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February 21, 1958

Revisit the news, notable people, and historical moments connected to this date.

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Headlines from February 21, 1958

Notable Births

Jake Burns

1958Jake Burns, Northern Irish singer-songwriter and guitarist[†]

John "Jake" Burns is a singer and guitarist, and is best known as the frontman of Stiff Little Fingers, although he has also recorded with Jake Burns and the Big Wheel, 3 Men + Black, and as a solo artist.

Mary Chapin Carpenter

1958Mary Chapin Carpenter, American singer-songwriter and guitarist[†]

Mary Chapin Carpenter is an American country and folk music singer-songwriter. Carpenter spent several years singing in Washington, D.C.-area clubs before signing in the late 1980s with Columbia Records. Carpenter's first album, 1987's Hometown Girl, did not produce any charting singles. She broke through with 1989's State of the Heart and 1990's Shooting Straight in the Dark.

Kim Coates

1958Kim Coates, Canadian-American actor[†]

Kim Frederick Coates is a Canadian-American actor who has worked in both Canadian and American films and television series. He has worked on Broadway portraying Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire and in the lead role of Macbeth performed at the Stratford Festival. He is best known for his role as Alexander "Tig" Trager in the FX series Sons of Anarchy and as Declan Gardiner in the Citytv series Bad Blood, as well as his recurring roles in Prison Break, Cold Case, CSI and CSI: Miami. He has also had film roles in The Last Boy Scout (1991), Bad Boys (1995), Black Hawk Down (2001), King of Sorrow (2007), the reinterpretation of Assault on Precinct 13 (2005), and Goon (2011).

Jack Coleman (actor)

1958Jack Coleman, American actor[†]

John MacDonald Coleman is an American actor who has played the role of Steven Carrington in the 1980s prime time soap opera Dynasty (1982–1988), Noah Bennet in the NBC science-fiction drama series Heroes (2006–2010), State Senator Robert Lipton on The Office (2010–2013), and United States Senator William Bracken on the ABC series Castle (2012–2015).

Alan Trammell

1958Alan Trammell, American baseball player, coach, and manager[†]

Alan Stuart Trammell is an American former professional baseball shortstop, manager, and coach. He is a member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame. He played for the Detroit Tigers for the entirety of his 20-year playing career in Major League Baseball (MLB). Trammell has served as a special assistant to the General Manager of the Detroit Tigers since the 2014 season.

Notable Deaths

Duncan Edwards

1958Duncan Edwards, English footballer (born 1936)[†]

Duncan Edwards was an English footballer who played as a left-half for Manchester United and the England national team. He was one of the Busby Babes, the young United team formed under manager Matt Busby in the mid-1950s, playing 177 matches for the club. He was noted for his physical strength, toughness, and level of authority on the pitch, and has been ranked amongst the toughest players of all time. One of eight players who died as a result of the Munich air disaster, he survived initially but succumbed to his injuries in hospital two weeks later. Many of his contemporaries have described him as one of the best, if not the best, players with whom they had played.

Historical Events

Peace symbols

1958The CND symbol, aka peace symbol, commissioned by the Direct Action Committee in protest against the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment, is designed and completed by Gerald Holtom.[†]

A number of peace symbols have been used many ways in various cultures and contexts. The dove and olive branch was used symbolically by early Christians and then eventually became a secular peace symbol, popularized by a Dove lithograph by Pablo Picasso after World War II. In the 1950s, the "peace sign", as it is known today, was designed by Gerald Holtom as the logo for the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), a group at the forefront of the peace movement in the UK, and adopted by anti-war and counterculture activists in the US and elsewhere. The symbol is a superposition of the semaphore signals for the letters "N" and "D", taken to stand for "nuclear disarmament", while simultaneously acting as a reference to Goya's The Third of May 1808 (1814).

Historical Context for February 21, 1958

In 1958, the world population was approximately 2,911,249,671 people[†]