This Day in History

[GordMay]

October 1

0331 BCE: Alexander the Great, of Macedonia, defeated Darius III, of Persia, at the Battle of Gaugamela [Arbela], spelling the end of the Persian empire.

1661: Yachting begins in England, as King Charles II beats his brother James, Duke of York, in a yacht race, from Greenwich to Gravesend.

1814: Opening of the ‘Congress of Vienna’, redraws Europe's political map, after the defeat of Napoléon Bonaparte.

1844: German explorer Ludwig Leichhardt departs Jimbour, the farthest outpost of settlement, on the Queensland Darling Downs, to begin his exploration of Australia's Northern Territory, from Moreton Bay to Port Essington.

1847: German inventor, and industrialist, Werner von Siemens founds Siemens AG, & Halske.

1864: Cyclone strikes Calcutta, killing 70,000.

1867: Karl Marx publishes ‘Das Kapital’, in Berlin, a description of the capitalist system, its instability, and tendency to self-destruction.

1890: An act of the US Congress creates ‘Yosemite National Park’, home of ‘Half Dome’, and the giant sequoia trees.

1893: 3rd worst hurricane in US history kills 1,800 (Mississippi).

1920: ‘Scientific American’ reports that radio will soon be used to transmit music to the home.

1924: Jimmy Carter, 39th president of the U.S. (1977-1981) born.

1939: Winston Churchill calls Russia a "riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma".

1949: Naming himself head of state, communist revolutionary Mao Zedong officially proclaims the existence of the People’s Republic of China; Zhou Enlai is named premier.

1957: Thalidomide, an anti-nausea drug and sleep-aid, was launched. For about five years it was commonly prescribed to pregnant women, as a drug to deal with morning sickness. It was finally withdrawn from the market, after it was determined that it caused birth defects.

1961: New York Yankee Roger Maris becomes the first-ever major-league baseball player to hit more than 60 home runs, in a single season. The great Babe Ruth set the record in 1927; Maris, and his teammate Mickey Mantle, spent 1961 trying to break it. After hitting 54 homers, Mantle injured his hip in September, leaving Maris to chase the record by himself. Finally, in the last game of the regular season, Maris hit his 61st home run against the Boston Red Sox.

1969: ‘Concorde 001' test flight breaks sound barrier.

1971: First CT or CAT brain scan performed, at Atkinson Morley Hospital, in Wimbledon, London.

1974: Watergate cover-up trial of Nixon aides Kenneth Parkinson & Robert Mardian, Nixon's Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, and U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell, opens, in Washington, D.C.

1974: US Computer scientist Gary Kildall presents the prototype of his CP/M operating system, in his backyard toolshed.

1975: In what is regarded by many as the greatest prizefight of all time (the “Thrilla in Manila”), Muhammad Ali defeated Joe Frazier, to retain his WBC/WBA heavyweight title, after the latter's corner called a halt to the bout, after 14 brutal rounds.

1979: US returns Canal Zone [but not the canal] to Panama, after 75 years.

1982: The Sony ‘CDP-101', world's first commercially released Compact Disc player released in Japan, for 168,000 yen $730 USD].

2005: Suicide bombers strike three restaurants, in two tourist areas, on the Indonesian island of Bali, killing 22 people, including the bombers, and injuring more than 50 others.

2015: Cargo ship “El Faro” goes missing, with 33 crew, during Hurricane Joaquin, near the Bahamas.

2017: Stephen Paddock opens fire on a crowd, attending the final night of a country music festival, in Las Vegas, killing 58 people, and injuring more than 800 [?]. Paddock began firing at the crowd at 10:05 PM, using an arsenal of 23 guns, 12 of which were upgraded with bump stocks, a tool used to fire semi-automatic guns in rapid succession. Within the 10-minute period, he was able to fire more than 1,100 rounds of ammunition.

[GordMay]

October 2

1535: Jacques Cartier discovers Hochelaga [Mount Royal, Montreal], much to the surprise of the Iroquoians, living there.

1608: Hans Lippershey applies for patent for first known early telescope, in the Netherlands.

1835: The first military engagement of the Texas War of Independence, the Battle of Gonzales, occurred on this day, between Texas rebels and Mexican troops.

1836: Naturalist Charles Darwin returned to England, after a five-year journey on the HMS “Beagle”, on which he gathered the specimens, and observations that led to his theory of evolution by natural selection.

1866: J. Osterhoudt patents tin can with key opener.

1940: British liner “Empress”, loaded with refugees for Canada, sunk.

1942: RMS “Queen Mary”, carrying thousands of US troops, slices cruiser HMS “Curacao” in half, killing 239.

1965: A team of scientists invent Gatorade, a sports drink to quench thirst, in a University of Florida lab.

1985: Actor Rock Hudson, 59, becomes the first major U.S. celebrity to die of complications from AIDS.

1991: Toronto Blue Jays clinch AL East title, with a 6-5 win v California Angels; become first sport franchise in history to draw 4 million fans, in one season.

