On This Day

September 26, 2013

1777 - Philadelphia was occupied by British troops during the American Revolutionary War.

1789 - Thomas Jefferson was appointed America's first Secretary of State. John Jay was appointed the first chief justice of the U.S. Samuel Osgood was appointed the first Postmaster-General. Edmund Jennings Randolph was appointed the first Attorney General.

1892 - "The King of Marches" was introduced to the general public.

1908 - Ed Eulbach of the Chicago Cubs became the first baseball player to pitch both games of a doubleheader and win both with shutouts.

1908 - In "The Saturday Evening Post" an ad for the Edison Phonograph appeared.

1914 - The U.S. Federal Trade Commission was established.{C}

1918 - During World War I, the Meuse-Argonne offensive against the Germans began. It was the final Allied offensive on the western front.

1950 - U.N. troops recaptured the South Korean capital of Seoul from the North Koreans during the Korean Conflict.{C}

1955 - The New York Stock Exchange suffered its worst decline since 1929 when the word was released concerning U.S. President Eisenhower's heart attack.

1960 - The first televised debate between presidential candidates Richard M. Nixon and John F. Kennedy took place in Chicago, IL.

1962 - "The Beverly Hillbillies" premiered on CBS-TV.

1964 - "Gilligan's Island" premiered on CBS-TV. The show aired for the last time on September 4, 1967.

1969 - "The Brady Bunch" series premiered on ABC-TV.

1980 - The Cuban government abruptly closed Mariel Harbor to end the freedom flotilla of Cuban refugees that began the previous April.

1981 - The Boeing 767 made its maiden flight in Everett, WA.

1984 - Britain and China initialed a draft agreement on the future of Hong Kong when the Chinese take over ruling the British Colony.

1985 - Shamu was born at Sea World in Orlando, FL. Shamu was the first killer whale to survive being born in captivity.

1986 - The episode of "Dallas" that had Bobby Ewing returning from the dead was aired.

1986 - William H. Rehnquist became chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court following the retirement of Warren Burger.

1990 - The Motion Picture Association of America announced that it had created a new rating. The new NC17 rating was to keep moviegoers under the age of 17 from seeing certain films.

1991 - Four men and four women began their two-year stay inside the "Biosphere II." The project was intended to develop technology for future space colonies.

1991 - The U.S. Congress heard a plea from Kimberly Bergalis concerning mandatory AIDS testing for health care workers.

1993 - The eight people who had stayed in "Biosphere II" emerged from their sealed off environment.

1995 - The warring factions of Bosnia agreed on guidelines for elections and a future government.

1996 - Shannon Lucid returned to Earth after being in space for 188 days. she set a time record for a U.S. astronaut in space and in the world for time spent by a woman in space.

2000 - The U.S. House of Representatives passed the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act. The act states that an infant would be considered to have been born alive if he or she is completely extracted or expelled from the mother and breathes and has a beating heart and definite movement of the voluntary muscles.

2000 - Slobodan Milosevic conceded that Vojislav Kostunica had won Yugoslavia's presidential election and declared a runoff. The declared runoff prompted mass protests.

2001 - In Kabul, Afghanistan, the abandoned U.S. Embassy was stormed by protesters. It was the largest anti-Amercian protest since the terror attacks on New York City and Washington, DC, on September 11.

2001 - Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres announced plans to formalize a cease-fire and end a year of fighting in the region.

September 27, 2013

1779 - John Adams was elected to negotiate with the British over the American Revolutionary War peace terms.

1825 - George Stephenson operated the first locomotive that hauled a passenger train.

1894 - The Aqueduct Race Track opened in New York City, NY.

1928 - The U.S. announced that it would recognize the Nationalist Chinese Government.

1938 - The League of Nations branded the Japanese as aggressors in China.

1939 - After 19 days of resistance, Warsaw, Poland, surrendered to the Germans after being invaded by the Nazis and the Soviet Union during World War II.

1940 - The Berlin-Rome-Tokyo Axis was set up. The military and economic pact was for 10 years between Germany, Italy and Japan.

1954 - The "Tonight!" show made its debut on NBC-TV with Steve Allen as host.

1962 - The U.S. sold Hawk anti-aircraft missiles to Israel.

1968 - The U.K.'s entry into the European Common Market was barred by France.

1970 - "The Original Amateur Hour" aired for the last time on CBS. It had been on television for 22 years.

1973 - U.S. Vice President Spiro Agnew said he would not resign after he pled "no contest" to a charge of tax evasion. He did resign on October 10th.

1979 - The Department of Education became the 13th Cabinet in U.S. history after the final approval from Congress.

1982 - Italian and French soldiers entered the Sabra and Chatilla refugee camps in Beirut. The move was made by the members of a multinational force due to hundreds of Palestinians being massacred by Christian militiamen.

1983 - Larry Bird signed a seven-year contract with the Boston Celtics worth $15 million. The contract made him the highest paid Celtic in history.

1986 - The U.S. Senate approved federal tax code changes that were the most sweeping since World War II.

1989 - Columbia Pictures Entertainment agreed to buyout Sony Corporation for $3.4 billion.

1989 - Two men went over the 176-foot-high Niagara Falls in a barrel. Jeffrey Petkovich and Peter Debernardi were the first to ever survive the Horshoe Falls.

1990 - The deposed emir of Kuwait addressed the U.N. General Assembly and denounced the "rape, destruction and terror" that Iraq had inflicted upon his country.

1991 - U.S. President George H.W. Bush eliminated all land-based tactical nuclear arms and removed all short-range nuclear arms from ships and submarines around the world. Bush then called on the Soviet Union to do the same.

1994 - More than 350 Republican congressional candidates signed the Contract with America. It was a 10-point platform they pledged to enact if voters sent a GOP majority to the House.

1995 - The U.S. government unveiled the redesigned $100 bill. The bill featured a larger, off-center portrait of Benjamin Franklin.

1998 - In Germany, Social Democrat Gerhard Schroeder was elected chancellor. The election ended 16 years of conservative rule.

1998 - Mark McGwire (St. Louis Cardinals) set a major league baseball record when he hit his 70th home run of the season.

2004 - North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Choe Su Hon announced that North Korea had turned plutonium from 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods into nuclear weapons. He also said that the weapons were to serve as a deterrent against increasing U.S. nuclear threats and to prevent nuclear war in northeast Asia. The U.S. State Department noted that the U.S. has repeatedly said that the U.S. has no plans to attack North Korea.

September 28, 2013

1066 - England was invaded by William the Conqueror who claimed the English throne.

1542 - San Diego, CA, was discovered by Portuguese navigator Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo.

1687 - The Turks surrendered Athens to the Venetians.

1781 - During the Revolutionary War, American forces began the siege on Yorktown, VA.

1787 - The U.S. Congress voted to send the new Constitution of the United States to the state legislatures for their approval.

1850 - The U.S. Navy abolished flogging as a form of punishment.

1850 - U.S. President Millard Fillmore named Brigham Young the first governor of the Utah territory. In 1857, U.S. President James Buchanan removed Young from the position.

1892 - The first nighttime football game in the U.S. took place under electric lights. The game was between the Mansfield State Normal School and the Wyoming Seminary.

1915 - The British defeated the Turks in Mesopotamia at Kut-el-Amara.

1924 - The first around-the-world flight was completed by two U.S. Army planes when they landed in Seattle, WA. The trip took 175 days.

1936 - "Bachelor's Children" debuted on CBS Radio.

1939 - During World War II, Germany and the Soviet Union agreed upon a plan on the division of Poland.

1939 - "Fleischmann Hour" aired for the last time on radio.

1944 - "The Boys From Boise" was shown on WABD in New York as the first full-length comedy written for television.

1950 - The United Nations admitted Indonesia.

1955 - The World Series was televised in color for the first time. The game was between the New York Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers.

1961 - "Dr. Kildare" premiered on NBC-TV.

1961 - "Hazel" premiered on NBC-TV.

1967 - The first mayor of Washington, DC, Walter Washington, took office.

1968 - The Atlanta Chiefs won the first North American Soccer League Championship.

1972 - Communist China and Japan agreed to re-establish diplomatic relations.

1974 - First Lady Betty Ford underwent a mastectomy to remove a lump in her breast.

1978 - Heavy fighting occurred in Lebanon between Syrian peacekeeping troops and Lebanese Christian militiamen.

1978 - Don Sherman, editor of Car & Driver, set a new Class E record in Utah. Driving the Mazda RX7 he reached a speed of 183.904 mph.

1984 - Bob Hope showed outtakes of his 34 years in television on NBC.

1991 - In response to U.S. President Bush's reduction of U.S. nuclear arms Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev promised to reciprocate.

1995 - Yasser Arafat of the PLO and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin signed an accord that transferred control of the West Bank.

1997 - The 103rd convention of the Audio Engineering Society (AES) was held in New York City, NY. The official debut of the DVD format was featured.

2000 - The U.S. Federal Drug Administration approved the use of RU-486 in the United States. The pill is used to induce an abortion.

2004 - The U.S. Federal Reserve and the U.S. Secret Service introduced the first newly redesigned $50 bill.

2004 - Nate Olive and Sarah Jones arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border to complete the first known continuous hike of the 1,800-mile trail down the U.S. Pacific Coast. They started the trek on June 8.

September 29, 2013

1789 - A regular army was established by the U.S. War Department with several hundred men.

1829 - The first public appearance by London's re-organized police force was met with jeers from political opponents. The force became known as Scotland Yard.

1902 - David Belasco opened his first Broadway theater.

1930 - Lowell Thomas made his debut on CBS Radio. He was in the radio business for the next 46 years.

1930 - Bing Crosby and Dixie Lee were married.

1940 - The radio quiz show "Double or Nothing" debuted on the Mutual Radio Network.

1943 - U.S. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower and Italian Marchal Pietro Badoglio signed an armistice aboard the British ship Nelson.

1946 - "The Adventures of Sam Spade" debuted on CBS Radio.

1951 - The first network football game was televised by CBS-TV in color. The game was between the University of California and the University of Pennsylvania.

