Saturday, May 21, 2011

TODAY IN HISTORY

MAY 21
1881:Former Civil War nurse and “Angel of the Battlefield” Clara Barton founds the American Red Cross in order to provide humanitarian aid to victims of wars and disasters.

1927: Charles Lindbergh completes the first solo trans-Atlantic flight, touching down at Le Bourget airfield near Paris some 33 hours after the Spirit of St. Louis took off from Roosevelt Field outside New York. A crowd of thousands of spectators lifts the 25-year-old “Lucky Lindy” out of the cockpit upon his arrival.

1991: Former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi is killed along with 17 others by a bomb planted by a female Tamil Tigers extremist in Tamil Nadu, India. Gandhi was the descendant of two former Indian prime ministers—the grandson of Jawaharlal Nehru and the son of Indira Gandhi, who was herself assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards in 1984. Rajiv Gandhi was 46.
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