2005: The “Ethan Allen” tour boat capsizes, on Lake George, in Upstate New York, killing twenty people.

2018: Saudi American journalist Jamal Khashoggi enters the Saudi consulate, in Istanbul, never to be seen again, prompting a diplomatic crisis.

[GordMay]

October 3

0052 BCE: Vercingetorix, leader of the Gauls, surrenders to the Romans under Julius Caesar, ending the siege and battle of Alesia.

0042 BCE: First Battle of Philippi: Triumvirs Mark Antony and Octavian fight an indecisive battle with Caesar's assassins Brutus and Cassius.

1778: Captain James Cook anchors at Alaska.

1863: Expressing gratitude for a pivotal Union Army victory, at Gettysburg, President Abraham Lincoln announces that the nation will celebrate an official Thanksgiving holiday, on November 26, 1863, and the fourth Thursday of every November thereafter.

1888: Explorer Fridtjof Nansen, and his team, complete first known crossing of Greenland interior, arriving in Godthaab.

1906: The first conference on wireless telegraphy, in Berlin, adopts ‘SOS’ as distress signal.

1908: ‘Pravda’ newspaper founded by Leon Trotsky, Adolph Joffe, Matvey Skobelev, and other Russian exiles in Vienna.

1913: US Federal income tax signed into law (at 1%), by President Woodrow Wilson.

1942: Germany conducts the first successful test flight of a ‘V-2' [A-4/V-2] missile, which flies perfectly over a 118-mile course.

1952: The first British atomic weapons test, called operation ‘Hurricane’, was successfully conducted aboard the frigate HMS “Plym”, at Monte Bello Island, Australia, making the UK the world's third nuclear power.

1963: Hurricane hits Haiti; about 5,000 die & 100,000 injured.

1967: Writer, singer and folk icon, Woody Guthrie dies.

1990: After four decades of Cold War division, and with pressure from the German chancellor Helmut Kohl, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to a unified Germany within NATO, leading to Germany's reunification.

1993: Battle of Mogadishu: In an attempt to capture officials of warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid's organisation, in Mogadishu, Somalia, 18 US Soldiers, and about 1,000 Somalis are killed, in heavy fighting.

1995: At the end of a sensational, 252 day trial, former football star O.J. Simpson is acquitted of the brutal 1994 double murder of his estranged wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman.

1997: ‘Mr. Hockey’, Gordie Howe, 69, becomes only pro hockey player to compete in six decades [1940s - 1990s].

2008: The $700 billion ‘Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008' authorizes the Secretary of the Treasury to purchase distressed assets of financial corporations, and supply cash directly to banks, to keep them afloat.
2008: Former NFL star O.J. Simpson found guilty, of charges of kidnapping, and armed robbery.

2013: 325 people are killed, after a migrant ship catches fire, and shipwrecks, off the coast of Lampedusa, Italy

[GordMay]

NOAA

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration [NOAA] is an American agency, that monitors oceanic and atmospheric conditions, forecasts weather, charts the sea, manages the protection of marine life, and more. It operates under the United States Department of Commerce. Though NOAA is a result of multiple predecessors, it was officially formed on Saturday, Oct. 3, 1970.

President Richard Nixon wanted to create an agency that supported "better protection of life and property from natural hazards…for a better understanding of the total environment…[and] for exploration and development leading to the intelligent use of our marine resources".

Nixon listed NOAA under the Department of Commerce, instead of the Department of Interior, because he was feuding with the interior secretary, Wally Hickel. They disagreed on Nixon administration's Vietnam War policy. Nixon disliked a letter Hickel wrote, that urged him to cede to the Vietnam War demonstrators. So, Nixon punished Hickel and didn't give him NOAA.

NOAA emerged from previous organizations, such as the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, formed in 1807, the Weather Bureau of the United States, formed in 1870, and the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries, which was formed in 1871.

NOAA has six major line offices, including the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), the National Ocean Service (NOS), and the National Weather Service (NWS).

Since 2001, NOAA has led the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's working group to address climate science. In 2017, NOAA employed over 11,000 civilian employees.

In 1971, NOAA received its official emblem. "A white, gull-like form links the atmosphere to the sea or Earth. The Earth and atmosphere and the interrelationships between the two are, of course, major concerns of NOAA," said NOAA's first administrator, Dr. Robert White. "The line defining the top of the gull's wings also resemble the trough of a foaming ocean wave against the blue sky. A creature of sea, land, and air, the gull adds an ecological touch to the Earth-sky motif."

[GordMay]

October 4

1190: Richard I [the Lionheart], on his way to Jerusalem, during the Third Crusade, invaded a hostile Sicily, and took the key city of Messina.

1363: End of the Battle of Lake Poyang; the Chinese rebel forces of Zhu Yuanzhang defeat that of his rival, Chen Youliang, one of the largest naval battles in history, with approximately 850,000 taking part.

1535: The 1st complete English-language Bible, the "Matthew Bible" is printed, with translations by William Tyndale and Miles Coverdale, either in Zürich,Switzerland, or in Cologne, Germany.