1953 - "Make Room for Daddy" premiered on ABC-TV.

1955 - "A View From the Bridge," a play by Arthur Miller, opened in New York at the Coronet Theater.

1957 - The New York Giants played their last game at the Polo Grounds. The next year the Giants were in San Francisco, CA.

1960 - "My Three Sons" debuted on ABC-TV.

1962 - U.S. President John F. Kennedy nationalized the Mississippi National guard in response to city officials defying federal court orders. The orders had been to enroll James Meredith at the University of Mississippi.

1963 - "My Favorite Martian" premiered on CBS-TV.

1963 - "The Judy Garland Show" premiered on CBS-TV.

1967 - The International Monetary Fund reformed monetary systems around the world.

1977 - Eva Shain became the first woman to officiate a heavyweight title boxing match. About 70 million people watched Muhammad Ali defeat Ernie Shavers on NBC-TV.

1982 - In Chicago, IL, seven people died after taking capsules of Extra-Strength Tylenol that had been laced with cyanide. 264,000 bottles were recalled.

1983 - The War Powers Act was used for the first time by the U.S. Congress when they authorized President Reagan to keep U.S. Marines in Lebanon for 18 more months.

1983 - "A Chorus Line" with performance number 3,389 became the longest running show on Broadway.

1984 - Irish officials announced that they had intercepted the Marita Anne carrying seven tons of U.S.-purchased weapons. The weapons were intended for the Irish Republican Army.

1984 - Elizabeth Taylor was voted to be the world's most beautiful woman in a Louis Harris poll. Taylor was at the time in the Betty Ford Clinic overcoming a weight problem.

1986 - Mary Lou Retton announced that she was quitting gymnastics.

1988 - The space shuttle Discovery took off from Cape Canaveral in Florida. It was the first manned space flight since the Challenger disaster.

1990 - "Millie's Book" by First Lady Barbara Bush was the best-selling non-fiction book in the U.S.

1992 - Magic Johnson announced that he was returning to professional basketball. The comeback ended the following November.

1992 - Brazilian lawmakers overwhelmingly voted to impeach President Fernando Collor de Mello.

1993 - Bosnia's parliament voted overwhelmingly to reject an international peace plan unless Bosnian Serbs returned land that had been taken by force.

1994 - The U.S. House voted to end the practice of lobbyist buying meals and entertainment for members of Congress.

1998 - Hasbro announced plans to introduce an action figure of retired U.S. General Colin Powell.

2010 - In China, Canton Tower became operational.

September 30, 2013

1399 - Henry Bolingbroke became the King of England as Henry IV.

1777 - The Congress of the United States moved to York, PA, due to advancing British forces.

1787 - The Columbia left Boston and began the trip that would make it the first American vessel to sail around the world.

1846 - Dr. William Morton performed a painless tooth extraction after administering ether to a patient.

1861 - Chewing gum tycoon William Wrigley, Jr. was born.

1868 - Spain's Queen Isabella was deposed and fled to France.

1882 - In Appleton, WI, the world's first hydroelectric power plant began operating.

1927 - George Herman "Babe" Ruth hit his 60th homerun of the season. He broke his own record with the homerun. The record stood until 1961 when Roger Maris broke the record.

1930 - "Death Valley Days" was heard for the first time on the NBC Blue radio network.

1935 - "The Adventures of Dick Tracey" debuted on Mutual Radio Network.

1935 - "Porgy and Bess" premiered in Boston.

1938 - The Munich Conference ended with a decision to appease Adolf Hitler. Britain, and France allowed Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland to be annexed by the Nazis.

1939 - "Captain Midnight" was heard for the first time on the Mutual Radio Network.

1946 - An international military tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany, found 22 top Nazi leaders guilty of war crimes.

1947 - The World Series was televised for the first time. The sponsors only paid $65,000 for the entire series between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Yankees.

1949 - The Berlin Airlift came to an end. The airlift had taken 2.3 million tons of food into the western sector despite the Soviet blockade.

1951 - "The Red Skelton Show" debuted on NBC-TV.

1954 - The U.S. Navy commissioned the Nautilus submarine at Groton, CT. It was the first atomic-powered vessel. The submarine had been launched on January 21, 1954.

1954 - Julie Andrews made her first Broadway appearance in "The Boy Friend".

1962 - James Meredith succeeded in registering at the University of Mississippi. It was his fourth attempt to register.

1963 - The Soviet Union publicly declared itself on the side of India in their dispute with Pakistan over Kashmir.

1966 - Albert Speer and Baldur von Schirach were released at midnight from Spandau prison after completing their 20-year sentences. Speer was the Nazi minister of armaments and von Schirach was the founder of Hitler Youth.

1971 - The Soviet Union and the United States signed pacts that were aimed at avoiding an accidental nuclear war.

1971 - A committee of nine people was organized to investigate the prison riot at Attica, NY. 10 hostages and 32 prisoners were killed when National Guardsmen stormed the prison on September 13, 1971.

1976 - California enacted the Natural Death Act of California. The law was the first example of right-to-die legislation in the U.S.

1980 - Israel issued its new currency, the shekel, to replace the pound.

1983 - The first AH-64 Apache attack helicopter was rolled out by McDonnell Douglas Helicopter Company.

1982 - "Cheers" began an 11-year run on NBC-TV.

1984 - Mike Witt became only the 11th pitcher to throw a perfect game in major league baseball.

1984 - "Doonesbury" by Garry Trudeau returned. The comic strip had not been printed in nearly 20 months.

1986 - The U.S. released accused Soviet spy Gennadiy Zakharov, one day after the Nicholas Daniloff had been released by the Soviets.

1987 - Mikhail S. Gorbachev retired President Andrei A. Gromyko from the Politburo and fired other old-guard leaders in a shake-up at the Kremlin.

1989 - Thousands of East Germans began emigrating under an accord between the NATO nations and the Soviet Union.

1989 - Non-Communist Cambodian guerrillas claimed that they had captured 3 towns and 10 other positions from the residing government forces.

1990 - The Soviet Union and South Korea opened diplomatic relations.

1991 - Haiti's first freely elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was overthrown by Brigadier General Raoul Cedras. Aristide was later returned to power.

1992 - George Brett of the Kansas City Royals reached his 3,000th career hit during a game against the California Angels.

1992 - Moscow banks distributed privatization vouchers aimed at turning millions of Russians into capitalists.

1993 - U.S. chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell retired.

1994 - The space shuttle Endeavor took off on an 11-day mission. Part of the mission was to use a radar instrument to map remote areas of the Earth.

1997 - France's Roman Catholic Church apologized for its silence during the persecution and deportation of Jews the pro-Nazi Vichy regime.

1998 - Gov. Pete Wilson of California signed a bill into law that defined "invasion of privacy as trespassing with the intent to capture audio or video images of a celebrity or crime victim engaging in a personal of family activity." The law went into effect January 1, 1999.

1999 - The San Francisco Giants played the Los Angeles Dodgers in the last baseball game to be played at Candlestick Park (3Com Park). The Dodgers won 9-4.

1999 - In Tokaimura, Japan, radiation escaped a nuclear facility after workers accidentally set off an uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction.

October 1, 2013

1569 - The Duke of Norfolk was imprisoned by Britain's Queen Elizabeth for trying to marry Mary the Queen of Scots.

1800 - Spain ceded the territory of Louisiana back to France. Later the property would be purchased by the U.S. effectively doubling its size.

1880 - Thomas Edison began the commercial production of electric lamps at Edison Lamp Works in Menlo Park.

1885 - Special delivery mail service began in the United States. The first routes were in West Virginia.

1890 - The U.S. Congress passed the McKinley Tariff Act. The act raised tariffs to a record level.

1896 - Rural Free Delivery was established by the U.S. Post Office.

1903 - The first modern World Series took place between the Boston Pilgrims and the Pittsburgh Pirates.

1908 - The Model T automobile was introduced by Henry Ford. The purchase price of the car was $850.

1918 - Damascus was captured from the Turks during World War I by a force made up of British and Arab forces.

1933 - Babe Ruth made his final pitching appearance. He pitched all nine innings and hit a home run in the 5th inning.

1936 - General Francisco Franco was proclaimed the head of the Spanish state.

1938 - German forces enter Czechoslovakia and seized control of the Sudetenland. The Munich Pact had been signed two days before.

1940 - The Pennsylvania Turnpike opened as the first toll superhighway in the United States.

1943 - Naples was captured by the Allied forces during World War II.

1946 - The International War Crimes Tribunal in Nuremberg sentenced 12 Nazi officials to death. Seven others were sentenced to prison terms and 3 were acquitted.

1946 - The first baseball play-off game for a league championship was played. The St. Louis Cardinals defeated the Brooklyn Dodgers, 4-2.

1949 - Mao Tse-tung raised the first flag of the People's Republic of China when the communist forces had defeated the Nationalists. The Nationalist forces fled to Taiwan.

1952 - "This is Your Life" began airing on NBC-TV.

1961 - Roger Maris (New York Yankees) hit his 61st home run of the season to beat Babe Ruth's major league record of 60.

1962 - Johnny Carson began hosting the "Tonight" show on NBC-TV. He stayed with the show for 29 years. jack Paar was the previous host.

1964 - The Free Speech Movement was started at the University of California at Berkeley.

1968 - "Night of the Living Dead" premiered in Pittsburgh, PA.

1971 - Walt Disney World opened in Orlando, FL.
Disney movies, music and books

1972 - The Chinese government approved friendly relations with the United States.

1979 - The United States handed control of the Canal Zone over to Panama.

1980 - Robert Redford became the first male to appear alone on the cover of "Ladies' Home Journal." He was the only male to achieve this in 97 years.

1981 - EPCOT (Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow) Center opened in Florida. The concept was planned by Walt Disney.

1984 - U.S. Labor Secretary Raymond Donovan announced that he was taking a leave of absence following his indictment on charges of larceny and fraud. He was later acquitted.

1985 - The PLO's headquarters in Tunisia was raided by Israeli jet fighters.

1988 - Mikhail Gorbachev assumed the Soviet presidency.

