October 21, 1959

1959George Bell, Dominican baseball player^[†]

Jorge Antonio Bell Mathey, better known as George Bell, is a Dominican former left fielder and American League MVP in Major League Baseball who played 12 seasons for the Toronto Blue Jays, Chicago Cubs (1991) and Chicago White Sox (1992–1993). Bell batted and threw right-handed.

1959Rose McDowall, Scottish singer-songwriter and guitarist^[†]

Rose McDowall is a Scottish musician who formed Strawberry Switchblade with Jill Bryson in 1981.

1959Andy Picheta, English director, producer, and screenwriter^[†]

Andy Picheta is a director and producer of film and television, music videos and musical concerts.

1959Kevin Sheedy, Welsh-Irish footballer and manager^[†]

Kevin Mark Sheedy is a football coach and former Republic of Ireland international player.

1959Ken Watanabe, Japanese actor and producer^[†]

Ken Watanabe is a Japanese actor. He is best known for playing tragic hero characters, such as General Tadamichi Kuribayashi in Letters from Iwo Jima and Lord Katsumoto Moritsugu in The Last Samurai, for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Among other awards, Watanabe has won the Japan Academy Film Prize for Best Actor twice, in 2007 for Memories of Tomorrow and in 2010 for The Unbroken. He is also known for his roles in Christopher Nolan's films Batman Begins and Inception, as well as Memoirs of a Geisha, and Pokémon Detective Pikachu.

1959Melora Walters, American actress, director, and writer^[†]

Melora Walters is an American actress and filmmaker, best known for her starring roles as Wanda Henrickson on HBO's Big Love (2006–2010) and Kathy Kone on Hulu's PEN15 (2019–2021). She has frequently collaborated with Paul Thomas Anderson, earning two Screen Actors Guild nominations for her work in Boogie Nights (1997) and Magnolia (1999), respectively. Her other film credits include Dead Poets Society (1989), Eraser (1996), Matchstick Men, Cold Mountain, The Butterfly Effect (2004), Short Term 12 (2013), Cam, Venom, and Offseason (2021). Walters' directorial credits include Waterlily Jaguar (2018) and Drowning (2019), both of which she wrote and co-produced.

1959In New York City, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum opens to the public.^[†]

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum at 1071 Fifth Avenue between 88th and 89th Streets on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It hosts a permanent collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, early Modern and contemporary art and also features special exhibitions throughout the year. It was established by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in 1939 as the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, under the guidance of its first director, Hilla von Rebay. The museum adopted its current name in 1952, three years after the death of its founder Solomon R. Guggenheim. It continues to be operated and owned by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.

1959President Dwight D. Eisenhower approves the transfer of all US Army space-related activities to NASA, including most of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency.^[†]

Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was the 34th president of the United States, serving from 1953 to 1961. During World War II, he was Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe and achieved the five-star rank as General of the Army. Eisenhower planned and supervised two of the most consequential military campaigns of World War II: Operation Torch in the North Africa campaign in 1942–1943 and the invasion of Normandy in 1944.