1582: The Gregorian calendar was introduced, and over the following centuries, numerous countries adopted it. Last Julian calendar day in Spain, Portugal, and pontifical states. To sync to the Gregorian calendar, 10 days are skipped, and the next date is Oct 15.

1795: General Napoleon Bonaparte leads the rout of counterrevolutionaries, in the streets of Paris, beginning his rise to power.

1853: The Crimean War began, as Ottoman Turks [later joined by England and France] declared war on Russia; the fighting lasted more than two years, and ended with Russia's defeat.

1873: Toronto Argonauts Football Club [CFL] forms, as Argonaut Rowing Club rugby-football squad; oldest existing pro sports team, in North America, still using original name.

1883: The ‘Orient Express’ departs, on its first official journey, from Paris to Istanbul.

1901: Charlie Barr skippered “Columbia” (US) beats “Shamrock II” (UK), 3-0 on New York City Harbour, in 11th America's Cup yachting challenge series.

1905: Orville Wright pilots the first flight longer than 30 minutes, lasting 33 minutes, 17 seconds, and covering 21 miles.

1927: Gutzon Borglum begins sculpting, on the face of Mount Rushmore, in the Black Hills National Forest of South Dakota. It would take another 12 years for the granite images of four of America’s presidents, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt, to be completed.

1957: The Soviet Union inaugurates the ‘Space Age’, with its launch of “Sputnik I”, the world’s first artificial satellite. The satellite, built by Valentin Glushko, weighed 184 pounds, and was launched by a converted Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM). Sputnik orbited the earth, in an elliptical low Earth orbit, every 96 minutes, at a maximum height of 584 miles. In 1958, it reentered the earth's atmosphere, and burned up.

1959: USSR’s ‘Luna 3' sent back 1st photos of Moon's far side.

1963: Hurricane ‘Flora’ storms through the Caribbean, killing 6,000, in Cuba and Haiti.

1970: Janis Joplin dies of an accidental heroin overdose.

1976: In ‘Gregg v. Georgia’, the U.S. Supreme Court lifts the ban on the death sentence, in murder cases. This restores the legality of capital punishment, which had not been practiced since 1967. The first execution, following this ruling, was Gary Gilmore, in 1977.

1979: Typhoon ‘Tip' forms, near Pohnpei, in Micronesia, would go on to be the most intense, and largest tropical cyclone, then ever recorded.

1985: Free Software Foundation founded, to promote universal freedom to create, distribute, and modify computer software.

1988: ‘Praise the Lord Ministries’ [PTL] televangelist Jim Bakker is indicted, on federal charges of mail and wire fraud, and of conspiring to defraud the public. Although the evidence was not particularly strong, Jim Bakker was convicted, in 1989, and sentenced to 45 years in prison. The sentence was later reduced to eight years, and he was released in 1994.

1989: The American racehorse Secretariat, who in 1973 won the U.S. Triple Crown [the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes, and the Belmont Stakes], was euthanized, after contracting laminitis.

1997: Second largest cash robbery, in U.S. history, occurs at the Charlotte, North Carolina office of Loomis, Fargo and Company, with $17.3 million in cash taken.

2004: “SpaceShipOne” wins Ansari X Prize, for private spaceflight.

2006: ‘WikiLeaks’ is launched, created by internet activist Julian Assange.

2014: Haitian politician Jean-Claude Duvalier [“Baby Doc”], who was president of Haiti, from 1971 to 1986, died in Port-au-Prince, while he was on trial for alleged human rights abuses.

[GordMay]

October 5

1274: Around 1,000 soldiers, of the Mongol army, land on the Japanese island of Tsushima, the first attack of Kublai Khan's failed invasion[s] of Japan.

1880: The first ball-point pen is patented, by Alonzo T. Cross.

1915: Germany issues an apology, and promises payment for the 128 American passengers killed, in the sinking of the British ship, “Lusitania”.

1916: Adolf Hitler is wounded in the left thigh, by an exploding shell, during the Battle of the Somme. The Battle of the Somme was, both, the largest battle, on the Western Front of World War I, and one of the deadliest in history, with more than a million casualties.

1919: A young Italian car mechanic and engineer, named Enzo Ferrari, takes part in his first car race, a hill climb in Parma, Italy. He finished fourth.

1930: Great Briton’s largest dirigible, the “R-101" Airship, crashes in Beauvais, France, killing all on board.

1948: A magnitude 7.3 earthquake, near Ashgabat, in the USSR, kills tens of thousands; estimates range from 110,000 to 176,000. This is one of the strongest, and most deadly earthquakes on record.

1953: Earl Warren sworn in, as 14th Chief Justice of US Supreme Court.

1954: Hurricane ‘Hazel’ forms, in the Caribbean, killing 400-1000 people, in the Bahamas and Haiti.

1962: The Beatles release their first record, ‘Love Me Do’, which gets to number seventeen, in the UK. It was later released in the US, on April 27th, 1964, and goes to Number 1.