1989 - The authorized Charles Schulz biography, Good Grief, was published.

1989 - 7,000 East Germans were welcomed into West Germany after they were allowed to leave by the communist government.

1990 - U.S. President George H.W. Bush addressed the U.N. General Assembly and once again condemned Iraq's takeover of Kuwait.

1990 - In Croatia, minority Serbs proclaimed autonomy.

1991 - U.S. President Bush condemned the military coup in Haiti that removed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from power. U.S. economic and military aid was suspended.

1991 - The U.S. trust territory of Palau became independent.

1992 - The Strategic Arm Reduction Treaty was approved by the U.S. Senate.

1994 - The U.S. and Japan avoided a trade war by reaching a series of trade agreements.

1994 - The National Hockey League (NHL) team owners began a lockout of the players that lasted 103 days.

1995 - Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman and nine other defendants were convicted in New York of conspiring to attack the U.S. through bombings, kidnappings and assassinations.

1996 - Lucent Technologies became an independent company.

1998 - The U.S. government posted a $2.2 million reward for the capture of Augustin Vasquez Mendoza. He is accused of killing an undercover U.S. agent during a drug purchase in 1994.

1999 - The 50th anniversary of the founding of the Peoples Republic of China was celebrated in Beijing.

2001 - San Francisco's Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to ban Internet filters designed to keep pornography away from children at city libraries. The board left the decision up to the Library Commission to decide whether to install filtering software in children's areas. A federal law in the U.S. mandated the use of the filters.

October 2, 2013

1492 - King Henry VII of England invaded France.

1780 - British army major John Andre was hanged as a spy. He was carrying information about the actions of Benedict Arnold.

1835 - The first battle of the Texas Revolution took place near the Guadalupe River when American settlers defeated a Mexican cavalry unit.

1836 - Charles Darwin returned to England after 5 years of acquiring knowledge around the world about fauna, flora, wildlife and geology. He used the information to develop his "theory of evolution" which he unveiled in his 1859 book entitled The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.

1869 - Mahatma (Mohandas) K Gandhi was born. He was known for his advocacy of non-violent resistance to fight tyranny.

1870 - Rome was made the capital of Italy.

1876 - The Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas opened. It was the state's first venture into public higher education. The school was formally dedicated 2 days later by Texas Gov. Richard Coke.

1889 - The first international Conference of American States began in Washington, DC.

1908 - Addie Joss of Cleveland pitched the fourth perfect game in major league baseball history.

1919 - U.S. President Woodrow Wilson suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed.

1920 - The Cincinnati Reds and the Pittsburgh Pirates played the only triple-header in baseball history. The Reds won 2 of the 3 games.

1924 - The Geneva Protocol adopted the League of Nations.

1925 - Scottish inventor John Logie Baird completed the first transmission of moving images.

1929 - "The National Farm and Home Hour" debuted on NBC radio.

1933 - "Red Adams" debuted on NBC radio.

1937 - Warner Bros. released "Love Is on the Air." Ronald Reagan made his acting debut in the motion picture. He was 26 years old.

1940 - During World War II, the HMS Empress was sunk while carrying child refugees from Britain to Canada.

1941 - Operation Typhoon was launched by Nazi Germany. The plan was an all-out offensive against Moscow.

1944 - The Nazis crushed the Warsaw Uprising.

1947 - The Federatino Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) formally established Formula One racing in Grand Prix competition.

1948 - The first automobile race to use asphalt, cement and dirt roads took place in Watkins Glen in New York. It was the first road race in the U.S. following World War II.

1949 - "The Aldrich Family" debuted on NBC-TV.

1950 - "Peanuts," the comic strip created by Charles M. Schulz, was published for the first time in seven newspapers.

1953 - "Person to Person" debuted on CBS-TV.

1955 - "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" debuted on CBS-TV.

1958 - Guinea, the French colony in West Africa, proclaimed its independence. Sekou Toure was the first president of the Republic of Guinea.

1959 - "The Twilight Zone" debuted on CBS-TV. The show ran for 5 years for a total of 154 episodes.

1962 - U.S. ports were closed to nations that allowed their ships to carry arms to Cuba, ships that had docked in a socialist country were prohibited from docking in the United States during that voyage, and the transport of U.S. goods was banned on ships owned by companies that traded with Cuba.

1967 - Thurgood Marshall was sworn in. He was the first African-American member of the U.S. Supreme Court.

1988 - Pakistan's Supreme Court ordered free elections.

1989 - In Leipzig, East Germany a protest took place demanding the legalization of opposition groups and the adoption of democratic reforms.

1990 - The Allies ceded their rights to areas they occupied in Germany.

1993 - Opponents of Russian President Boris Yeltsin fought police and set up burning barricades.

1998 - Hawaii sued petroleum companies, claiming state drivers were overcharged by about $73 million a year in price-fixing.

1998 - About 10,000 Turkish soldiers crossed into northern Iraq and attacked Kurdish rebels.

2001 - The U.S. Postmaster unveiled the "Tribute to America" stamp. The stamp was planned for release the next month.

2001 - NATO, for the first time, invoked a treaty clause that stated that an attack on one member is an attack on all members. The act was in response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States.

October 3, 2013

1863 - U.S. President Lincoln declared that the last Thursday of November would be recognized as Thanksgiving Day.

1888 - "The Yeomen of the Guard" was performed for the first time. It was the first of 423 shows.

1893 - The motor-driven vacuum cleaner was patented by J.S. Thurman.

1901 - The Victor Talking Machine Company was incorporated. After a merger with Radio Corporation of America the company became RCA-Victor.

1906 - W.T. Grant opened a 25-cent department store.

1922 - Rebecca L. Felton became the first female to hold office of U.S. Senator. She was appointed by Governor Thomas W. Hardwick of Georgia to fill a vacancy.

1929 - The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes officially changed its name to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.

1932 - Iraq was admitted into the League of Nations leading Britain to terminate their mandate over the nation. Britain had ruled Iraq since taking it from Turkey during World War I.

1935 - Italian forces invaded Abyssinia (now Ethiopia).

1941 - Adolf Hitler stated in a speech that Russia was "broken" and they "would never rise again."

1942 - The Office of Economic Stabilization was established by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He also authorized controls on rents, wages, salaries and farm prices.

1944 - During World War II, U.S. troops broke through the Siegfried Line.

1946 - "A Day in the Life of Dennis Day" began airing on NBC-TV.

1951 - CBS-TV aired the first coast-to-coast telecast of a prizefight. Dave Sands defeated Carl Olson at Soldier Field in Chicago.

1952 - Britain became the third nuclear power in the world when they successfully detonated their first atomic bomb. The U.S. and Russia were the only other nuclear powers.

1954 - "Father Knows Best" began airing on CBS-TV.

1955 - "Captain Kangaroo" premiered on CBS-TV.

1955 - "The Mickey Mouse Club" premiered on ABC-TV.

1961 - "The Dick Van Dyke Show" debuted on CBS-TV.

1962 - The Sigma VII blasted off from Cape Canaveral for a nine-hour flight.

1962 - The play, "Stop the World, I Want to Get Off!" opened on Broadway.

1974 - Frank Robinson took over the management position of the Cleveland Indians baseball team. He was the first black manager in major league baseball.

1981 - Irish Nationalist in Maze Prison in Belfast, Northern Ireland called off their hunger strike. The strike had lasted 7 months and ten people had died.

1986 - "Tough Guys" was released. It was the first comedy to feature Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas. It was, however, their seventh movie together.

1988 - The space shuttle Discovery landed safely after its four-day mission. It was the first American shuttle mission since the Challenger disaster.

1989 - East Germany suspended unrestricted travel to Czechoslovakia in an effort to slow the flow of refugees to the West.

1989 - Art Shell became the first African-American head coach in the modern NFL when he took over the Los Angeles Raiders.

1990 - The Berlin Wall was dismantled eleven months after the borders between East and West Germany were dissolved. The unification of Germany ended 45 years of division.

1990 - Iraqi President Saddam Hussein made a visit to Kuwait since his country had seized control of the oil-rich nation.

1994 - The headquarters of the Haitian pro-army militia was raided by U.S. soldiers.

2001 - ESPN began its 10th season of National Hockey League (NHL) coverage.

2001 - Barry Bonds (San Francisco Giants) broke Babe Ruth's major league single-season record for walks at 171.

2003 - Ray Horn, of the duo "Siegfried & Roy," was attacked by tiger during a performance. Roy survived the attack after being dragged offstage. The tiger, a 7-year-old male named Montecore, was debuting in his first show.

2006 - North Korea announced that it would conduct a nuclear test as a key step in the manufacture of atomic bombs that it viewed as a deterrent against a U.S. attack. A date for the test was not announced.

2006 - The Dow Jones industrial average closed at a new high ending the day at 11,727.34. Earlier in the session, the Dow had risen to 11,758.95. Both previous records had been set on January 14, 2000.

October 4, 2013

1535 - The first complete English translation of the Bible was printed in Zurich, Switzerland.

1648 - The first volunteer fire department was established in New York by Peter Stuyvesant.

1777 - At Germantown, PA, Patriot forces and British forces both suffer heavy losses in battle. The battle was seen as British victory, which actually served as a moral boost to the Americans.

1876 - The Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas formally dedicated by Texas Gov. Richard Coke. It was the state's first venture into public higher education. The college opened for classed two days earlier.

1881 - Edward Leveaux received a patent for the player piano.

1887 - The Paris Herald Tribune was published for the first time. It was later known as the International Herald Tribune.

1893 - The first professional football contract was signed by Grant Dibert for the Pittsburgh AC.

1895 - The first U.S. Open golf tournament took place in Newport, RI. Horace Rawlins, 19 years old, won the tournament.

1909 - The first airship race in the U.S. took place in St. Louis, MO.

1915 - The Dinosaur National Monument was established. The area covered part of Utah and Colorado.

1927 - The first actual work of carving began on Mount Rushmore.

1931 - The comic strip "Dick Tracy" made its debut in the Detroit Daily Mirror. The strip was created by Chester Gould.

1933 - "Esquire" magazine was published for the first time.

