Portal:Biography/Selected anniversaries/December 21

Births

 * 1596 – Peter Mogila, Moldovan bishop (d. 1646)
 * 1682 – Calico Jack, Cuban-English pirate (d. 1720)
 * 1778 – Anders Sandøe Ørsted, 3rd Prime Minister of Denmark (d. 1860)
 * 1795 – Leopold von Ranke, German historian (d. 1886)
 * 1917 – Heinrich Böll, German author and Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1985)
 * 1940 – Frank Zappa, American singer-songwriter (d. 1993)

Deaths

 * 1375 – Giovanni Boccaccio, Italian author and poet (b. 1313)
 * 1807 – John Newton, English soldier and clergyman (b. 1725)
 * 1920 – Mohammed Abdullah Hassan, founder of the Dervish state (b. 1856)
 * 1940 – F. Scott Fitzgerald, American author (b. 1896)
 * 1945 – George S. Patton, American military commander (b. 1885)
 * 2006 – Saparmurat Niyazov, 1st President of Turkmenistan (b. 1940)