Portal:Biography/Selected anniversaries/October 21

Births

 * 1772 - Samuel Taylor Coleridge, British poet (d. 1834)
 * 1833 - Alfred Nobel, Swedish inventor and founder of the Nobel Prize (d. 1896) (pictured)
 * 1917 - Dizzy Gillespie, American musician (d. 1993)
 * 1929 - Ursula K. Le Guin, American author (d. 2018)
 * 1942 - Judy Sheindlin, American judge and television host
 * 1943 - Brian Piccolo, American football player (d. 1970)
 * 1949 - Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli statesman
 * 1956 - Carrie Fisher, American actress and writer (d. 2016)

Deaths

 * 1662 - Henry Lawes, English composer (b. 1595)
 * 1687 - Sir Edmund Waller, English poet (b. 1606)
 * 1805 - Horatio Nelson, British admiral (mortally wounded in battle) (b. 1758)
 * 1969 - Jack Kerouac, American novelist (b. 1922)
 * 1980 - Hans Asperger, Austrian psychologist (b. 1906)
 * 1984 - François Truffaut, French film director (b. 1932)