1940 - Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini met in the Alps at Brenner Pass. Hitler was seeking help from Italy to fight the British.

1948 - The Railroad Hour" debuted on ABC radio.

1953 - "I Led Three Lives" was first seen in syndication. The TV show was never on network.

1954 - "December Bride" debuted on CBS-TV.

1956 - "Playhouse 90" debuted on CBS-TV.

1957 - "Leave it to Beaver" debuted on CBS-TV.

1957 - The Soviet Union launched Sputnik I into orbit around the Earth. Sputnik was the first manmade satellite to enter space. Sputnik I fell out of orbit on January 4, 1958.

1958 - British Overseas Airways Corporation became the first jetliner to offer trans-Atlantic service to passengers with flights between London, England and New York.

1959 - The first World Series to be played west of St. Louis began in Los Angeles, CA.

1965 - Pope Paul VI addressed the U.N. General Assembly and became the first reigning pontiff to visit the Western Hemisphere.

1976 - Barbara Walters joined Harry Reasoner at the anchor desk of the "ABC Evening News" for the first time.

1981 - Bruce Jenner and Harry Belafonte debuted in their first dramatic roles in NBC-TV's "Grambling's White Tiger".

1987 - NFL owners used replacement personnel to play games despite the player's strike.

1990 - The German parliament had its first meeting since reunification.

1992 - The 16-year civil war in Mozambique ended.

1993 - Russian Vice-President Alexander Rutskoi and Chairman Ruslan Khasbulatov surrendered to Boris Yeltsin after a ten-hour tank assault on the Russian White House. The two men had barricaded themselves in after Yeltsin called for general elections and dissolved the legislative body.

1993 - Dozens of Somalis dragged an American soldier through the streets of Mogadishu. A videotape showed Michael Durant being taken prisoner by Somali militants.

1994 - South African President Nelson Mandela was welcomed to the White House by U.S. President Clinton.

1997 - Hundreds of thousands of men attended a Promise Keepers rally on the Mall in Washington, DC.

1998 - The Vincent Van Gogh exhibit opened in Washington, DC. The exhibit featured 70 paintings.

1998 - Davis Gaines performed as the Phantom in the show "Phantom of the Opera" for the 2,000th time.

2001 - NATO granted the United States open access to their airfields and seaports and agreed to deploy ships and early-warning radar planes in the war on terrorism.

2001 - Barry Bonds (San Francisco Giants) hit his 70th home run of the season to tie Mark McGwire's major league record. Bonds also moved past Reggie Jackson on the all-time list with his 564th career home run.

2001 - Rickey Henderson (San Diego Padres) scored his 2,246th career run to break Ty Cobb's major league record.

2001 - In Washington, DC, Reagan National Airport re-opened. The airport had been closed since the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001.

2004 - SpaceShipOne reached an altitude of 368,000 feet. It was the first privately built, manned rocket ship to fly in space twice within a two week window. The ship won the Ansari X Prize of $10 million dollars for their success.

October 5, 2013

1813 - Chief Tecumseh of the Shawnee Indians was killed at the Battle of Thames when American forced defeated the British and the allied Indian warriors.

1877 - Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce Indians surrendered to the U.S. Army after a 1,000-mile retreat towards the Canadian border.

1919 - Enzo Ferrari debuted in his first race. He later founded the Auto Avio Construzioni Ferrari, an independent manufacturing company.

1921 - The World Series was broadcast on the radio for the first time. The game was between the New York Giants and the New York Yankees.

1930 - Laura Ingalls became the first woman to make a transcontinental airplane flight.

1930 - "The Fighting Priest" began airing on CBS radio.

1931 - Clyde Pangborn and Hugh Herndon landed in Washington after flying non-stop across the Pacific Ocean. The flight originated in Japan and took about 41 hours.

1934 - "Hollywood Hotel" became the first major network radio to originate from Hollywood, CA.

1937 - U.S. President Roosevelt called for a "quarantine" of aggressor nations.

1947 - U.S. President Harry S Truman held the first televised presidential address from the White House. The subject was the current international food crisis.

1952 - "Inner Sanctum" was heard for the last time on ABC radio.

1955 - The play "The Diary of Anne Frank" opened at the Cort Theatre in New York.

1969 - A Cuban defector landed a Soviet-made MiG-17 at Homestead Air Force Base in Florida. The plane entered U.S. air space and landed without being detected.

1969 - "Monty Python's Flying Circus" debuted on BBC television.

1970 - Anwar Sadat took office as President of Egypt replacing Gamal Abdel Nassar. Sadat was assassinated in 1981.

1974 - American David Kunst completed the first journey around the world on foot. It took four years and 21 pairs of shoes. He crossed four continents and walked 14,450 miles.

1985 - An Egyptian policeman went on a shooting rampage at a Sinai beach. Seven Israeli tourists were killed. The policeman died in prison the following January of an apparent suicide.

1986 - "Business World" began airing on ABC-TV.

1986 - Sandinista soldiers captured American Eugene Hasenfus after shooting him down over southern Nicaragua.

1988 - In a debate between candidates for vice president of the U.S., Democratic Lloyd Bentsen told Republican Dan Quayle, "You're no jack Kennedy."

1989 - The Dalai Lama (Lhama Dhondrub, Tenzin Gyatso) was named the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for his nonviolent campaign to end the Chinese domination of Tibet. Gyatso was the 15th Dalai Lama.

1990 - The Glasgow Royal Concert Hall opened.

1991 - Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev announced that his country would cut its nuclear arsenal in response to the arms reduction that was initiated by U.S. President George Bush.

1993 - China set off an underground nuclear explosion.

1995 - A 60-day cease-fire was agreed upon by Bonsian combatants. The civil war had lasted 3 1/2.

1997 - In London, the Express Newspapers printed an article claiming that Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman were homosexual and that their marriage was a sham to cover the truth. The paper paid damages in a settlement on October 29, 1998.

1998 - The U.S. paid $60 million for Russia's research time on the international space station to keep the cash-strapped Russian space agency afloat.

1999 - Kevin Spacey received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

1999 - MCI Worldcom Inc. and Sprint Corp. announced plans to merge.

2006 - Wal-Mart Stores Inc. rolled out its $4 generic drug program to the entire state of Florida after a successful test in the Tampa area.

October 6, 2013

1683 - The first Mennonites arrived in America aboard the Concord. The German and Dutch families settled in an area that is now a neighborhood in Philadelphia, PA.

1847 - "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Bronte was first published in London.

1848 - The steamboat SS California left New York Harbor for San Francisco via Cape Horn. The steamboat service arrived on February 28, 1849. The trip took 4 months and 21 days.

1857 - The American Chess Congress held their first national chess tournament in New York City.

1863 - The first Turkish bath was opened in Brooklyn, NY, by Dr. Charles Shepard.

1866 - The Reno Brothers pulled the first train robbery in America near Seymour, IN. The got away with $10,000.

1880 - The National League kicked the Cincinnati Reds out for selling beer.

1884 - The Naval War College was established in Newport, RI.

1889 - In Paris, the Moulin Rouge opened its doors to the public for the first time.

1889 - The Kinescope was exhibited by Thomas Edison. He had patented the moving picture machine in 1887.

1890 - Polygamy was outlawed by the Mormon Church.

1927 - "The Jazz Singer" opened in New York starring Al Jolson. The film was based on the short story "The Day of Atonement" by Sampson Raphaelson.

1928 - War-torn China was reunited under the Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-Shek.

1937 - "Hobby Lobby" debuted on CBS radio.

1939 - Adolf Hitler denied any intention to wage war against Britain and France in an address to Reichstag.

1948 - "Summer and Smoke" by Tennessee Williams opened on Broadway.

1949 - U.S. president Harry Truman signed the Mutual Defense Assistance Act. The act provided $1.3 billion in the form of military aid to NATO countries.

1954 - E.L. Lyon became the first male nurse for the U.S. Army.

1961 - U.S. president John F. Kennedy advised American families to build or buy bomb shelters to protect them in the event of a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union.

1962 - Robert Goulet began the role of Sir Lancelot in "Camelot".

1973 - Egypt and Syria attacked Israel in an attempt to win back territory that had been lost in the third Arab-Israel war. Support for Israel led to a devastating oil embargo against many nations including the U.S. and Great Britain on October 17, 1973. The war lasted 2 weeks.

1979 - Pope John Paul II became the first pontiff to visit the White House.

1991 - Elizabeth Taylor married Larry Fortensky. The ceremony was held at Michael Jackson's estate near Los Angeles, CA. It was Taylor's 8th marriage and Fortensky's 3rd.

1992 - Ross Perot appeared in his first paid broadcast on CBS-TV after entering the U.S. presidential race.

October 7, 2013

1765 - Nine American colonies sent a total of 28 delegates to New York City for the Stamp Act Congress. The delegates adopted the "Declaration of Rights and Grievances."

1777 - During the American Revolution the second Battle of Saratoga began.

1868 - Cornell University was inaugurated in Ithaca, NY.

1913 - For the first time, Henry Ford's entire Highland Park automobile factory was run on a continuously moving assembly line when the chassis was added to the process.

1918 - The Georgia Tech football team defeated Cumberland College 222-0. Georgia Tech carried the ball 978 yards and never threw a pass.

1939 - "Kate Hopkins, Angel of Mercy" was heard for the first time on CBS radio.

1940 - "Portia Faces Life" debuted on the NBC Red network.

1949 - The German Democratic Republic (East Germany) was formed.

1950 - The U.S.-led U.N. forces crossed the 38th parallel and entered North Korea. China in November proved their threat to enter the war by sending several hundred thousand troops over the border into North Korea.

1951 - The Western Hills Hotel in Fort Worth, TX, became the first hotel to feature all foam-rubber mattresses and pillows.

1956 - A U.S. House subcommittee began investigations of allegedly rigged TV quiz shows.

1963 - U.S. President Kennedy signed a nuclear test ban treaty with Britain and the Soviet Union.

1968 - The Motion Picture Association of America adopted the film-rating system that ranged for "G" to "X."

