![Today in History 21 May 2024](https://b.blackcampus.online/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/GridArt_20240521_090640157-1024x1024.jpg)
White Night Riots
1881: The American Red Cross was founded by Clara Barton, a pioneering American nurse.
![](https://b.blackcampus.online/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/American-Red-Cross.jpg)
1911: French troops occupy Fez, sparking second Moroccan Crisis.
1940: Nazis begin killing “unfit” people in East Prussia. On May 21, 1940, a “special unit” carries out its mission and begins murdering more than 1,500 hospital patients in East Prussia. The massacre lasted until June 6, 1940. A special military unit, basically a hit squad, carried out its agenda and killed the patients over an 18-day period, one small part of the larger Nazi program to exterminate everyone deemed “unfit” by its ideology. After the murders, the unit reported back to headquarters in Berlin that the patients had been “successfully evacuated.”
1980: “The Empire Strikes Back,” the second movie in what would become the decades-long Star Wars franchise, premieres in movie theaters.
![](https://b.blackcampus.online/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/The-Empire-Strikes-Back.jpg)
1991: Former Prime Minister of India, Rajiv Gandhi, is assassinated. The attacker was a woman believed to be linked the Sri Lankan separatist militant organization, the Tamil Tigers. At least 14 people lost their lives in the suicide bombing.
![](https://b.blackcampus.online/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Rajiv-Gandhi.jpg)
1979: Violent clashes follow the lenient sentencing for Harvey Milk’s murderer. Milk, the first openly gay U.S. politician, had been shot and killed together with San Francisco Mayor George Moscone. The assassin, Dan White, was convicted of voluntary manslaughter only, triggering the White Night Riots.
![](https://b.blackcampus.online/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/White-Night-Riots.jpg)
1951: The 9th Street Show opens in New York. The ground-breaking art exhibition showing works by artists like Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning is considered the birth hour of the artistic avant-garde referred to as the New York School.
1930: The Women’s Enfranchised Act goes into effect in South Africa. White women 21 years and older are allowed to vote and run for office. The law does not permit women of South Africa’s black majority to vote, or any woman of other non-white races.
![](https://b.blackcampus.online/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Womens-Enfranchised-Act.jpg)
1932: Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly solo nonstop across the Atlantic. The U.S. aviatress’ disappearance on an attempted round-the-world flight five years later is one of the most discussed unsolved mysteries in the history of flight.
1904: FIFA, the world governing body of association football, is founded. The Fédération Internationale de Football Association is responsible for the organization of the World Cup, which is one of the world’s most viewed sporting events.
![](https://b.blackcampus.online/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/The-Federation-Internationale-de-Football-Association.jpg)
2009: The Gambia’s dictator Yahya Jammeh begins a witch-hunting campaign, reportedly terrified that he may be removed from power through witchcraft. More than 1,000 Gambians were abducted by Jammeh’s “witch-doctors,” taken to detention centres and tortured.
![](https://b.blackcampus.online/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Yahya-Jammeh-1.jpeg)
BIRTHS ON THIS DAY: May 21
Mengistu Haile Mariam 87 years:
Military dictator of Ethiopia (1974-1991), in Wolayita, Ethiopia. His junta overthrew Emperor Haile Selassie, ending the 600 year-old Solomonic Dynasty. He attempted to run Ethiopia’s economy with Marxist-Leninist policies like nationalisation and land redistribution. After he survived a failed assassination attempt in 1978, his revenge on political rivals and their supporters cost the lives of up to 750,000 Ethiopians. He failed to act during Ethiopia’s historic famine in 1983-1985, when 1.2 million people died. After the Soviet Union withdrew its support of his regime in 1990, he was forced out of power in 1991.
Elizabeth Fry (21 May 1780 – 12 October 1845)
Elizabeth Fry was born on May 21 1780. She was an English Quaker and prison reformer who visited Newgate Prison, London in 1813 where over 300 women and their children were living in filthy, overcrowded conditions. From this time, she devoted herself to improving conditions, providing hostels for the homeless and establishing various charitable organizations to help the poor.
Fry was a major driving force behind new legislation to improve the treatment of prisoners, especially female inmates, and as such has been called the “Angel of Prisons” She died at the age of 65.
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