1968: Civil rights march, in Derry, stopped by the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), and resulting clashes lead to two days of serious rioting, often considered the start of 'the Troubles' in Northern Ireland.

1970: Members of the Quebec Liberation Front (QLF) kidnap British Trade Commissioner James Cross, in Montreal, resulting in the October Crisis, and Canada's first peacetime use of the War Measures Act.

1974: American Dave Kunst completes the first round-the-world journey on foot, taking four years, and 21 pairs of shoes, to complete the 14,500-mile journey, across the land masses of four continents.

1978: Over 30 major nations ratify the ‘Environmental Modification Convention’, which prohibits weather warfare, that has widespread, long-lasting, or severe effects.

1983: Lech Wałęsa, leader of Poland's Solidarity union, received the Nobel Prize for Peace.

1986: Eugene Hasenfus is captured, by troops of the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua, after the plane in which he is flying is shot down; two others on the plane die in the crash. Under questioning, Hasenfus confessed that he was shipping military supplies into Nicaragua, for use by the Contras, an anti-Sandinista force, that had been created and funded by the United States. Most dramatically, he claimed that operation was really run by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The ensuing Iran-Contra scandal involved the secret sale of U.S. weapons to Iran (which was supposed to help in the release of U.S. hostages in the Middle East), while some of the proceeds from these sales were used to covertly fund the Contra war in Nicaragua.

1991: The first official version of the ‘Linux kernel’, version 0.02, is released.

1998: The Judiciary Committee, of the U.S. House of Representatives, recommended impeachment hearings, against President Bill Clinton.

2011: Apple co-founder, Steve Jobs dies, at age 56, of complications from pancreatic cancer.

2018: Nobel Peace Prize awarded jointly to Congolese gynaecologist Denis Mukwege, and Yazidi activist Nadia Murad, for ‘efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war’.

2020: At least 14m tonnes of plastic pieces are at the bottom of the ocean, 30 times more than on the surface, according to new research.
➥ https://www.frontiersin.org/articles...20.576170/full

[GordMay]

October 6

1536: William Tyndale, the English translator of the New Testament, is strangled, and burned at the stake, for heresy, at Vilvorde, France.

1866: The Reno brothers [Frank, John, Simeon and William] stage the first moving* train robbery in American history, making off with $13,000, from an Ohio and Mississippi railroad train, in Jackson County, Indiana.
* Stop a moving train, in a sparsely populated region, where they could carry out their crime, without risking interference.

1887: Architect Le Corbusier, [Charles-Édouard Jeanneret], born, La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland.

1914: Norwegian ethnologist and adventurer, Thor Heyerdahl, who organized and led the famous Kon-Tiki (1947), and Ra (1969–70) transoceanic scientific expeditions, was born, in Larvik, Norway.

1917: Canadian troops capture the village of Passchendaele, in the Third Battle of Ypres, after 250,000 casualties on both sides.

1948: Earthquake in Ashgabat kills 100,000, in the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic.
1948: Paleoanthropologist Mary Leakey finds the first partial fossil skull of Proconsul africanus, an ancestor of apes and humans, on Rusinga Island, Kenya

1956: Scientist Albert Sabin announces that his oral polio vaccine is ready for testing; it would soon supplant Jonas Salk's vaccine, in many parts of the world.

1961: President John F. Kennedy, speaking on civil defense, advises American families to build bomb shelters, to protect them from atomic fallout, in the event of a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union.

1966: Partial meltdown, at Detroits's ‘Fermi 1' nuclear reactor.
1966: LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) is first declared illegal in state of California, other states follow.

1973: The surprise attack, by Egyptian and Syrian forces, on Israel, in the ‘Yom Kippur War’ throws the Middle East into turmoil, and threatens to bring the United States and the Soviet Union into direct conflict, for the first time since the ‘Cuban Missile Crisis’, in 1962.

1976: In China, the Gang of Four [Jiang Qing, and Wang Hongwen, Zhang Chunqiao, and Yao Wenyuan], having lost their influence with the death of Mao Zedong, were arrested.

1981: Islamic extremists, led by lieutenant Khaled el Islambouli, assassinate Anwar Sadat, the president of Egypt, as he reviews troops on the anniversary of the Yom Kippur War. He is succeeded by Vice President Hosni Mubarak.

1986: Russian nuclear sub, “K291", sinks in Atlantic Ocean.

1995: ‘51 Pegasi’ discovered as the first major star, apart from the Sun, to have a planet orbiting around it.

2010: Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger launch ‘Instagram’.

2017: Nobel Peace Prize awarded to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN).

2020: Nobel Prize for Physics awarded to Roger Penrose, Reinhard Genzel and Andrea M. Ghez, for work on black holes.

[GordMay]

October 7

3761 BCE: The epoch [origin] of the modern Hebrew calendar [Proleptic Julian calendar].

1542: Explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo discovers Catalina Island, off the coast of California.