1981 - The Egyptian parliament, after the assassination of Anwar Sadat, named Vice President Hosni Mubarak the next president of Egypt.

1982 - A record was set when 147,000,000 shares were exchanged on the New York Stock Exchange.

1985 - The United States announced that it would no longer automatically comply with World Court decisions.

1989 - In Budapest, Hungary's Communist Party renounced Marxism in favor of democratic socialism.

1993 - U.S. President Clinton sent more troops, heavy armor, and naval firepower to Somalia.

1994 - U.S. President Clinton dispatched an aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf when Iraqi troops were spotted moving toward Kuwait. The U.S. Army was also put on alert.

1998 - The U.S. government filed an antitrust suit that alleged Visa and MasterCard inhibit competition by preventing banks from offering other cards.

1999 - American Home Products Corp. agreed to pay up to $4.83 billion to settle claims that the fen-phen diet drug caused dangerous problems with heart valves.

2000 - Vojislav Kostunica took the oath of office as Yugoslavia's first popularly elected president.

2001 - Barry Bonds (San Francisco Giants) hit his 73rd home run of the season and set a new major league record.

2001 - The U.S. and Great Britain began airstrikes in Afghanistan in response to that state's support of terrorism and Osama bin Laden. The act was the first military action taken in response to the terrorist attacks on the U.S. on September 11, 2001.

2003 - In California, Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected governor in the recall election of Governor Gray Davis.

2003 - Randy Quaid received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

2004 - Billy Bob Thornton got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

October 8, 2013

1895 - The Berliner Gramophone Company was founded in Philadelphia, PA.

1904 - "Little Johnny Jones" opened in Hartford, CT.

1915 - During World War I, the Battle of Loos concluded.

1918 - U.S. Corporal Alvin C. York almost single-handedly killed 25 German soldiers and captured 132 in the Argonne Forest in France. York had originally tried to avoid being drafted as a conscientious objector. After this event his was promoted to sergeant and was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

1919 - The first transcontinental air race in the U.S. began.

1935 - "The O’Neills" debuted on CBS radio.

1938 - The cover of "The Saturday Evening Post" portrayed Norman Rockwell.

1944 - "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet" debuted on CBS radio.

1945 - U.S. President Truman announced that only Britain and Canada would be given the secret to the atomic bomb.

1950 - U.N. forces crossed into North Korea from South Korea.

1952 - "The Complete Book of Etiquette" was published for the first time.

1956 - Donald James Larsen (New York Yankees) pitched the first perfect game in the history of the World Series.

1957 - The Brooklyn Baseball Club announced that it had accepted a deal to move the Dodgers to Los Angeles.

1966 - The U.S. Government declared that LSD was dangerous and an illegal substance.

1970 - Soviet author Alexander Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize for literature.

1979 - "Sugar Babies" opened at the Mark Hellinger Theatre on Broadway.

1981 - U.S. President Reagan greeted former Presidents Carter, Ford and Nixon to the White House. The group was preparing to leave for Egypt to attend the funeral of Anwar Sadat.

1982 - In Poland, all labor organizations, including Solidarity, were banned.

1991 - A slave burial site was found by construction workers in lower Manhattan. The "Negro Burial Ground" had been closed in 1790. Over a dozen skeletons were found.

1993 - The U.S. government issued a report absolving the FBI of any wrongdoing in its final assault in Waco, TX, on the Branch Davidian compound. The fire that ended the siege killed as many as 85 people.

1996 - Pope John Paul II underwent a successful operation to remove his inflamed appendix.

1998 - Taliban forces attacked Iranian border posts. Iran said that three border posts were destroyed before the Taliban forces were forced to retreat. The Taliban of Afghanistan denied the event occurred.

1998 - Canada and Netherlands were voted into the U.N. Security Council.

2001 - Tom Ridge, former Governor of Pennsylvania, was sworn in as director of the new U.S. department of Homeland Security.

2001 - Rush Limbaugh announced to his listeners that he was totally deaf in his left ear and had only partial hearing in his right ear. The condition had happened in a three month period.

2001 - Two Russian cosmonauts made the first spacewalk to be conducted outside of the international space station without a shuttle present.

2002 - A federal judge approved U.S. President George W. Bush's request to reopen West Coast ports, to end a caustic 10-day labor lockout. The lockout was costing the U.S. economy an estimated $1 billion to $2 billion a day.

2003 - China announced that it would have a human crew orbit the Earth briefly on October 15.

2003 - Vietnam and the United States reached a tentative agreement that would allow the first commercial flights between the two countries since the end of the Vietnam War.

2003 - It was announced that Vivendi Universal and General Electric Co. had reached an agreement to merge. The name for the combined company was NBC Universal.

2003 - Siegfried Fischbacher and his manager announced that the "Siegfried and Roy" show at the Mirage was canceled permanently. It was also said that if Roy Horn survived, after a tiger attack on October 3, the duo would continue to work together.

2004 - The first-ever direct presidential elections were held in Afghanistan.

October 9, 2013

1635 - Roger Williams, founder of Rhode Island, was banished from Massachusetts because he had spoken out against punishments for religious offenses and giving away land that belonged to the Indians. Williams had founded Providence, Rhode Island as a place for people to seek religious freedom.

1701 - The Collegiate School of Connecticut was chartered in New Haven. The name was later changed to Yale.

1776 - A group of Spanish missionaries settled in what is now San Francisco, CA.

1781 - The last major battle of the American Revolutionary War took place in Yorktown, VA. The American forces, led by George Washington, defeated the British troops under Lord Cornwallis.

1812 - During the War of 1812 American forces captured two British brigs, the Detroit and the Caledonia.

1855 - Isaac Singer patented the sewing machine motor.

1855 - Joshua C. Stoddard received a patent for his calliope.

1858 - Mail service via stagecoach between San Francisco, CA, and St. Louis, MO, began.

1872 - Aaron Montgomery started his mail order business with the delivery of the first mail order catalog. The firm later became Montgomery Wards.

1876 - Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Watson made their longest telephone call to date. It was a distance of two miles.

1888 - The public was admitted to the Washington Monument for the first time.

1914 - During World War I, German forces captured Antwerp, Belgium.

1919 - The Cincinnati Reds won the World Series. The win would be later tainted when 8 Chicago White Sox were charged with throwing the game. The incident became known as the "Black Sox" scandal.

1930 - Aviator Laura Ingalls landed in Glendale, CA, to complete the first solo transcontinental flight across the U.S. by a woman.

1935 - "Cavalcade of America" was first broadcast on CBS radio.

1936 - The first generator at Boulder Dam began transmitting electricity to Los Angeles, CA. The name of the dam was later changed to Hoover Dam.

1940 - St. Paul's Cathedral in London was bombed by the Nazis. The dome was unharmed in the bombing.

1943 - "Land of the Lost" debuted on ABC radio.

1946 - "The Iceman Cometh" opened in New York City, NY.

1946 - The first electric blanket went on sale in Petersburg, VA.

1947 - The Broadway show, "High Button Shoes", opened.

1963 - Over 2,000 people were killed in northeast Italy when the Vaiont Dam was overrun by water. The incident was caused by landslide that occurred behind the dam.

1967 - Che Guevara was executed by Bolivian soldiers for attempting to incite a revolution in Bolivia.

1974 - Oskar Schindler died in Frankfurt, Germany. Schindler is credited with saving the lives of about 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust.

1975 - Andrei Sakharov was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The Soviet scientist is known as the "father of the hydrogen bomb."

1983 - Helen Moss joined the Brownies at the age of 83. She became the oldest person to become a member.

1985 - The hijackers of the Achille Lauro cruise liner surrendered after the ship arrived in Port Said, Egypt.

1986 - U.S. District Judge Harry E. Claiborne became the fifth federal official to be removed from office through impeachment. The U.S. Senate convicted Claiborne of "high crimes and misdemeanors."

1986 - Joan Rivers debuted her new "The Late Show" on the FOX network.

1986 - The musical "Phantom of the Opera" by Andrew Lloyd Webber opened in London.

1989 - The official Soviet news agency Tass reported an unidentified flying object. The report included a trio of tall aliens that had visited the city of Voronzh.

1991 - The play revival "On Borrowed Time" opened.

1994 - The U.S. sent troops and warships to the Persian Gulf in response to Saddam Hussein sending thousands of troops and hundreds of tanks toward the Kuwaiti border.

1995 - Saboteurs tinkered with a stretch of railroad track in Arizona. An Amtrak train derailed killing one and injuring a hundred.

2000 - Brett Hull (Dallas Stars) scored his 611th National Hockey League (NHL) goal. The goal allowed him to pass his father, Bobby Hull, on the all time scoring list bringing him to number 9.

2001 - Prosecutors in Miami, FL, announced that they would seek a prison sentence if O.J. Simpson was convicted in his road rage trial. Jury selection began for the trial just after the announcement.

2003 - Britain's Queen Elizabeth II knighted Roger Moore and made Sting a CBE (Commander of the British Empire).

2009 - NASA launched the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS). On November 13, it was announced that water had been discovered in the planned impact plume on the moon.

October 10, 2013

1845 - The United States Naval Academy opened in Annapolis, MD.

1865 - The billiard ball was patented by John Wesley Hyatt.

1886 - The tuxedo dinner jacket made its U.S. debut in New York City.

1887 - Thomas Edison organized the Edison Phonograph Company.

1911 - China's Manchu dynasty was overthrown by revolutionaries under Sun Yat-sen.

1913 - U.S. President Woodrow Wilson triggered the explosion of the Gamboa Dike that ended the construction of the Panama Canal.

1928 - "Hold Everything" opened on Broadway.

1932 - "Betty and Bob" began on radio.

1932 - "Judy and Jane" began on radio.

1933 - Dreft, the first synthetic detergent, went on sale.

1937 - The Mutual Broadcasting System debuted "Thirty Minutes in Hollywood".

1938 - Nazi Germany completed its annexation of Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland.

1943 - Chaing Kai-shek took the oath of office as the president of China.

1957 - U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower apologized to Komla Agbeli Gbdemah, the finance minister of Ghana, after the official had been refused service in a Dover, DE, restaurant.

