Today in history

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September 18

1758 James Abercromby is replaced as supreme commander of British forces after his defeat by French commander the Marquis of Montcalm at Fort Ticonderoga during the French and Indian War.

1759 Quebec surrenders to the British after a battle which sees the deaths of both James Wolfe and Louis Montcalm, the British and French commanders.

1793 George Washington lays the foundation stone for the U.S. Capitol.

1830 Tom Thumb, the first locomotive built in the United States, loses a nine-mile race in Maryland to a horse.

1850 Congress passes the second Fugitive Slave Bill into law (the first was enacted in 1793), requiring the return of escaped slaves to their owners.

1862 After waiting all day for a Union attack which never came at Antietam, Confederate General Robert E. Lee begins a retreat out of Maryland and back to Virginia.

1863 Union cavalry troops clash with a group of Confederates at Chickamauga Creek.

1874 The Nebraska Relief and Aid Society is formed to help farmers whose crops were destroyed by grasshoppers swarming throughout the American West.

1911 Russian Premier Piotr Stolypin dies four days after being shot at the Kiev opera house by socialist lawyer Dimitri Bogroff.

1914 The Irish Home Rule Bill becomes law, but is delayed until after World War I.

1929 Charles Lindbergh takes off on a 10,000 mile air tour of South America.

1934 The League of Nations admits the Soviet Union.

1939 A German U-boat sinks the British aircraft carrier Courageous, killing 500 people.

1948 Margaret Chase Smith becomes the first woman elected to the Senate without completing another senator's term when she defeats Democratic opponent Adrian Scolten. Smith is also the only woman to be elected to and serve in both houses of Congress.

1960 Two thousand cheer Castro's arrival in New York for the United Nations session.

1964 U.S. destroyers fire on hostile targets in Vietnam.

1980 Cosmonaut Arnoldo Tamayo, a Cuban, becomes the first black to be sent on a mission in space.

[dlbpharmd]

September 19

1356 In a landmark battle of the Hundred Years' War, English Prince Edward defeats the French at Poitiers.

1544 Francis, the king of France, and Charles V of Austria sign a peace treaty in Crespy, France, ending a 20-year war.

1692 Giles Corey is pressed to death for standing mute and refusing to answer charges of witchcraft brought against him. He is the only person in America to have suffered this punishment.

1777 American forces under Gen. Horatio Gates meet British troops led by Gen. John Burgoyne at Saratoga Springs, NY.

1783 The first hot-air balloon is sent aloft in Versailles, France with animal passengers including a sheep, rooster and a duck.

1788 Charles de Barentin becomes lord chancellor of France.

1841 The first railway to span a frontier is completed between Stousbourg and Basle, in Europe.

1863 In Georgia, the two-day Battle of Chickamauga begins as Union troops under George Thomas clash with Confederates under Nathan Bedford Forrest.

1893 New Zealand becomes the first nation to grant women the right to vote.

1900 President Loubet of France pardons Jewish army captain Alfred Dreyfus, twice court-martialed and wrongly convicted of spying for Germany.

1918 American troops of the Allied North Russia Expeditionary Force receive their baptism of fire near the town of Seltso against Soviet forces.

1948 Moscow announces it will withdrawal soldiers from Korea by the end of the year.

1955 Argentina's President Juan Peron is overthrown by rebels.

1957 First underground nuclear test is takes place in Nevada.

1985 An earthquake kills thousands in Mexico City.

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September 20

480 BC Themistocles and his Greek fleet win one of history's first decisive naval victories over Xerxes' Persian force off Salamis.

1378 The election of Robert of Geneva as anti-pope by discontented cardinals creates a great schism in the Catholic church.

1519 Ferdinand Magellan embarks from Spain on a voyage to circumnavigate the world.

1561 Queen Elizabeth of England signs a treaty at Hamptan Court with French Huguenot leader Louis de Bourbon, the Prince of Conde. The English will occupy Le Harve in return for aiding Bourbon against the Catholics of France.

1565 Pedro Menendez of Spain wipes out the French at Fort Caroline, in Florida.

1604 After a two-year siege, the Spanish retake Ostend, the Netherlands, from the Dutch.

1784 Packet and Daily, the first daily publication in America, appears on the streets.

1806 Explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark pass the French village of La Charette, the first white settlement they have seen in more than two years.

