Today is Oct. 21, which means there are 71 days remaining until the end of the year. Listed below are several important events that happened on this date over the years.
Thomas Edison invents the lightbulb, 1879. Rather, it was the evening of Oct. 21 that he first completed a fully functional version of what would later become commercial light bulbs. This prototype lasted much longer than his previous attempts at just over thirteen hours and became the basis for lighting Pearl Street three years later.
The birth of John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie, 1917. Gillespie was an American jazz musician who specialized in many talents including bandleading, trumpeting, composing and singing. He went on to become one of the major symbols of a rising genre of music called bebop in the 1940s, as well as a pioneer for Afro-Cuban rhythms according to the National Endowment for the Arts. Up until his death on Jan. 6, 1993, he was extremely passionate in his craft and collaborated with a variety of musicians over the course of his career.
Walt Disney World was first announced, 1945. Walt Disney World served as Walt Disney’s second resort venture following the opening of Disneyland California. In order to open the park without causing the cost of land to increase in the area, he purchased the land he planned to build Walt Disney World on via multiple fabricated companies. Though he originally planned to announce he was the owner on Nov. 15, a magazine in Orlando published an article correctly speculating both that Disney owned the land and it would be used to create a new resort.
World Wide Internet Attack, 2002. As the largest malicious cyberattack at its time, the incident involved a distributed denial of service, or DDOS, sent to several of the largest online domain name systems in the world. Seven of the thirteen servers went down completely during the time of the attack, which caused many websites to also become unavailable for use. Fortunately, the remaining servers were prepared for such attacks, and eventually all domain name systems returned to full functionality.