1959 - Pan American World Airways announced the beginning of the first global airline service.

1963 - A dam burst in Italy killing 3,000 people.

1965 - The Red Baron made his first appearance in the "Peanuts" comic strip.

1973 - Fiji became independent after of nearly a century of British rule.

1977 - Joe Namath played the last game of his National Football League (NFL) career.

1978 - The U.S. bill authorizing the Susan B. Anthony dollar was signed by U.S. President Jimmy Carter.

1984 - The U.S. Congress passed the 2nd Boland Amendment which outlawed solicitation of 3rd-party countries to support the Contras. The amendment barred the use of funds available to CIA, defense, or intelligence agencies for "supporting, directly or indirectly, military or paramilitary operations in Nicaragua by any nation, group, organization or individual."

1987 - Tom McClean finished rowing across the Atlantic Ocean. It set the record at 54 days and 18 hours.

1991 - The United States cut all foreign aid to Haiti in reaction to a military coup that forced President Jean-Claude Aristide into exile.

1994 - Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras resigned as Haiti's commander-in-chief of the army and pledged to leave the country.

1994 - Iraq announced it was withdrawing its forces from the Kuwaiti border. No signs of a pullback were observed.

1995 - Gary Kasparov won a chess championship against Viswanathan Anand that had lasted about a month.

1997 - The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, opened to the public. Architect Frank Gehry designed the 450 ft. long and 98 ft. wide building.

2001 - U.S. President George W. Bush presented a list of 22 most wanted terrorists.

2003 - Rush Limbaugh annouced that he was addicted to painkillers and that he was going to check into a rehab center.

2010 - In China, Canton Tower opened to the public.

October 11, 2013

1776 - During the American Revolution the first naval battle of Lake Champlain was fought. The forces under Gen. Benedict Arnold suffered heavy losses.

1811 - The Juliana, the first steam-powered ferryboat, was put into operation by the inventor John Stevens. The ferry went between New York City, NY, and Hoboken, NJ.

1869 - Thomas Edison filed for a patent on his first invention. The electric machine was used for counting votes for the U.S. Congress, however the Congress did not buy it.

1881 - David Henderson Houston patented the first roll film for cameras.

1890 - The Daughters of the American Revolution was founded in Washington, DC.

1899 - The Boer War began in South Africa between the British and the Boers of the Transvaal and Orange Free State.

1929 - JCPenney opened a store in Milford, DE, making it a nationwide company with stores in all 48 states.

1932 - In New York, the first telecast of a political campaign was aired.

1936 - The radio show, "Professor Quiz", aired for the first time.

1939 - U.S. President Roosevelt was presented with a letter from Albert Einstein that urged him to develop the U.S. atomic program rapidly.

1942 - The Battle of Cape Esperance, during World War II, began in the Solomons.

1958 - Pioneer 1, a lunar probe, was launched by the U.S. The probe did not reach its destination and fell back to Earth and burned up in the atmosphere.

1968 - Apollo 7 was launched by the U.S. The first manned Apollo mission was the first in which live television broadcasts were received from orbit. Wally Schirra, Don Fulton Eisele and R. Walter Cunningham were the astronauts aboard.

1971 - Hugh Downs left the "Today" show and "Concentration". He later became the host of ABC's "20/20".

1975 - "Saturday Night Live" was broadcast for the first time. George Carlin was the guest host.

1975 - Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham were married in Fayetteville, AR.

1983 - The last hand-cranked telephones in the U.S. went out of service. The 440 telephone customers of Bryant Pond, ME, were switched to direct-dial service.

1984 - Construction began on the Kamric/Cinergy Futursonics Studio in Houston, TX.

1984 - American Kathryn D. Sullivan became the first female astronaut to space walk. She was aboard the space shuttle Challenger.

1984 - Mario Lemieux (Pittsburgh Penguins) made his debut in the National Hockey League (NHL) against the Boston Bruins. He scored a goal on his first shot on his first NHL shift.

1994 - U.S. troops in Haiti took control of the National Palace.

1994 - Iraqi troops began moving away from the Kuwaiti border.

1994 - The Colorado Supreme Court declared that the anti-gay rights measure in the state was unconstitutional.

October 12, 2013

1492 - Christopher Columbus, an Italian explorer, sighted Watling Island in the Bahamas. He believed that he had found Asia while attempting to find a Western ocean route to India. The same day he claimed the land for Isabella and Ferdinand of Spain.

1792 - The first monument honoring Christopher Columbus was dedicated in Baltimore, MD.

1810 - Bavarian Crown Prince Ludwig married Princess Therese of Saxony-Hildburghausen. The royalty invited the public to attend the event which became an annual celebration that later became known as Oktoberfest.

1860 - Inventor Elmer Sperry was born on this day. He held patents on more than 400 inventions. The most important being the Sperry Automatic Pilot.

1892 - In celebration of the 400th anniversary of the Columbus landing the original version of the Pledge of Allegiance was first recited in public schools.

1895 - In Newport, RI, the first amateur golf tournament was held.

1915 - Former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt criticized U.S. citizens who identified themselves by dual nationalities.

1915 - British nurse Edith Cavell was executed by a German firing squad for helping Allied soldiers escape from Belgium during World War I.

1920 - Construction of the Holland Tunnel began. It opened on November 13, 1927. The tunnel links Jersey City, NJ and New York City, NY.

1933 - John Dillinger, bank robber, escaped from a jail in Allen County, OH. The sheriff was killed by his gang as they helped Dillinger escape.

1933 - The U.S. Department of Justice acquired Alcatraz Island from the U.S. Army.

1937 - "Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons" debuted on radio.

1938 - Filming began on "The Wizard of Oz."

1942 - During World War II, Attorney General Francis Biddle announced that Italian nationals in the United States would no longer be considered enemy aliens.

1945 - Private First Class Desmond T. Doss was presented with the Congressional Medal of Honor for outstanding bravery as a medical corpsman. He was the first conscientious objector in American history to win the award.

1950 - The Kefauver Crime Commission convened in New York to investigate interstate organized crime.

1960 - Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev pounded a shoe on his desk during a dispute at a U.N. General Assembly.

1961 - The first video memoirs by a U.S. president were made. Walter Cronkite interviewed Dwight D. Eisenhower.

1964 - The Soviet Union launched Voskhod 1 into orbit around the Earth. It was the first space flight to have a multi-person crew and the first flight to be performed without space suits.

1972 - During the Vietnam War, a racial brawl broke out aboard the U.S. aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk. Nearly 50 sailors were injured.

1976 - China announced that Hua Guo-feng was named to succeed the late Mao Tse-tung as chairman of the Communist Party.

1984 - An attempt on British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's life was unsuccessful, but did take the lives of five people. The bomb had been planted by the I.R.A.

1988 - Federal prosecutors announced that the Sundstrand Corp. would pay $115 million dollars to settle with the Pentagon for overbilling airplane parts over a five-year period.

1989 - The U.S. House of Representatives approved a statutory federal ban on the destruction of the American flag.

1993 - The play "Mixed Emotions" opened at the John Golden Theatre.

1994 - Haitian military leader Raoul Cedras was granted political asylum by Panama.

1994 - The Magellan space probe ended its four-year mission to Venus for the purpose of mapping.

1997 - The St. Francis Basilica and 15th-century bell tower above Foligno city hall in Italy were damaged by 3 earthquakes.

1998 - The U.S. House of Representatives passed the Online Copyright Bill.

1999 - Rob Reiner received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

1999 - In Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf seized power in a bloodless coup that toppled Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. The Supreme Court ruled that the coup was legal but insisted that a civilian government be restored within three years.

2000 - In Aden, Yemen, the USS Cole, a U.S. Navy destroyer, experienced a large explosion while refueling. The explosion was the result of a terrorist attack using a small boat. 17 crewmembers were killed and at least 39 were injured.

2000 - In Denver, CO, the U.S. District Court denied Timothy McVeigh's request for a new trial.

2001 - A special episode of America's Most Wanted was aired that focused on 22 wanted terrorists. The show was specifically requested by U.S. President George W. Bush.

2001 - A car bomb exploded in Madrid, Spain, that injured 17 people. Basque separatists claimed responsibility.

2002 - In Bali, Indonesia, over 180 people were killed and over 300 were injured when a bomb was detonated in a nightclub district.

2006 - The Dow Jones industrial average advanced over 11,900 for the first time.

October 13, 2013

54 A.D. - The Roman emperor Claudius I died after being poisoned by his wife, Agrippina.

1775 - The U.S. Continental Congress ordered the construction of a naval fleet.

1792 - The cornerstone of the Executive Mansion was laid in Washington, DC. The building became known as the White House in 1818.

1812 - American forces were defeated at the Battle of Queenstown Heights. The British victory effectively ended an further U.S. invasion of Canada.

1843 - B'nai B'rith, the Jewish organization, was founded by Henry Jones and eleven others in New York City, NY.

1854 - The state of Texas ratified a state constitution.

1924 - The play "The Guardsman" opened in New York City, NY.

1943 - During World War II, Italy signed an armistice with the Allies and declared war on Germany.

1944 - American troops entered Aachen, Germany, during World War II.

1944 - During World War II, British and Greek advance units landed at Piraeus.

1951 - In Atlanta, GA, a football with a rubber covering was used for the first time. Georgia Tech beat Louisiana State 25-7.

1953 - An ultrasonic burglar alarm was patented by Samuel Bagno.

1957 - Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra introduced the Ford Edsel on an hour long special.

1960 - The World Series ended on a home run for the first time. Bill Mazeroski's homerun allowed the Pirates to beat the Yankees.

1962 - "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" opened on Broadway.

1967 - The first game of the new American Basketball Association was played.

1977 - Four Palestinians hijacked an Lufthansa airliner to Somalia. They demanded the release of members of the Red Army Faction.

1981 - Egyptian voters elected Vice President Hosni Mubarak as the new president one week after Anwar Sadat was assassinated.

1984 - Jesse Jackson appeared on "Saturday Night Live."

1989 - U.S. President George H.W. Bush called for an overthrow of the Panamanian ruler Manuel Antonio Noriega.