1830 The National Negro Convention convenes in Philadelphia with the purpose of abolishing slavery.

1850 The slave trade is abolished in the District of Columbia.

1853 The Allies defeat the Russians at the battle of Alma on the Crimean Peninsula.

1863 Union troops under George Thomas prevent the Union defeat at Chickamauga from becoming a rout, earning him the nickname "the Rock of Chickamauga."

1934 Bruno Hauptmann arrested for the kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby.

1952 Scientists confirm that DNA holds hereditary data.

1965 Seven U.S. planes are downed in one day over Vietnam.

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September 21

454 In Italy, Aetius, the supreme army commander, is murdered in Ravenna by Valentinian III, the emperor of the West.

1327 Edward II of England is murdered by order of his wife.

1520 Suleiman (the Magnificent), son of Selim, becomes Ottoman sultan in Constantinople.

1589 The Duke of Mayenne of France is defeated by Henry IV at the Battle of Arques.

1673 James Needham returns to Virginia after exploring the land to the west, which would become Tennessee.

1745 A Scottish Jacobite army commanded by Lord George Murray routs the Royalist army of General Sir John Cope at Prestonpans.

1863 Union troops defeated at Chickamauga seek refuge in Chattanooga, Tennessee, which is then besieged by Confederate troops.

1904 Exiled Nez Perce leader Chief Joseph dies of a "broken heart".

1915 Stonehenge is sold by auction for 6,600 pounds sterling ($11,500) to a Mr. Chubb, who buys it as a present for his wife. He presents it to the British nation three years later.

1929 Fighting between China and the Soviet Union breaks out along the Manchurian border.

1936 The German army holds its largest maneuvers since 1914.

1937 The women's airspeed record is set at 292 mph by American pilot Jacqueline Cochran.

1941 The German Army cuts off the Crimean Peninsula from the rest of the Soviet Union.

1942 British forces attack the Japanese in Burma.

1944 U.S. troops of the 7th Army, invading Southern France, cross the Meuse River.

1978 Two Soviet cosmonauts set a space endurance record after 96 days in space.

1989 General Colin Powell is confirmed by the U.S. Senate as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

[Damelon]

Sept. 21, 1937: The Hobbit Opens Up a Brave New World

1937: Before there is the Lord of the Rings trilogy, there is The Hobbit. J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy novel is first published on this date.
Often thought of as the precursor to the Rings trilogy, The Hobbit was Tolkien's first book. It tells the tale of a simple hobbit cajoled by a wizard into joining the quest to recover stolen treasure.
Tolkien enjoys a lofty reputation among devotees of fantasy fiction, but it was a long time coming. Fantasy was not a popular fiction genre at the time he wrote The Hobbit, and the work was dismissed by most critics as fanciful juvenilia. In fact, Tolkien said later that the story evolved from tales he spun for his own children.
Nevertheless, the novel was a commercial success for Tolkien, although he would continue laboring in the shadow of his closest literary contemporary, C.S. Lewis.
The Hobbit was also not written with the modern Wired reader in mind, since the story's characters and the world they inhabit are decidedly low-tech. This mirrored Tolkien's own ambivalence toward modern technology:
"I am in fact a hobbit (in all but size). I like gardens, trees and unmechanized farmlands; I smoke a pipe, and like good plain food (unrefrigerated)...."

[dlbpharmd]

September 22

1656 The General Provincial Court in session at Patuxent, Maryland, impanels the first all-woman jury in the Colonies to hear evidence against Judith Catchpole, who is accused of murdering her child. The jury acquits her after hearing her defense of never having been pregnant.

1711 The Tuscarora Indian War begins with a massacre of settlers in North Carolina, following white encroachment that included the enslaving of Indian children.

1776 American Captain Nathan Hale is hanged as a spy by the British in New York City; his last words are reputed to have been, "I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country."

1789 Russian forces under Aleksandr Suvorov drive the Turkish army under Yusuf Pasha from the Rymnik River, upsetting the Turkish invasion of Russia.

1862 President Lincoln issues a proclamation calling for all slaves within the rebel states to be freed on January 1, a political move that helps keep the British from intervening on the side of the South.

1864 Union General Philip Sheridan defeats Confederate General Jubal Early's troops at the Battle of Fisher's Hill in Virginia.

1869 The Cincinnati Red Stockings, the first professional baseball team, arrive in San Francisco after a rollicking, barnstorming tour of the West.