1571: In the last great clash of galleys, the Ottoman navy is defeated at Lepanto, Greece, by a Christian naval coalition [Holy League of southern European nations], under the overall command of Spain's Don Juan de Austria.

1737: A cyclone causes 40 foot waves, that are believed to have killed 300,000, in Calcutta, India

1806: Carbon paper patented, in London, by inventor Ralph Wedgwood.

1830: The Black Line begins; a leveé of colonists in Tasmania, Australia, attempts to round up Aborigines, onto the Tasman Peninsula.
➥ https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-mome...the-black-line

1900: Heinrich Himmler born. Himmler was one of the most powerful figures in the Third Reich, overseeing the creation and management of the vast Nazi police state, as well as the infrastructure of the Holocaust.

1913: Moving assembly line debuts at Ford factory, reducing the time it took to manufacture a car, from 12 hours to 93 minutes.

1919: ‘KLM’, Royal Dutch Airlines, established [oldest existing airline].

1931: South African archbishop Desmond Tutu born.

1940: The ‘McCollum memo’ proposes bringing the U.S. into the war in Europe [WW2], by provoking the Japanese to attack the United States.
➥ https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/McCollum_memorandum

1949: Iva Toguri D'Aquino, better known as Tokyo Rose, is sentenced to 10 years in prison, for treason.

1952: President of Russia, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin born, in Leningrad [now St. Petersburg], Russia.

1957: A fire in the Windscale plutonium production reactor [later called Sellafield, north of Liverpool, England, spreads radioactive iodine and polonium through the countryside, and into the Irish Sea. Livestock in the immediate area were destroyed, along with 500,000 gallons of milk. At least 30, and possibly as many as 1,000, cancer deaths were subsequently linked to the accident.

1963: Hurricane ‘Flora’ hits Haiti & Dominican Republic, kills 7,190.

1973: Iraq nationalizes Exxon and Mobil shares in Basrah Petroleum Company, representing 23.75 percent equity in the company.

1985: Members of the Palestine Liberation Front, a small faction headed by Abu Abbas within the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), hijacked an Italian cruise ship, the “Achille Lauro”.

1996: Fox News Channel, a satellite and cable news network, created by Roger Ailes, for Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, was launched in the United States.

2001: A U.S.-led coalition begins attacks on Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, with an intense bombing campaign, and covert operations on the ground, by American and British forces. Logistical support was provided by other nations including France, Germany, Australia and Canada and later, troops were provided by the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance rebels. The invasion of Afghanistan was the opening salvo in the United States war on terror [‘Operation Enduring Freedom’], and a response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York city, and Washington, D.C. The conflict in Afghanistan would span two decades, and become the longest war in U.S. history.

2014: Spanish nurse diagnosed with Ebola, the first case outside west Africa.

2016: Washington Post releases ‘Access Hollywood’ videotape, of Donald Trump boasting, in vulgar terms, about kissing, groping and trying to have sex with women, during a 2005 conversation, caught on a hot microphone, saying that “when you’re a star, they let you do it”, “Grab them by the p---y,” Trump says. “You can do anything.”
➥

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcZcTnykYbw

2020: Hurricane ‘Delta’ makes landfall, on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, with 100-mph winds, the 25th named storm for 2020.

[GordMay]

October 8

1769: Captain James Cook lands in New Zealand at Poverty Bay [East Coast].

1856: In Canton [Guangzhou], Chinese officials boarded a British-registered ship, the “Arrow”, arrested several Chinese crew members (who were later released), and allegedly lowered the British flag; the event contributed to the start of the second Opium War, in which Britain and France battled China.

1871: The most devastating fire, in United States history, burns in Sugar Bush & Peshtigo, Wisconsin. Some 1,200 to 2,500 people lost their lives [including every soul in Sugar Bush], and 2 billion trees were consumed by flames. Despite the fact that this was the worst fire in American history, newspaper headlines, on subsequent days, were dominated by the story of another devastating, though smaller, blaze: the Great Chicago Fire. Another fire in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, that consumed 2 million acres, was an even smaller footnote, in the next day’s papers.
1871: Flames spark, in the Chicago barn of Patrick and Catherine O’Leary, igniting a two-day blaze, that kills between 200 and 300 people, destroys 17,450 buildings, leaves 100,000 homeless, and causes an estimated $200 million [in 1871 dollars; roughly $4 billion in 2021 dollars] in damages.

1918: Corporal Alvin York single-handedly captured 132 Germans, and killed another 25, during the Meuse-Argonne offensive of World War I. York is promoted to sergeant, and awarded US Medal of Honor, and French Croix de Guerre.

1919: The U.S. Senate and House of Representatives pass the Volstead Prohibition Enforcement Bill.

1945: Microwave oven patented, by US inventor, Percy Spencer.

1956: Don Larsen, of the New York Yankees, throws the only perfect game, New York's 2-0 win in Game 5, over the Brooklyn Dodgers, in World Series history. The Yankees go on to win the World Series in seven games.

1967: Che Guevara is captured, and later shot to death, by Bolivian army.