1990 - Le Duc Tho died at the age of 79. He was a co-founder of the Vietnamese Communist Party.

1992 - A commercial flight record was set by an Air France supersonic jetliner for circling the Earth in 33 hours and one minute.

1995 - Walt Disney World Resort admitted its 500-millionth guest.
1998 - The National Basketball Association (NBA) canceled regular season games, due to work stoppage, for first time in its 51-year history.

1999 - The U.S. Senate rejected the ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).

2010 - Near Copiapó, Chile, 33 miners were trapped underground in San José Mine. The miners were rescued after 69 days underground.

October 14, 2013

1066 - The Battle of Hastings occurred in England. The Norman forces of William the Conqueror defeated King Harold II of England.

1879 - Thomas Edison signed an agreement with Jose D. Husbands for the sale of Edison telephones in Chile.

1887 - Thomas Edison and George E. Gouraud reached an agreement for the international marketing rights for the phonograph.

1912 - Theodore Roosevelt was shot while campaigning in Milwaukee, WI. Roosevelt's wound in the chest was not serious and he continued with his planned speech. William Schrenk was captured at the scene of the shooting.

1922 - Lieutenant Lester James Maitland set a new airplane speed record when he reached a speed of 216.1 miles-per-hour.

1926 - The book "Winnie-the-Pooh," by A.A. Milne, made its debut.

1928 - The first televised wedding took place in Des Plains, IL. James Fowlkes and Cora Dennison were married in a radio studio.

1930 - Ethel Merman debuted on Broadway in "Girl Crazy."

1933 - Nazi Germany announced that it was withdrawing from the League of Nations.

1934 - "Lux Radio Theater" began airing on the NBC Blue radio network.

1936 - The first SSB (Social Security Board) office opened in Austin, TX. From this point, the Board's local office took over the assigning of Social Security Numbers.

1943 - The Radio Corporation of America finalized the sale of the NBC Blue radio network. Edward J. Noble paid $8 million for the network that was renamed American Broadcasting Company.

1944 - German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel committed suicide rather than face execution after being accused of conspiring against Adolf Hitler and the execution that would follow.

1944 - During World War II, the Second British Parachute Brigade liberated the city of Athens.

1947 - Over Rogers Dry Lake in Southern California, pilot Chuck Yeager flew the Bell X-1 rocket plane and became the first person to break the sound barrier.

1954 - C.B. DeMille's "The Ten Commandments", starring Charlton Heston, began filming in Egypt. The epic had a cast of 25,000 people.

1960 - U.S. presidential candidate John F. Kennedy first suggested the idea of a Peace Corps.

1961 - "How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying" opened on Broadway.

1962 - The Cuban Missile Crisis began when U.S. reconnaissance aircrafts photographed Soviet construction of intermediate-range missile sites in Cuba.

1964 - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his non-violent resistance to racial prejudice in America. He was the youngest person to receive the award.

1968 - The first live telecast to come from a manned U.S. spacecraft was transmitted from Apollo 7.

1970 - Anwar el-Sadat became president of Egypt following the death of President Nasser.

1984 - George ‘Sparky’ Anderson became the first baseball manager to win 100 games and a World Series in both leagues. (MLB)

1986 - Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev charged that the U.S. wanted to "bleed the Soviet Union economically" with the arms race in space.

1987 - Jessica McClure, 18 months old, fell down an abandoned well in Midland, TX. The rescue took 58 hours.

2002 - Britain stripped power from the Catholic and Protestant politicians of Northern Ireland. Britain resumed sole responsibility for running Northern Ireland.

October 15, 2013

1815 - Napoleon Bonaparte began his exile on the remote island of St. Helena in the Atlantic Ocean.

1860 - Grace Bedell, 11 years old, wrote a letter to presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln. The letter stated that Lincoln would look better if he would grow a beard.

1883 - The U.S. Supreme Court struck down part of the Civil Rights Act of 1875. It allowed for individuals and corporations to discriminate based on race.

1892 - The U.S. government announced that the land in the western Montana was open to settlers. The 1.8 million acres were bought from the Crow Indians for 50 cents per acre.

1914 - The Clayton Antitrust Act was passed by the U.S. Congress.

1931 - "Cat and the Fiddle" opened in New York for the first of 395 performances.

1937 - "To Have and Have Not" by Ernest Hemingway was published for the first time.

1939 - New York Municipal Airport was dedicated. The name was later changed to La Guardia Airport.

1945 - Pierre Laval, the former premier of Vichy France, was executed for treason.

1946 - Hermann Goering, a Nazi war criminal and founder of the Gestapo, poisoned himself just hours before his scheduled execution.

1951 - "I Love Lucy" premiered on CBS-TV.

1953 - "Teahouse of the August Moon" opened on Broadway. It ran for 1,027 performances.

1962 - The Cuban Missile Crisis began. It was on this day that U.S. intelligence personnel analyzing data discovered Soviet medium-range missle sites in Cuba. On October 22 U.S. President John F. Kennedy announced that he had ordred the naval "quarantine" of Cuba.

1964 - It was announced that Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had been removed from power. He was replaced with Alexei N. Kosygin.

1966 - U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed a bill creating the Department of Transportation.

1973 - "Tomorrow" debuted on NBC-TV.

1983 - U.S. Marines killed five snipers who had pinned them down in Beirut International Airport.

1984 - The Freedom of Information Act was passed.

1989 - South African officials released eight prominent political prisoners.

1989 - Wayne Gretzky, while playing for the Los Angeles Kings, surpassed Gordie Howe's NHL scoring record of 1,850 career points.

1993 - U.S. President Clinton sent warships to enforce trade sanctions that had been imposed on Haitian military rulers.

1993 - South Africa's President F.W. de Klerk and African National Congress President Nelson Mandela were named winners of the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to end the apartheid system in South Africa.

1997 - British Royal Air Force pilot Andy Green broke the land-speed record by driving a jet-powered car faster than the speed of sound.

1997 - The Cassini-Huygens mission was launched from Cape Canaveral, FL. On January 14, 2005, a probe sent back pictures of Saturn's moon Titan during and after landing.

1998 - The U.N. condemned the U.S. economic embargo on Cuba for the seventh year in a row.

2001 - NASA's Galileo spacecraft passed within 112 miles of Jupiter's moon Io.

October 16, 2013

1701 - The Collegiate School was founded in Killingworth, CT. The school moved to New Haven in 1745 and changed its name to Yale College.

1829 - In Boston, MA, the first modern hotel in America opened. The Tremont Hotel had 170 rooms that rented for $2 a day and included four meals.

1859 - Abolitionist John Brown led a raid on Harper's Ferry, VA (now located in West Virginia).

1869 - A hotel in Boston became the first in the U.S. to install indoor plumbing.

1916 - Margaret Sanger opened the first birth control clinic in New York City, NY.

1923 - Walt Disney contracted with M.J. Winkler to distribute the Alice Comedies. This event is recognized as the start of the Disney Company.
1928 - Marvin Pipkin received a patent for the frosted electric light bulb.

1939 - "Right To Happiness" debuted on the NBC-Blue network.

1939 - "The Man Who Came to Dinner" opened on Broadway.

1941 - The Nazis advanced to within 60 miles of Moscow. Romanians entered Odessa, USSR, and began exterminating 150,000 Jews.

1942 - The ballet "Rodeo" premiered in New York City.

1943 - Chicago's new subway system was officially opened with a ribbon cutting ceremony.

1944 - "The Robe," by Lloyd Douglas, was published for the first time.

1945 - "His Honor the Barber" debuted on NBC Radio.

1955 - Mrs. Jules Lederer replaced Ruth Crowley in newspapers using the name Ann Landers.

1962 - U.S. President Kennedy was informed that there were missile bases in Cuba, beginning the Cuban missile crisis.

1964 - China detonated its first atomic bomb becoming the world's fifth nuclear power.

1967 - NATO headquarters opened in Brussels.

1970 - Anwar Sadat was elected president of Egypt to succeed Gamal Abdel Nassar.

1973 - Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho were named winners of the Nobel Peace Prize. The Vietnamese official declined the award.

1982 - China announced that it had successfully fired a ballistic missile from a submarine.

1987 - Rescuers freed Jessica McClure from the abandoned well that she had fallen into in Midland, TX. The was trapped for 58 hours.

1989 - U.S. President George H.W. Bush signed the Gramm-Rudman budget reduction law that ordered federal programs be cut by $16.1 billion.

1990 - Comedian Steve Martin and his wife Victoria Tennant visited U.S. soldiers in Saudi Arabia.

1993 - The U.N. Security Council approved the deployment of U.S. warships to enforce a blockade on Haiti to increase pressure on the controlling military leaders.

1994 - German Chancellor Helmut Kohl was re-elected to a fourth term.

1995 - The "Million Man March" took place in Washington, DC.

1997 - Charles M. Schulz and his wife Jeannie announced that they would give $1 million toward the construction of a D-Day memorial to be placed in Virginia.

2000 - It was announced that Chevron Corp. would be buying Texaco Inc. for $35 billion. The combined company was called Chevron Texaco Corp. and became the 4th largest oil company in the world.

2002 - It was reported that North Korea had told the U.S. that it had a secret nuclear weapons program in violation of an 1994 agreement with the U.S.

2002 - The Arthur Andersen accounting firm was sentenced to five years probation and fined $500,000 for obstructing a federeal investigation of the energy company Enron.

October 17, 2013

1777 - American troops defeated British forces in Saratoga, NY. It was the turning point in the American Revolutionary War.

1888 - The first issue of "National Geographic Magazine" was released at newsstands.

1931 - Al Capone was convicted on income tax evasion and was sentenced to 11 years in prison. He was released in 1939.

1933 - "News-Week" appeared for the first time at newsstands. The name was later changed to "Newsweek."

1933 - Dr. Albert Einstein moved to Princeton, NJ, after leaving Germany.

1939 - "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" premiered.

1945 - Ava Gardner and Artie Shaw were married.

1945 - Colonel Juan Peron became the dictator of Argentina after staging a coup in Buenos Aires.

