Daily Almanac: October 21, 2023

Sunrise/Sunset

RISE: 8:03 a.m.
SET: 7:01 p.m.

High/Low Temperatures:

HIGH: 68 °F
LOW: 43 °F

Today is…

• “Back to the Future” Day
• National Pumpkin Cheesecake Day
• National Fetch Day

What Happened On This Day:

• 2014 Oscar Pistorius Convicted for 5 Years. The South African Paralympic Champion was on trial for the murder of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp. He was sentenced to a maximum of five years for culpable homicide. He was released on parole for good behavior in October 2015. However, in December 2015, South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal upgraded the charges to murder and found him guilty of murder.
• 1983 The 17th General Conference on Weights and Measures Ends. The conference passed a resolution defining a meter as the distance traveled by light in vacuum during a time interval of about three hundred millionth of a second. Before this, the meter or metre was assigned several different definitions. In 1793, it was defined as one ten-millionth of the distance between the Earth’s Equator and the North Pole. In 1960, it was once again redefined by the 11th General Conference of Weights and Measures as equal to “1650763,73 wavelengths in vacuum of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the levels 2p10 and 5d5 of the krypton 86 atom.”• 1959 The Guggenheim Opens its Doors. The Guggenheim Museum displays works from some of the world’s most celebrated and sought-after contemporary artists. Situated in the Manhattan area of New York, the museum was first opened in 1939 as the Museum of Non-Objective Painting.

Births On This Day

• 1956 Carrie Fisher

American actress, screenwriter, author
• 1772 Samuel Taylor Coleridge

English poet, philosopher

Deaths On This Day

• 2012 George McGovern

American politician, historian, author
• 1969 Jack Kerouac

American author, poet