By The Associated Press

Today in History

Today is Monday, Oct. 21, the 294th day of 2019. There are 71 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On Oct. 21, 1892, schoolchildren across the U.S. observed Columbus Day (according to the Gregorian date) by reciting, for the first time, the original version of “The Pledge of Allegiance,” written by Francis Bellamy for The Youth’s Companion.

On this date:

In 1797, the U.S. Navy frigate Constitution, also known as “Old Ironsides,” was christened in Boston’s harbor.

In 1879, Thomas Edison perfected a workable electric light at his laboratory in Menlo Park, N.J.

In 1917, members of the 1st Division of the U.S. Army training in Luneville (luhn-nay-VEEL’), France, became the first Americans to see action on the front lines of World War I.

In 1944, during World War II, U.S. troops captured the German city of Aachen (AH’-kuhn).

In 1960, Democrat John F. Kennedy and Republican Richard M. Nixon clashed in their fourth and final presidential debate in New York.

In 1966, 144 people, 116 of them children, were killed when a coal waste landslide engulfed a school and some 20 houses in Aberfan, Wales.

In 1967, the Israeli destroyer INS Eilat (ay-LAHT’) was sunk by Egyptian missile boats near Port Said (sah-EED’); 47 Israeli crew members were lost. Tens of thousands of Vietnam War protesters began two days of demonstrations in Washington, D.C.

In 1971, President Richard Nixon nominated Lewis F. Powell and William H. Rehnquist to the U.S. Supreme Court. (Both nominees were confirmed.)

In 1976, Saul Bellow won the Nobel Prize for literature, the first American honored since John Steinbeck in 1962.

In 1985, former San Francisco Supervisor Dan White — who’d served five years in prison for killing Mayor George Moscone (mahs-KOH’-nee) and Supervisor Harvey Milk, a gay-rights advocate — was found dead in a garage, a suicide.

In 1996, President Clinton’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on gays in the military survived its first Supreme Court test.

In 2001, Washington, D.C., postal worker Thomas L. Morris Jr. died of inhalation anthrax as officials began testing thousands of postal employees.

Ten years ago: Northwest Airlines Flight 188, an Airbus A320, flew past the Minneapolis airport by more than 100 miles before turning around and landing safely; the pilots later said they’d been distracted while talking about their schedules. Authorities found the body of missing Florida 7-year-old Somer Thompson in a Georgia landfill (Jarred Harrell later pleaded guilty to kidnapping, rape and murder, and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole). Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jack Nelson of the Los Angeles Times died in Bethesda, Maryland, at 80.