1893 Bicycle makers Charles and Frank Duryea show off the first American automobile produced for sale to the public by taking it on a maiden run through the streets of Springfield, Massachusetts.

1906 Race riots in Atlanta, Georgia leave 21 people dead.

1914 The German cruiser Emden shells Madras, India, destroying 346,000 gallons of fuel and killing only five civilians.

1915 Xavier University, the first African-American Catholic college, opens in New Orleans, Louisiana.

1918 General Allenby leads the British army against the Turks, taking Haifa and Nazareth, Palestine.

1919 President Woodrow Wilson abandons his national tour to support the League of Nations when he suffers a case of nervous exhaustion.

1929 Communist and Nazi factions clash in Berlin.

1945 President Truman accepts U.S. Secretary of War Stimson's recommendation to designate the war World War II.

1947 A Douglas C-54 Skymaster makes the first automatic pilot flight over the Atlantic.

1961 President John Kennedy signs a congressional act establishing the Peace Corps.

1969 Willie Mays of the San Francisco Giants becomes the first baseball player since Babe Ruth to hit 600 home runs.

1970 President Richard M. Nixon signs a bill giving the District of Columbia representation in the U.S. Congress.

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September 23

1553 The Sadians defeat the last of their enemies and establish themselves as rulers of Morocco.

1561 Philip II of Spain gives orders to halt colonizing efforts in Florida.

1577 William of Orange makes his triumphant entry into Brussels, Belgium.

1667 Slaves in Virginia are banned from obtaining their freedom by converting to Christianity.

1739 The Austrians sign the Treaty of Belgrade after having lost the city to the Turks.

1779 The American navy under John Paul Jones, commanding from Bonhomme Richard, defeats and captures the British man-of-war Serapis.

1788 Louis XVI of France declares the Parliament restored.

1795 A national plebiscite approves the new French constitution, but so many voters sustain that the results are suspect.

1803 British Major General Sir Arthur Wellesley defeats the Marathas at Assaye, India.

1805 Lieutenant Zebulon Pike pays $2,000 to buy from the Sioux a 9-square-mile tract at the mouth of the Minnesota River that will be used to establish a military post, Fort Snelling.

1806 The Lewis and Clark Expedition arrives back in St. Louis just over three years after its departure.

1864 Confederate and Union forces clash at Mount Jackson, Front Royal and Woodstock in Virginia during the Valley campaign.

1911 The Second International Aviation Meet opens in New York.

1912 Mack Sennet's first "Keystone Cop" film debuts, Cohen Collects a Debt.

1945 The first American dies in Vietnam during the fall of Saigon to French forces.

1952 Richard Nixon responds to charges of a secret slush fund during his 'Checkers Speech.'

1954 East German police arrest 400 citizens as U.S. spies.

1967 Soviets sign a pact to send more aid to Hanoi.

1973 Juan Peron is re-elected president of Argentina after being overthrown in 1955.

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September 24

1788 After having been dissolved, the French Parliament of Paris reassembles in triumph.

1789 Congress passes the Judiciary Act of 1789, establishing a strong federal court system with the powers it needs to ensure the supremacy of the Constitution and federal law. The new Supreme Court will have a chief justice and five associate justices.

1842 Branwell Bronte, the brother of the Bronte sisters and the model for Hindley Earnshaw in Emily's novel Wuthering Heights, dies of tuberculosis. Emily and Anne die the same year.

1862 President Abraham Lincoln suspends the writ of habeas corpus against anyone suspected of being a Southern sympathizer.

1904 Sixty-two die and 120 are injured in head-on train collision in Tennessee.

1914 In the Alsace-Lorraine area between France and Germany, the German Army captures St. Mihiel.

1915 Bulgaria mobilizes troops on the Serbian border.

1929 The first flight using only instruments is completed by U.S. Army pilot James Doolittle.

1930 Noel Coward's comedy Private Lives opens in London starring Gertrude Lawrence and Coward himself.

1947 The World Women's Party meets for the first time since World War II.

1956 The first transatlantic telephone cable system begins operation.

1957 President Dwight D. Eisenhower sends federal troops into Little Rock, Arkansas, to protect nine black students entering its newly integrated high school.

1960 The Enterprise, the first nuclear powered aircraft carrier, is launched.

1962 The University of Mississippi agrees to admit James Meredith as the first black university student, sparking more rioting.