1978: Ken Warby of Australia sets the world water speed record, 317.60 mph, at Blowering Dam in Australia; no other human has yet (2013) exceeded 300 mph on water, and survived.
➥ Warby Motorsport - The world's fastest team on water

2004: Martha Stewart reported to a federal prison, in West Virginia, to begin her five-month sentence, for insider trading, and obstruction of justice.

2005: Killing at least 79,000 people, an earthquake struck the Pakistan-administered portion of the Kashmir region, and the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan.

2014: Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person diagnosed with a case of the Ebola Virus Disease, in the U.S., dies at age 42, at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas.

[GordMay]

Hurricane 'Michael' was a Category 5 hurricane, that developed on Oct. 7, 2018. It was extremely powerful and destructive, breaking quite a few records. Michael was the third-most aggressive (in terms of pressure) Atlantic hurricane, to make landfall in the conterminous United States.

Michael was also the first Category 5 storm to hit the Florida Panhandle, and the most intense hurricane to make landfall, in the U.S. during October.

The storm started from a broad low-pressure area, in the southwestern Caribbean Sea on Oct. 1.
By Oct. 7, the system turned into a tropical depression. The next day, Michael officially reached hurricane status.

The hurricane quickly strengthened, in the Gulf of Mexico, reaching major hurricane status (Category 3 or higher) on Oct. 9.
On Oct. 10, Michael reached Category 5 status, and made landfall in Florida. The hurricane brought peak winds of 260 km/h to the area.

The storm weakened as it moved inland, toward the Chesapeake Bay.
By Oct. 11, Michael was downgraded to an extratropical cyclone while over southern Virginia.

By the time the storm dissipated, it had caused at least 74 deaths. The storm also caused around US$25.1 billion (2018) in damages.

Overall, Michael is the 10th most intense landfalling Atlantic hurricane (measured solely by central pressure).

On March 20, 2019, the World Meteorological Organization retired Michael from the Atlantic hurricane names lists. This was done, mostly, because of the loss of life it caused, specifically in the Florida Panhandle and Georgia.

“This is the most terrifying eyewall I’ve ever been in” ~ Mark Robinson
Video ➥ https://twitter.com/i/status/1050100777534910464

[GordMay]

October 9

1651: English parliament passes Navigation Act.

1779: The Luddite riots begin, in Manchester, England, in reaction to machinery for spinning cotton.

1799: Sinking of British frigate HMS “Lutine”,off Dutch coast, with the loss of 240 men, and cargo worth £1,200,000.

1837: Steamboat "Home" sinks off Okracoke, North Carolina, killing 100.

1888: The Washington Monument, designed by Robert Mills, opens to the public.

1940: John Lennon born.

1941: US President Franklin D. Roosevelt approves an atomic program, that would become the ‘Manhattan Project’.
➥ https://www.onthisday.com/photos/man...project-begins

1963: Hurricane ‘Flora’ ravages Cuba & Haiti, kills 6,000.

1967: Revolutionary and guerilla leader Ernesto Rafael Guevara de la Serna [Che Guevara], age 39, is executed, by the Bolivian army. The U.S.-military-backed Bolivian forces captured Guevara, on October 8, while battling his band of guerillas in Bolivia, and executed him the following day. His hands were cut off, as proof of death, and his body was buried in an unmarked grave. In 1997, Guevara’s remains were found, and sent back to Cuba, where they were reburied.

1974: Oskar Schindler, credited with saving 1,200 Jews, during the Holocaust, dies, at the age of 66. A member of the Nazi Party, he ran an enamel-works factory, in Krakow, during the German occupation of Poland, employing workers from the nearby Jewish ghetto. When the ghetto was liquidated, he persuaded Nazi officials to allow the transfer of his workers to the Plaszow labor camp, thus saving them from deportation, to the death camps. In 1944, all Jews at Plaszow were sent to Auschwitz, but Schindler, at great risk to himself, bribed officials into allowing him to keep his workers, and set up a factory in a safer location, in occupied Czechoslovakia. By the war’s end, he was penniless, but he had saved 1,200 Jewish people. In 1962, he was declared a Righteous Gentile, by Yad Vashem, Israel’s official agency for remembering the Holocaust.

1990: Radio stations around world play "Imagine", honoring John Lennon, on what would have been his 50th birthday.

1992: A 13 kilogram (est.) meteorite lands in the driveway of Knapp residence, Peekskill, New York, destroying family's 1980 Chevrolet Malibu

1999: Last flight of the Lockheed SR-71 "Blackbird" stealth reconnaissance aircraft.
➥ https://www.historynet.com/sr-71-bla...eed-record.htm

2012: Women's rights and education activist, Malala Yousafzai is shot three times, by a Taliban gunman, as she tried to board her school bus, in Swat district, of northwest Pakistan. In 2014, she became the youngest-ever Nobel Prize recipient.

2019: Nobel Prize for Chemistry awarded to John B. Goodenough, M. Stanley Whittingham, and Akira Yoshino, for development of lithium-ion batteries. Goodenough is oldest-ever winner, at 97.

