Events on July 21 in history

The passenger steamer SS Columbia sinks after colliding with the steam schooner San Pedro off Shelter Cove, California, killing 88 people.

SS Columbia (1880–1907) was a cargo and passenger steamship that was owned by the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company and later the San Francisco and Portland Steamship Company. Columbia was constructed in 1880 by the John Roach & Sons shipyard in Chester, Pennsylvania for the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company.Columbia was the first ship to carry a dynamo powering electric lights instead of oil lamps and the first commercial use of electric light bulbs outside of Thomas Edison's Menlo Park, New Jersey laboratory. Due to this, a detailed article and composite illustration of Columbia was featured in the May 1880 issue of Scientific American magazine.Columbia was lost on 21 July 1907 after a collision with the lumber schooner San Pedro off Shelter Cove, California, with the loss of 88 lives.