April 21, 1836: Six weeks after the Battle of The Alamo, Texas militia under Sam Houston launched a surprise attack against the forces of Mexican General Santa Anna along the San Jacinto River. The Mexicans were thoroughly routed, and hundreds were taken prisoner, including General Santa Anna himself.
April 21, 1865: A train carrying the coffin of assassinated President Abraham Lincoln left Washington, D.C. on its way to Springfield, Illinois, where he would be buried on May 4. The train carrying Lincoln’s body traveled through 180 cities and seven states on its way to Lincoln’s home state of Illinois. Scheduled stops for the special funeral train were published in newspapers. At each stop, Lincoln’s coffin was taken off the train, placed on an elaborately decorated horse-drawn hearse and led by solemn processions to a public building for viewing.
April 21, 1918: In the skies over Vauz sur Somme, France, Manfred von Richthofen, the notorious German flying ace known as “The Red Baron,” was killed by Allied fire. Richthofen had penetrated deep into Allied territory in pursuit of a British aircraft. The Red Baron was flying too near the ground – an Australian gunner shot him through his chest, and his plane crashed into a field alongside the road from Corbie to Bray. Another account has Captain A. Roy Brown, a Canadian in the Royal Air Force, shooting him down. British troops recovered his body, and he was buried with full military honors. He was 25 years old. In a time of wooden and fabric aircraft, when 20 air victories ensured a pilot legendary status, Manfred von Richthofen downed 80 enemy aircraft.
April 21, 1930: A fire at an Ohio prison in Columbus killed 320 inmates, some of whom burned to death when they were not unlocked from their cells. It was one of the worst prison disasters in American history. The prison, built to hold 1,500 people, was almost always overcrowded and notorious for its poor conditions. At the time of the 1930 fire, there were 4,300 prisoners living in the jail. The cell block adjacent to the scaffolding housed 800 prisoners, most of them already locked in for the night. The inmates begged to be let out of their cells as smoke filled the cell block. However, most reports claim that the guards not only refused to unlock the cells, they continued to lock up other prisoners. Meanwhile, the fire spread to the roof, endangering the inmates on the prison’s upper level as well.
Two prisoners finally forcibly took the keys from a guard and began their own rescue efforts. Approximately 50 inmates made it out of their cells before the heavy smoke stopped the impromptu evacuation. The roof then caved in on the upper cells. About 160 prisoners burned to death.
April 21, 1945: Soviet forces fighting south of Berlin, at Zossen, assaulted the headquarters of the German High Command. The only remaining opposing “force” to the Russian invasion of Berlin were the “battle groups” of Hitler Youth – teenagers with anti-tank guns, strategically placed in parks and suburban streets. In a battle at Eggersdorf, 70 of these Hitler teens strove to fight off a Russian assault with a mere three anti-tank guns. They were bulldozed by Russian tanks and infantry. The “Thousand-Year Reich” was just days from collapse.
April 21, 1980: Rosie Ruiz, age 26, finished first in the women’s division of the Boston Marathon with a time of 2:31:56. She was rewarded with a medal, a laurel wreath and a silver bowl. However, eight days later, Ruiz was stripped of her victory after race officials learned she jumped into the race about a mile before the finish line.