[GordMay]

'Delta' was the 26th storm, in the record-breaking 2020 Atlantic hurricane season

Hurricane 'Delta' formed from a tropical wave, around the Eastern Caribbean, on Oct. 1, 2020. By the time Delta formed, it was the 26th tropical storm, 25th named storm, 10th hurricane, and third major hurricane, of the season.

On Oct. 5, the tropical wave was designated Tropical Depression 26, and then Tropical Storm Delta.

By Oct. 6, Delta strengthened into a Category 4 hurricane, making it one of the fastest intensifications, in the Atlantic Ocean.

Delta first made landfall in Puerto Morelos, Mexico, as a Category 2 hurricane. The hurricane brought the town 165 km/h [89 knot] winds. It continued to weaken, as it moved inland, and was downgraded to a Category 1 hurricane, as it emerged into the Gulf of Mexico.

On Oct. 8, Delta restrengthened, intensifying into a Category 3 storm. The next day, the storm made landfall near Creole, Louisiana, packing 155 km/h [84 Kt] wind speeds. The storm turned into a remnant low, after Oct. 10, and dissipated by Oct. 12.

In Mexico, Delta damaged trees, causing over 266,000 customers to lose power. Two deaths were reported, in association with the hurricane. Overall in Mexico, Delta caused around US$186 million in damages.

Within the United States, Delta predominantly impacted Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and the Carolinas. Delta caused widespread flooding, power outages, and structural damage.

By the time Delta dissipated, it caused US$3.09 billion in damages, across Mexico, the U.S., and the Caribbean.

[GordMay]

October 10

0732: At Tours, France, Charles Martel kills Abd el-Rahman, and halts the Muslim invasion of Europe.

1731: Henry Cavendish, English physicist who measured the density and mass of the Earth, was born.

1789: In Versailles France, Joseph Guillotin says the most humane way of carrying out a death sentence, is decapitation, by a single blow of a blade.

1845: The United States Naval Academy opens, in Annapolis, Maryland, with 50 midshipmen students, and seven professors.

1846: English astronomer William Lassell discovered Triton, the largest satellite of the planet Neptune.

1877: The U.S. Army holds a West Point funeral, with full military honors, for Lieutenant-Colonel George Armstrong Custer, who was killed, the previous year, in Montana, by Sioux and Cheyenne Indians at the Battle of the Little Big Horn.

1911: The Panama Canal officially joined the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific ocean, when the Gamboa dike was demolished, with charges of dynamite.

1944: 800 Romani children, including more than a hundred boys between 9 and 14 years old, are systematically murdered, at concentration camps in Auschwitz II, Birkenau. Approximately 1.5 million Gypsies were murdered, by the Nazis.

1949: Wang Wanxing, Chinese rights advocate; prisoner for 13 years in detention centers and psychiatric institutions (Ankang), was born. He is the only person, thus far, to be released from these institutions, and allowed to live in a Western country.

1957: Part of the radioactive core at pile 1, at Windscale Nuclear Plant, in West Cumbria, used to make to make weapons-grade plutonium, was on fire, and as there had never been a similar experience, it was a best guess as to how to distinguish the fire. A combination of water, pumped in to the reactor, and turning off the air supply to the reactor, worked. The fire caused the release of substantial amounts of radioactive contamination, into the surrounding area, and the event, known as the Windscale fire, was the world's worst reactor accident, until the Three Mile Island accident in 1979.

1967: Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies is signed by the United States and the Soviet Union.

1970: The Quebec Provincial Minister of Labour, Pierre Laporte, is kidnapped by Quebec Liberation Front [FLQ], a militant separatist group, terrorists. The Canadian Prime Minister, Pierre Trudeau, believing the situation to be out of control, agrees to send troops to the French Canadian province, to help maintain order, and proclaiming the ‘War Powers Act’, under which the FLQ was banned, some civil liberties were suspended, and thousands of troops were sent. In a series of raids, 400 Quebec separatists are taken into custody, and held without charges.

1973: Vice President Spiro T. Agnew resigned from office, and pleaded no contest to the charge of failing to report $29,500 in income [in exchange for the dropping of charges of political corruption], while governor of Maryland. He was subsequently fined $10,000, sentenced to three years probation, and disbarred, by the Maryland court of appeals.

1985: The hijacking of the Italian cruise ship “Achille Lauro” reaches a dramatic climax, when U.S. Navy F-14 fighters intercept an Egyptian airliner, attempting to fly the Palestinian hijackers to freedom, and force the jet to land, at a NATO base in Sigonella, Sicily. American and Italian troops surrounded the plane, and the terrorists were taken into Italian custody.

1986: An earthquake, measuring 7.5 on the Richter Scale, strikes San Salvador, the capital city of El Salvador, killing an estimated 1,500 people.

2002: The US House of Representatives has voted to authorize President George W Bush to, unilaterally, declare war against Iraq. This allows the US to use force against Iraq, in a manner "necessary and appropriate" to protect US national security, and enforce UN resolutions.

