October 21 · This Day in America
In a cluttered laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey, a carbonized cotton thread inside a glass bulb begins to glow — and keeps glowing. Thirteen and a half hours later it is still alight. Thomas Edison and his team have tried hundreds of materials across more than a thousand experiments to find a filament that will burn long, bright, and cheap. This one does. It is not the first electric light ever made, but it is the first that an ordinary household could actually use, and that is the whole revolution. Within a few years the night itself begins to retreat: streets, factories, kitchens, libraries lit on demand by the turn of a switch. A man who had been deaf since boyhood had just handed the world a second day inside every night. The 19th century goes to bed in lamplight and wakes up electric.
Source: www.americanheritage.com
Also on this day · 1797
On the third try, after two launches that stuck fast on the ways, the frigate USS Constitution finally slides into Boston Harbor with President John Adams looking on. Her oak hull is so tough that British cannonballs will one day seem to bounce off her, earning the name "Old Ironsides." More than two centuries later she is still commissioned and still afloat — the oldest warship in the world that can sail.
Source: www.history.navy.mil