guin, American author

1956

Carrie Fisher, American actress and writer

1978

Will Estes, American actor