1969 The "Chicago Eight," charged with conspiracy and crossing state lines with the intent to incite a riot, go on trial for their part in the mayhem during the 1968 Democratic Party National Convention in the "Windy City."

1970 The Soviet Luna 16 lands, completing the first unmanned round trip to the moon.

1993 Sihanouk is reinstalled as king of Cambodia.

[Cheval]

1869 - "Black Friday" - Wall Street went into a panic and thousands of businessmen were finacially ruined after Jay Gould and James Fisk made an attempt to corner the gold market.

1976 - Patty Hearst was sentenced to 7 years in prison for her part in a 1974 San Francisco bank robbery that was carried out by the Symbionese Liberation Army.

1991 - Theodore Suess Geisel (AKA Dr. Suess) died in La Jolla, CA. He was 87 years old.

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September 25

1396 The last great Christian crusade, led jointly by John the Fearless of Nevers and King Sigismund of Hungary, ends in disaster at the hands of Sultan Bajazet I's Ottoman army at Nicopolis.

1598 In Sweden, King Sigismund is defeated at Stangebro by his Uncle Charles.

1775 British troops capture Ethan Allen, the hero of Ticonderoga, when he and a handful of Americans try to invade Canada.

1789 Congress proposes 12 new amendments to the Constitution.

1804 The 12th Amendment is ratified, changing the procedure of
choosing the president and vice-president.

1846 American General Zachary Taylor's forces capture Monterey, Mexico.

1909 The first National Aeronautic Show opens at Madison Square Garden.

1915 An allied offensive is launched in France against the German Army.

1918 Brazil declares war on Austria.

1937 German Chancellor Adolf Hitler meets with Italian Premier Benito Mussolini in Munich.

1938 President Franklin Roosevelt urges negotiations between Hitler and Czech President Benes over the Sudetenland.

1942 The War Labor Board orders equal pay for women in the United States.

1943 The Red Army retakes Smolensk from the Germans who are retreating to the Dnieper River in the Soviet Union.

1959 President Eisenhower and Soviet Premier Khrushchev begin Camp David talks.

1974 Scientists warn that continued use of aerosol sprays will cause ozone depletion, which will lead to an increased risk of skin cancer and global weather changes.

1981 Sandra Day O'Connor, the first female Supreme Court Justice, is sworn in.

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September 26

1580 Sir Francis Drake returns to Plymouth, England, aboard the Golden Hind, after a 33-month voyage to circumvent the globe.

1777 The British army launches a major offensive, capturing Philadelphia.

1786 France and Britain sign a trade agreement in London.

1820 The legendary frontiersman Daniel Boone dies quietly at the Defiance, Mo., home of his son Nathan, at age 85.

1826 The Persian cavalry is routed by the Russians at the Battle of Ganja in the Russian Caucasus.

1829 Scotland Yard, the official British criminal investigation organization, is formed.

1864 General Nathan Bedford Forrest and his men assault a Federal garrison near Pulaski, Tennessee.

1901 Leon Czolgosz, who murdered President William McKinley, is sentenced to death..

1913 The first boat is raised in the locks of the Panama Canal.

1914 The Federal Trade Commission is established to foster competition by preventing monopolies in business.

1918 German Ace Ernst Udet shoots down two Allied planes, bringing his total for the war up to 62.

1937 Bessie Smith, known as the 'Empress of the Blues,' dies in a car crash in Mississippi.

1940 During the London Blitz, the underground Cabinet War Room suffers a hit when a bomb explodes on the Clive Steps.

1941 The U.S. Army establishes the Military Police Corps.

1950 General Douglas MacArthur's American X Corps, fresh from the Inchon landing, links up with the U.S. Eighth Army after its breakout from the Pusan Perimeter.

1955 The New York Stock Exchange suffers a $44 million loss.

1960 Vice President Nixon and Senator John F. Kennedy participate in the first nationally televised debate between presidential candidates.

1961 Nineteen-year-old Bob Dylan makes his New York singing debut at Gerde's Folk City.

1967 Hanoi rejects a U.S. peace proposal.

1969 The Beatles last album, Abbey Road, is released.

1972 Richard M. Nixon meets with Emperor Hirohito in Anchorage, Alaska, the first-ever meeting of a U.S. President and a Japanese Monarch.

