Friday, October 7

This Day In History

• 1765   The Stamp Act Congress convened in New York to draw up colonial grievances against England.
  
• 1777   The second Battle of Saratoga began during the American Revolution.
  
• 1849   Author Edgar Allan Poe died in Baltimore at age 40.
  
• 1868   Cornell University was inaugurated in Ithaca, N.Y.
  
• 1916   Georgia Tech’s Yellow Jackets beat helpless Cumberland College 222-0! Coach John Heisman (of Heisman Trophy fame) led the Golden Tornado, as his Georgia Tech team was nicknamed, into the history books. They carried the ball for 978 yards and never once threw a pass!
  
• 1949   The Republic of East Germany was formed.
  
• 1954   Marian Anderson became the first black singer hired by the Metropolitan Opera in New York
  
• 1959   A U.S. House subcommittee began investigations of allegedly rigged TV quiz shows.
  
• 1963   President John F. Kennedy signed the documents of ratification for a nuclear test ban treaty with Britain and the Soviet Union.
  
• 1968   The Motion Picture Association of America adopted its film-rating system.
  
• 1981   Egypt's parliament named Vice President Hosni Mubarak to succeed the assassinated Anwar Sadat.
  
• 1982   The musical ''Cats'' opened on Broadway, beginning its record run of 7,485 performances.
  
• 1989   Hungary's Communist Party renounced Marxism in favor of democratic socialism during a party congress in Budapest.
  
• 1998   Matthew Shepard, a gay student at the University of Wyoming, was beaten, robbed and left tied to a wooden fence post outside Laramie, Wyo.; he died five days later.
  
• 1999   American Home Products Corp. agreed to pay up to $4.83 billion to settle claims that the fen-phen diet drug combination caused dangerous heart valve problems.
  
• 2000   Vojislav Kostunica took the oath of office as Yugoslavia's first popularly elected president.
  
• 2001   The United States and Britain launched air strikes against Taliban positions and Osama bin Laden's training camps in Afghanistan; bin Laden praised God for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in a videotaped statement aired on the Arabic satellite station Al-Jazeera.
  
• 2002   The Washington-area sniper struck again, shooting and critically wounding a 13-year-old boy as his aunt dropped him off at school in Bowie, Md.
  

Happy Birthday To

• 1849   James Whitcomb Riley (poet: When the Frost is on the Punkin’, Little Orphant Annie; died July 22, 1916)
  
• 1888   Henry Wallace (33rd Vice President of U.S. [1941-1945]; died Nov 18, 1965)
  
• 1905   Andy Devine (Jeremiah Schwartz) (actor: The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok, Flipper, Andy’s Gang, Whale of a Tale, Myra Breckinridge, How the West was Won, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The Red Badge of Courage, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves; died Feb 18, 1977)
  
• 1931   Desmond Tutu (Nobel Peace Prize-winner [1984]: Archbishop: 1st black Anglican bishop of Johannesburg, S. Africa)
  
• 1943   Oliver North (U.S. military: Marine Corps Lt. Col.: center of Iran-contra Affair; radio/TV personality)
  
• 1951   John Cougar Mellencamp (singer)