This Day In History
- 1776 Members of the Continental Congress began attaching their signatures to the Declaration of Independence.
- 1492 Christopher Columbus set sail on the "Santa Maria". He was accompanied by a crew of 90 and two more ships, the "Nina" and the "Pinta". They left Spain half an hour before sunrise to begin the search for a water passage to Cathay. Instead, Columbus and company landed on October 12 at Guanahani, San Salvador Island in the Bahamas ... not India but the New World of the Americas.
- 1921 Opera singer Enrico Caruso died in Naples, Italy.
- 1921 A jury in Chicago acquitted several former members of the Chicago White Sox and two others of conspiring to defraud the public by throwing the World Series.
- 1933 The world-famous Mickey Mouse Watch was introduced. The timepiece sold for $2.75. A Mickey Mouse Clock sold for $1.50. New models now sell for $25 or more and the original watches and clocks are worth hundreds of dollars.
- 1934 German President Paul von Hindenburg died, paving the way for Adolf Hitler's complete takeover.
- 1939 Albert Einstein signed a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt urging creation of an atomic weapons research program.
- 1943 A Navy patrol torpedo boat, PT-109, commanded by Lt. John F. Kennedy, sank after being sheared in two by a Japanese destroyer off the Solomon Islands. Kennedy was credited with saving members of the crew.
- 1945 President Harry S. Truman, Soviet leader Josef Stalin and British Prime Minister Clement Attlee concluded the Potsdam conference.
- 1964 The Pentagon reported the first of two attacks on U.S. destroyers by North Vietnamese torpedo boats in the Gulf of Tonkin.
- 1979 Johnny Carson, the "Tonight Show" host, graced the cover of the Burbank, CA telephone directory. You know you’ve made it when you’re on the cover of the phone book.
- 1985 A Delta Air Lines jumbo jet crashed while attempting to land at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, killing 137 people.
- 1990 Iraq invaded Kuwait, seizing control of the oil-rich emirate.
- 1997 Author William S. Burroughs died at age 83.
- 2000 Republicans nominated Texas Gov. George W. Bush for president and Dick Cheney for vice president at the party's convention in Philadelphia.
- 2001 Muslim extremists seized 36 Filipinos on the southern island of Basilan and beheaded at least four.
- 2003 Liberian President Charles Taylor agreed to cede power.
- 1900 Ernie Pyle (journalist: Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter [1944]: reports of 1940 London bombings and war reports from Africa, Italy and France; managing editor: Washington Daily News; killed by sniper’s bullet on Ie Shima, small island off Okinawa, April 18, 1945)
- 1900 John T. Scopes (high school teacher: subject of famous 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial: convicted of teaching evolution in Tennessee school; died Oct 21, 1970)
- 1940 Martin Sheen (Ramon Estevez) (actor: The West Wing)
- 1941 Martha Stewart
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