1977 Israel announces a cease-fire on Lebanese border.

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September 27

1540 The Society of Jesus, a religious order under Ignatius Loyola, is approved by the Pope.

1669 The island of Crete in the Mediterranean Sea falls to the Ottoman Turks after a 21-year siege.

1791 Jews in France are granted French citizenship.

1864 Confederate guerrilla Bloody Bill Anderson and his henchmen, including a teenage Jesse James, massacre 20 unarmed Union soldiers at Centralia, Missouri. The event becomes known as the Centralia Massacre.

1869 Wild Bill Hickok, sheriff of Hays City, Kan., shoots down Samuel Strawhim, a drunken teamster causing trouble.

1916 Constance of Greece declares war on Bulgaria.

1918 President Woodrow Wilson opens his fourth Liberty Loan campaign to support men and machines for World War I.

1920 Eight Chicago White Sox players are charged with fixing the 1919 World Series.

1939 Germany occupies Warsaw as Poland falls to Germany and the Soviet Union.

1942 Australian forces defeat the Japanese on New Guinea in the South Pacific.

1944 Thousands of British troops are killed as German forces rebuff their massive effort to capture the Arnhem Bridge across the Rhine River in Holland.

1950 U.S. Army and Marine troops liberate Seoul, South Korea.

1956 The U.S. Air Force Bell X-2, the world's fastest and highest-flying plane, crashes, killing the test pilot.

1964 The Warren Commission, investigating the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, issues its report, stating its conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald was the sole gunman.

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September 28

48 BC On landing in Egypt, Pompey is murdered on the orders of Ptolemy.

855 The Emperor Lothar dies in Gaul, and his kingdom is divided between his three sons.

1066 William, Duke of Normandy, soon to be known as William the Conqueror invades England.

1106 King Henry of England defeats his brother Robert at the Battle of Tinchebrai and reunites England and Normandy.

1238 James of Aragon retakes Valencia, Spain, from the Arabs.

1607 Samuel de Champlain and his colonists return to France from Port Royal Nova Scotia.

1794 The Anglo-Russian-Austrian Alliance of St. Petersburg, which is directed against France, is signed.

1864 Union General William Rosecrans blames his defeat at Chickamauga on two of his subordinate generals. They are later exonerated by a court of inquiry.

1874 Colonel Ronald Mackenzie raids a war camp of Comanche and Kiowa at the Battle of Palo Duro Canyon, Texas, slaughtering 2,000 of their horses.

1904 A woman is placed under arrest for smoking a cigarette on New York's Fifth Avenue.

1912 W.C. Handy's "Memphis Blues" is published.

1913 Race riots in Harriston, Mississippi, kill 10 people.

1924 Three U.S. Army aircraft arrive in Seattle, Washington after completing a 22 day round-the-world flight.

1959 Explorer VI, the U.S. satellite, takes the first video pictures of earth.

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September 29

1197 Emperor Henry VI dies in Messina, Sicily.

1399 Richard II of England is deposed. His cousin, Henry of Lancaster, declares himself king under the name Henry IV.

1493 Christopher Columbus leaves Cadiz, Spain, on his second voyage to the new world.

1513 Spanish explorer Vasco Nunez de Balboa discovers the Pacific Ocean.

1789 Congress votes to create a U.S. army.

1833 A civil war breaks out in Spain between Carlisists, who believe Don Carlos deserves the throne, and supporters of Queen Isabella.

1850 Mormon leader Brigham Young is named the first governor of the Utah Territory.

1864 Union troops capture the Confederate Fort Harrison, outside Petersburg, Virginia.

1879 Dissatisfied Ute Indians kill Agent Nathan Meeker and nine others in the "Meeker Massacre."

1932 A five-day work week is established for General Motors workers.

1939 Germany and the Soviet Union reach an agreement on the division of Poland.

1941 30,000 Jews are gunned down in Kiev when Henrich Himmler sends four strike squads to exterminate Soviet Jewish civilians and other "undesirables."

1943 Adolf Hitler's book Mein Kampf is published in the United States.

1950 General Douglas MacArthur officially returns Seoul, South Korea, to President Syngman Rhee.

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September 30

1399 Richard II is deposed.

1568 Eric XIV, king of Sweden, is deposed after showing signs of madness.

1630 John Billington, one of the original pilgrims who sailed to the New World on the Mayflower, becomes the first man executed in the English colonies. He is hanged for having shot another man during a quarrel.

1703 The French, at Hochstadt in the War of the Spanish Succession, suffer only 1,000 casualties to the 11,000 of their opponents, the Austrians of Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I.

