1729
Apr 21, Catharina II, the Great, writer, empress of Russia (1762-96), was born

1816
Apr 21, Charlotte Bronte (d.1855), English novelist, writer of "Jane Eyre," was born in Thornton, England. Her sister Emily wrote “Wuthering Heights": "Better to be without logic than without feeling."

1926
Apr 21, Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor II (Elizabeth II), queen of England (1952), was born.

1930
Apr 21, Margaret Rose, Princess of York, was born in London, England.

1949
Apr 21, Patti LuPone, actress, singer (Evita, Life Goes On), was born in Northport, NY.

1980
Apr 21, At the Boston Marathon, Rosie Ruiz was the first woman to cross the finish line; but she was disqualified as a fraud when officials discovered she had jumped into the race about a mile from the finish.

1997
Apr 21, In Algeria rebels butchered 93 people including 43 women and girls in the Baouch Boukhelef-Khemisti farming community.

2003
Apr 21, In Cleveland Amanda Berry (16) went missing. In 2013 she and two other kidnapped women were found alive in a residential area just south of downtown. 3 brothers were arrested.

2004
Apr 21, Mary McGrory (85), Washington Post columnist, died.

2005
Apr 21, Anna Ayala, the woman who claimed she found a finger in her bowl of Wendy's chili on Mar 22 in San Jose, Ca., was arrested at her home in Las Vegas.

2009
Apr 21, In Iran Roxana Saberi (31), dual American-Iranian citizen convicted on April 13 of spying for the United States, went on a hunger strike. She was sentenced to eight years in prison after a swift, closed door trial. Saberi ended her hunger strike on April 5 and waited for her appeal process to move forward.

2014
Apr 21, In Nigeria parents of kidnapped girls told the governor of Borno state that officials would not listen to them when they drew up their list of names of missing children and that the total reached 234.

Educative