1973 - The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) began an oil-embargo against several countries including the U.S. and Great Britain. The incident stemmed from Western support of Israel when Egypt and Syria attacked the nation on October 6, 1973. The embargo lasted until March of 1974.

1978 - U.S. President Carter signed a bill that restored full U.S. citizenship rights to Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

1979 - Mother Teresa of India was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

1987 - U.S. First Lady Nancy Reagan underwent a modified radical mastectomy at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland.

1989 - An earthquake measuring 7.1 on the Richter Scale hit the San Francisco Bay area in California. The quake caused about 67 deaths, 3,000 injuries, and damages up to $7 billion.

1994 - Israel and Jordan initialed a draft peace treaty.

1994 - The Angolan government and rebels agreed to a peace treaty that ended their 19 years of civil war.

1997 - The remains of revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara were laid to rest in his adopted Cuba, 30 years after his execution in Bolivia.

2000 - In New York City, Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum opened to the public. The 42nd Street location joined Tussaud's other exhibitions already in London, Hong Kong, Amsterdam and Las Vegas.

2000 - Patrick Roy (Colorado Avalanche) achieved his 448th victory as a goalie in the NHL. Roy passed Terry Sawchuck to become the record holder for career victories.

2001 - Israel's tourism minister was killed. A radical Palestinian faction claimed that it had carried out the assassination to avenge the killing of its leader by Israel 2 months earlier.

2001 - Pakistan placed its armed forces on high alert because of troop movements by India in the disputed territory of Kashmir. India said that the movements were part of a normal troop rotation.

2001 - Italian priest Giuseppe "Beppe" Pierantoni was kidnapped by the terrorist group the "Pentagon." He was released on April 8, 2002.

2003 - In the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration approved a drug, known as memantine, to help people with Alzheimer's symptoms.

2003 - In Taipei, Taiwan, construction crews finished 1,676-foot-tall-building called Taipei 101. The building was planned to open for business in 2004.

2003 - In northwest England, the Carnforth railway station reopened as a heritage center.

October 18, 2013

1469 - Ferdinand of Aragon married Isabella of Castile. The marriage united all the dominions of Spain.

1685 - King Louis XIV of France revoked the Edict of Nantes, which had established the legal toleration of the Protestant population.

1767 - The Mason-Dixon line was agreed upon. It was the boundary between Maryland and Pennsylvania.

1842 - Samuel Finley Breese Morse laid his first telegraph cable.

1860 - British troops burned the Yuanmingyuan at the end of the Second Opium War.

1867 - The U.S. took formal possession of Alaska from Russia. The land was purchased of a total of $7 million dollars (2 cents per acre).

1873 - The first rules for intercollegiate football were drawn up by representatives from Rutgers, Yale, Columbia and Princeton Universities.

1892 - The first long-distance telephone line between Chicago, IL, and New York City, NY, was opened.

1898 - The American flag was raised in Puerto Rico only one year after the Caribbean nation won its independence from Spain.

1929 - The Judicial Committee of England’s Privy Council ruled that women were to be considered as persons in Canada.

1943 - The first broadcast of "Perry Mason" was presented on CBS Radio. The show went to TV in 1957.

1944 - Czechoslovakia was invaded by the Soviets during World War II.

1944 - "Forever Amber", written by Kathleen Windsor, was first published.

1950 - Connie Mack announced that he was going to retire after 50 seasons as the manager of the Philadelphia Athletics.

1956 - NFL commissioner Bert Bell disallowed the use of radio-equipped helmets by NFL quarterbacks.

1958 - The first computer-arranged marriage took place on Art Linkletter's show.

1961 - Henri Matiss' "Le Bateau" went on display at New York's Museum of Modern Art. It was discovered 46 days later that the painting had been hanging upside down.

1967 - The American League granted permission for the A's to move to Oakland. Also, new franchises were awarded to Kansas City and Seattle.

1968 - Two black athletes, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, were suspended by the U.S. Olympic Committee for giving a "black power" salute during a ceremony in Mexico City.

1969 - The U.S. government banned artificial sweeteners due to evidence that they caused cancer.

1970 - Quebec's minister of labor was found strangled to death after eight days of being held captive by the Quebec Liberation Front (FLQ).

1971 - After 34 years, the final issue of "Look" magazine was published.

1977 - Reggie Jackson tied Babe Ruth's record for hitting three homeruns in a single World Series game. Jackson was only the second player to achieve this.

1983 - General Motors agreed to hire more women and minorities for five years as part of a settlement with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

1985 - South African authorities hanged black activist Benjamin Moloise. Moloise had been convicted of murdering a police officer.

1989 - Egon Krenz became the leader of East Germany after Erich Honecker was ousted. Honeker had been in power for 18 years.

1989 - The space shuttle Atlantis was launched on a mission that included the deployment of the Galileo space probe.

1990 - Iraq made an offer to the world that it would sell oil for $21 a barrel. The price level was the same as it had been before the invasion of Kuwait.

1997 - A monument honoring U.S. servicewomen, past and present, was dedicated at Arlington National Cemetery.

2006 - Microsoft released Internet Explorer 7.0.

October 19, 2013

1765 - In the U.S., The Stamp Act Congress met and drew up a declaration of rights and liberties.

1781 - British General Charles Lord Cornwallis surrendered to U.S. General George Washington at Yorktown, Virginia. It was to be the last major battle of the American Revolutionary War.

1812 - Napoleon Bonaparte's French forces began their retreat out of Russia after a month of chasing the retreating Russian army.

1914 - In the U.S., government owned vehicles were first used to pick up mail in Washington, DC.

1915 - The U.S. recognized General Venustiano Carranza as the president of Mexico. The U.S. imposed embargo to all parts of Mexico except where Carranza was in control.

1933 - Basketball was introduced to the 1936 Olympic Games by the Berlin Organization Committee.

1937 - "Woman's Day" was published for the first time.

1937 - "Big Town" made its debut on CBS.

1943 - The Moscow Conference of Foreign Ministers began in Russia during World War II. Delegates from the U.S.S.R., Great Britain, the U.S., and China met to discuss war aims and cooperation between the nations.

1944 - The play "I Remember Mama" opened on Broadway. Marlon Brando made his debut with his appearance.

1944 - The U.S. Navy announced that black women would be allowed into Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES).

1950 - The United Nations forces entered the North Korean capital of Pyongyang.

1951 - U.S. President Truman singed an act officially ending the state of war with Germany.

1959 - Patty Duke, at the age of 12, made her Broadway debut in "The Miracle Worker." The play lasted for 700 performances.

1960 - The United States imposed an embargo on exports to Cuba covering all commodities except medical supplies and certain food products.

1969 - U.S. Vice President Spiro Agnew referred to anti-Vietnam War protesters "an effete corps of impudent snobs."

1974 - The news program "Weekend" debuted on NBC.

1977 - The Concorde made its first landing in New York City.

1983 - The U.S. Senate approved a bill establishing a national holiday in honor of Martin Luther King Jr.

1984 - Four U.S. employees of the CIA were killed in El Salvador when their plane crashed.

1987 - The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 508 points. It was the worst one-day percentage decline, 22.6%, in history.

1989 - The U.S. Senate rejected a proposed constitutional amendment that barred the desecration of the American flag.

1993 - Benazir Bhutto was returned to the premiership of Pakistan.

1998 - In Washington, DC, Microsoft went on trial to defend against an antitrust case.

1998 - Former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson got his boxing license back after he had lost it for biting Evander Holyfield's ear during a fight.

2003 - In London, magician David Blaine emerged from a clear plastic box that had been suspended by a crane over the banks of the Thames River. He survived only on water for 44 days. Blaine had entered the box on September 5.

2006 - The Dow Jones industrial average ended the day at 12,011.73. It was the first close above 12,000.

October 20, 2013

1740 - Maria Theresa became the ruler of Austria, Hungary and Bohemia with the death of her father, Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI.

1774 - The new Continental Congress, the governing body of America’s colonies, passed an order proclaiming that all citizens of the colonies "discountenance and discourage all horse racing and all kinds of gaming, cock fighting, exhibitions of shows, plays and other expensive diversions and entertainment."

1803 - The U.S. Senate approved the Louisiana Purchase.

1818 - The U.S. and Great Britain established the boundary between the U.S. and Canada to be the 49th parallel.

1827 - The Battle of Navarino took place during the Greek War for Independence.

1873 - A Hippodrome was opened in New York City by showman Phineus T. (P.T.) Barnum.

1892 - The city of Chicago dedicated the World's Columbian Exposition.

1903 - A joint commission ruled in favor of the U.S. concerning a dispute over the boundary between Canada and the District of Alaska.

1910 - A baseball with a cork center was used in a World Series game for the first time.

1930 - "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" debuted on NBC radio.

1935 - Mao Zedong arrived in Hanoi after his Long March that took just over a year. He then set up the Chinese Communist Headquarters.

1942 - Pierre Laval told the French labor that they must serve in Germany.

1944 - Allied forces invaded the Philippines.

1944 - During World War II, the Yugoslav cities of Belgrade and Dubrovnik were liberated.

1947 - Hollywood came under scrutiny as the House Un-American Activities Committee opened hearings into alleged Communist influence within the motion picture industry.

1952 - The Mau Mau uprising against white settlers began in Kenya.

1955 - "No Time for Sergeants" opened on Broadway.

1957 - Walter Cronkite began hosting "The 20th Century." The show aired until January 4, 1970.

1968 - Jackie Lee Bouvier Kennedy married Aristotle Onassis.

1979 - The John F. Kennedy Library in Boston was dedicated.

1984 - The U.S. State Department reduced the number of Americans assigned to the U.S. embassy in Beirut, Lebanon.

1993 - Attorney General Janet Reno warned the TV industry to limit the violence in their programs.

1995 - Britain, France and the U.S. announced a treaty that banned atomic blasts in the South Pacific.

2003 - A 40-year-old man went over Niagara Falls without safety devices and survived. He was charged with illegally performing a stunt.

2009 - European astronomers discover 32 exoplanets.

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