1791 Mozart's opera The Magic Flute is performed for the first time in Vienna.

1846 The first anesthetized tooth extraction is performed by Dr. William Morton in Charleston, Massachusetts.

1864 Confederate troops fail to retake Fort Harrison from the Union forces during the siege of Petersburg.

1911 Italy declares war on Turkey over control of Tripoli.

1918 Bulgaria pulls out of World War I.

1927 Babe Ruth hits his 60th homerun of the season off Tom Zachary in Yankee Stadium, New York City.

1935 George Gershwin's opera Porgy and Bess opens at the Colonial Theatre in Boston.

1938 Under German threats of war, Britain, France, Germany and Italy sign an accord permitting Germany to take control of Sudetenland--a region of Czechoslovakia inhabited by a German-speaking minority.

1939 The French Army is called back into France from its invasion of Germany. The attack, code named Operation Saar, only penetrated five miles.

1943 The Women's Army Auxiliary Corps becomes the Women's Army Corps, a regular contingent of the U.S. Army with the same status as other army service corps.

1949 The Berlin Airlift is officially halted after 277,264 flights.

1950 U.N. forces cross the 38th parallel separating North and South Korea as they pursue the retreating North Korean Army.

1954 The first atomic-powered submarine, the Nautilus, is commissioned in Groton, Connecticut.

1954 NATO nations agree to arm and admit West Germany.

1955 Actor and teen idol James Dean is killed in a car crash while driving his Porsche on his way to enter it into a race in Salinas, California.

1960 Fifteen African nations are admitted to the United Nations.

1962 U.S. Marshals escort James H. Meredith into the University of Mississippi; two die in the mob violence that follows.

1965 President Lyndon Johnson signs legislation that establishes the National Foundation for the Arts and the Humanities.

[dlbpharmd]

October 1

331BC Alexander the Great decisively shatters King Darius III's Persian army at Gaugamela (Arbela), in a tactical masterstroke that leaves him master of the Persian Empire.

1273 Rudolf of Hapsburg is elected emperor in Germany.

1588 The feeble Sultan Mohammed Shah of Persia, hands over power to his 17-year old son Abbas.

1791 In Paris, the National Legislative Assembly holds its first meeting.

1839 The British government decides to send a punitive naval expedition to China.

1847 Maria Mitchell, American astronomer, discovers a comet and is elected the same day to the American Academy of Arts---the first woman to be so honored. The King of Denmark awarded her a gold medal for her discovery.

1856 The first installment of Gustav Flaubert's novel Madame Bovary appears in the Revue de Paris after the publisher refuses to print a passage in which the character Emma has a tryst in the back seat of a carriage.

1864 The Condor, a British blockade-runner, is grounded near Fort Fisher, North Carolina.

1878 General Lew Wallace is sworn in as governor of New Mexico Territory. He went on to deal with the Lincoln County War, Billy the Kid and write Ben-Hur. His Civil War heroics earned him the moniker Savior of Cincinnati.

1890 Yosemite National Park is dedicated in California.

1908 The Ford Model T, the first car for millions of Americans, hits the market. Over 15 million Model Ts are eventually sold, all of them black.
1942 The German Army grinds to a complete halt within the city of Stalingrad.

1943 British troops in Italy enter Naples and occupy Foggia airfield.

1944 The U.S. First Army begins the siege Aachen, Germany.

1946 Twelve Nazi war criminals are sentenced to be hanged at Nuremberg trials---Karl Donitz, Hermann Goring, Alfred Jodl, Hans Frank, Wilhelm Frick, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Wilhelm Keitel, Joachin von Ribbentrop, Fritz Saukel, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Julius Streicher, and Alfred Rosenberg.

1974 Five Nixon aides--Kenneth Parkinson, Robert Mardian, Nixon's Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, and U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell--go on trial for conspiring to hinder the Watergate investigation.

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October 2

1263 At Largs, King Alexander III of Scotland repels an amphibious invasion by King Haakon IV of Norway.

1535 Having landed in Quebec a month ago, Jacques Cartier reaches a town, which he names Montreal.

1862 An Army under Union General Joseph Hooker arrives in Bridgeport, Alabama to support the Union forces at Chattanooga. Chattanooga's Lookout Mountain provides a dramatic setting for the Civil War's battle above the clouds.

