July 21 is:
National Junk Food Day
National Creme Brulee Day
National Ice Cream Day
Birthday of Frances Folsom Cleveland (July 21, 1864), wife of Grover Cleveland; First lady 1885-1889 and 1893-1897. On June 2, 1886, Grover Cleveland, at age 49, married twenty-one year old Frances Folsom. It remains the only wedding at the White House of a sitting president. Upon leaving the White House in 1889, Mrs. Cleveland told the staff to take good care of things because “we will come back.” They did, in 1893.
July 21,1865 – In the market square of Springfield, Missouri, Wild Bill Hickok shot and killed Davis Tutt in what is regarded as the first western showdown.
According to factinate.com “Tutt and Wild Bill did not get along. They chased the same women and gambled fiercely with one another. Eventually, Wild Bill lost a gold watch to Tutt in a poker game. The watch was special to Hickok, so he asked Tutt not to wear it in public—but of course, Tutt refused. Tensions boiled over and on July 21, 1865, the two of them met in Springfield’s town square. What happened next is believed to have been one of the first quick-draw duels in history.
Tutt missed. Wild Bill didn’t. He shot his rival through the heart, and was subsequently arrested for murder. But this was a different time, and after a lengthy trial, a jury cleared Hickok of all charges.”
At Adair, Iowa, on July 21, 1873, Jesse James and the James-Younger Gang pulled off the first successful train robbery in the American Old West.
Birthday of Ernest Hemingway (July 21, 1899), American novelist, author of “The Old Man and the Sea” and “For Whom the Bell Tolls” and many others.
Willis Carrier created the first air conditioner in Buffalo, New York in 1902.
1925 – Scopes Trial: In Dayton, Tennessee, high school biology teacher John T. Scopes was found guilty of teaching evolution in class and fined $100.
The United States Senate ratified the North Atlantic Treaty in 1949.
At -89.2 degrees Celsius, the coldest-ever recorded temperature was measured in Antarctica on July 21, 1983 (equal to -128.6 Fahrenheit).
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the fastest-selling novel ever was published in 2007. It sold 15 million copies in the first 24 hours of its release.
July 21, 2011: End of the Space Shuttle program.