2011: ‘Megavirus chilensis’, the largest virus yet to be discovered, was found off the coast of Chile. The newly found virus is ten to twenty times wider than an average virus, and is thought to infect small organisms in the sea, like amoebas.

[GordMay]

October 1780:

The Great Hurricane of 1780 is known by a lot of monikers, including the “1780 Disaster”.

The storm is still the deadliest Atlantic hurricane on record.
Between Oct. 10-16, 1780, approximately 22,00 people died, across the Lesser Antilles.

The official Atlantic hurricane database begins in 1851, so the exact details, of the hurricane's strength, are unknown.

A boat first spotted the storm, in the eastern Caribbean Sea.
On Oct. 9, the hurricane made landfall on Barbados, likely packing wind speeds as high as 320 km/h [173 Knot, 199 MPH].

On Oct. 11, the hurricane made landfall on Saint Lucia and Martinique. The next day, the storm hit Guadeloupe. The hurricane also made landfall in the present-day Dominican Republic.

The gale of wind, which happened on the 12th Oct., was the most severe [perhaps] ever known.

Barbados suffered amazingly, 6,500 souls perished.
Tobago laid waste, Grenades, St. Vincent, St. Lucia, Martinique, suffered more than any person can conceive," wrote the attorney general of Guadeloupe.
In Barbados, around 4,500 people died. Reports say that the hurricane's winds were "so deafening that people could not hear their own voices."
In Martinique, the storm produced a 7.6-metre storm surge, destroying houses and causing 9,000 deaths.
The storm caused widespread destruction in Saint Lucia, destroying most houses in Port Castries, and causing around 6,000 deaths.

The second most deadly Atlantic storm is the 1998 Hurricane 'Mitch', which killed more than 11,374 people.

[GordMay]

October 11

1138: Earthquake in Aleppo, Syria, kills an estimated 230,000.

1634: The Burchardi flood [‘the second Grote Mandrenke’] kills about 15,000, in North Friesland, Denmark, and Germany.

1737: Earthquake reported to have killed 300,000, and destroyed half of Calcutta, in India. Now thought to have been an exaggerated account of a hurricane, which claimed 3,000 of the city's estimated 20,000 residents.

1793: The death toll, from a Yellow Fever epidemic [American plague, as it was known at the time], in Philadelphia, hits 100. By the time it ended, 5,000 people were dead.

1795: In gratitude for putting down a rebellion in the streets of Paris, France's National Convention appoints Napoleon Bonaparte second in command of the Army of the Interior.

1862: The Confederate Congress, in Richmond, passes a draft law, allowing anyone owning 20 or more slaves to be exempt from military service. This law confirms many southerners opinion that they are in a 'rich man's war, and a poor man's fight.'

1899: The South African Boer War begins, between the British Empire, and the Boers [Afrikaners] of the Transvaal [the South African Republic], and Orange Free State.

1939: Albert Einstein informs FDR of the possibilities of an atomic bomb.

1954: The Vietnam Doc Lap Dong Minh (Vietnam Independence League), or Viet Minh, under Ho Chi Minh, formally take over Hanoi ,and control of North Vietnam.

1958: The 2nd unmanned, U.S. deep-space probe, “Pioneer 1", was launched towards lunar orbit, reaches 113,810 km, falls back.

1968: Apollo 7, the first manned Apollo mission, is launched, with astronauts Walter M. Schirra, Jr.; Donn F. Eisele; and Walter Cunningham aboard. Made 163 orbits, in 260 hours.

1972: Race riot breaks out, aboard carrier USS “Kitty Hawk”, off Vietnam, during ‘Operation Linebacker’.

1977: American inventor, Gordon Gould issued his first US patent, for a optically pumped laser amplifier, 20 years after first claiming to have invented the laser.

1979: Allan McLeod Cormack & Godfrey Newbold Hounsfield win Nobel Prize for medicine, for developing CAT scan.

1980: Cosmonauts Popov & Ryumin set space endurance record, of 184 days.

1982: English ship “Mary Rose”, which sank during an engagement with France, in 1545, raised at Portsmouth, England.

1986: US President Ronald Reagan, and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. open talks at a summit, in Reykjavik, Iceland; and together, they forged an unlikely relationship. to de-escalate the Cold War. The talks collapsed at the last minute, but the significant progress, nonetheless, led to the signing of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, in 1987,

1991: Televangelist Jimmy Swaggart seen soliciting a prostitute.

1995: John Bobbitt has plastic surgery, to increase his penis 3 inches.

2000: NASA launches its 100th Space Shuttle mission, “STS-92". [92 is 100Th?]

2001: The Polaroid Corporation, which had provided photo prints, in minutes with its ‘instant cameras’, since 1947, files for bankruptcy.

2002: Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, wins the Nobel Peace Prize, “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.”

2020: British Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton wins Eifel Grand Prix, at Germany's Nürburgring, to equal Michael Schumacher's record of 91 Formula 1 victories.