1870 The papal states vote in favor of union with Italy. The capital is moved from Florence to Rome.

1871 Morman leader Brigham Young, 70, is arrested for polygamy. He was later convicted, but the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the conviction.

1879 A dual alliance is formed between Austria and Germany, in which the two countries agree to come to the other's aid in the event of aggression.

1909 Orville Wright sets an altitude record, flying at 1,600 feet. This exceeded Hubert Latham's previous record of 508 feet.

1931 Aerial circus star Clyde Pangborn and playboy Hugh Herndon, Jr. set off to complete the first nonstop flight across the Pacific Ocean from Misawa City, Japan.

1941 The German army launches Operation Typhoon, the drive towards Moscow.

1950 The comic strip Peanuts, by Charles M. Schultz, makes its first appearance in newspapers.

1964 Scientists announce findings that smoking can cause cancer.

1967 Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American Supreme Court justice, is sworn in. Marshall had previously been the solicitor general, the head of the legal staff of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and a leading American civil rights lawyer.

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October 3

1739 Russia signs a treaty with the Turks, ending a three-year conflict between the two countries.

1776 Congress borrows five million dollars to halt the rapid depreciation of paper money in the colonies.

1862 At the Battle of Corinth, in Mississippi, a Union army defeats the Confederates.

1873 Captain Jack and three other Modoc Indians are hanged in Oregon for the murder of General Edward Canby.

1876 John L. Routt, the Colorado Territory governor, is elected the first state governor of Colorado in the Centennial year of the U.S.

1906 The first conference on wireless telegraphy in Berlin adopts SOS as warning signal.

1929 The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes officially changes its name to Yugoslavia.

1931 The comic strip Dick Tracy first appears in the New York News.

1940 U.S. Army adopts airborne, or parachute, soldiers. Airborne troops were later used in World War II for landing troops in combat and infiltrating agents into enemy territory.

1941 The Maltese Falson, starring Humphrey Bogart as detective Sam Spade, opens.

1942 Germany conducts the first successful test flight of a V-2 missile, which flies perfectly over a 118-mile course.

1944 German troops evacuate Athens, Greece.

1951 A "shot is heard around the world" when New York Giants outfielder Bobby Thomson hits a home run in the bottom of the ninth inning, beating the Brooklyn Dodgers to win the National League pennant.

1955 The children's television program Captain Kangaroo debuts.

1989 Art Shell becomes the first African American to coach a professional football team, the Los Angeles Raiders.

1990 After 40 years of division, East and West Germany are reunited as one nation.

[Damelon]

October 3: Shemini Atzeret begins at sunset (Judaism, 2007); National Foundation Day in South Korea; German Unity Day.

1283 – Dafydd ap Gruffydd the Prince of Wales, the last native ruler of Wales to resist English domination, was executed by drawing and quartering.
1918 – World War I: Following his armed forces' defeat to the Allied Powers, Tsar Ferdinand I of Bulgaria abdicated in favor of his son Boris III.
1929 – King Alexander I renamed the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes as the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and changed its subdivisions from the 33 oblasts to nine new banovinas.
1990 – German reunification (reunited country flag pictured): The five re-established German states (Bundesländer) of East Germany formally joined West Germany.
1993 – Soldiers from Malaysian, Pakistani and U.S. armed forces attempted to capture Somalian warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid in the Battle of Mogadishu.

[dlbpharmd]

October 4

1777 At Germantown, Pa., British General Sir William Howe repels George Washington's last attempt to retake Philadelphia, compelling Washington to spend the winter at Valley Forge.

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

1861 The Union ship USS South Carolina captures two Confederate blockade runners outside of New Orleans, La.

1874 Kiowa leader Satanta, known as "the Orator of the Plains," surrenders in Darlington, Texas. He is later sent to the state penitentiary, where he commits suicide October 11, 1878.

1905 Orville Wright pilots the first flight longer than 30 minutes. The flight lasted 33 minutes, 17 seconds and covered 21 miles.

1914 The first German Zeppelin raids London.

1957 Sputnik 1, the first man-made satellite, is launched, beginning the "space race." The satellite, built by Valentin Glushko, weighed 184 pounds and was launched by a converted Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM). Sputnik orbited the earth every 96 minutes at a maximum height of 584 miles. In 1958, it reentered the earth's atmosphere and burned up.

1968 Cambodia admits that the Viet Cong use their country for sanctuary.

1972 Judge John Sirca imposes a gag order on the Watergate break-in case.

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.