Sunday, October 9

This Day In History

• 1635   Religious dissident Roger Williams was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
  
• 1701   The Collegiate School of Connecticut   later Yale University   was chartered in New Haven.
  
• 1776   A group of Spanish missionaries settled in present-day San Francisco.
  
• 1855   The sewing machine motor was patented by Isaac Singer
  
• 1858   Mail service via stagecoach between San Francisco and St. Louis was started. It took 23 days, four hours for that first run.
  
• 1872   The first mail order catalog was delivered. It was only one page but it worked. It was sent out by Mr. Aaron Montgomery Ward of the famous Montgomery Ward catalog and department stores.
  
• 1888   The public was first admitted to the Washington Monument.
  
• 1930   Laura Ingalls became the first woman to fly across the United States as she completed a nine-stop journey from Roosevelt Field in New York to Glendale, Calif.
  
• 1936   The first generator at Boulder (later Hoover) Dam began transmitting electricity to Los Angeles.
  
• 1946   The Eugene O'Neill drama ''The Iceman Cometh'' opened at the Martin Beck Theater in New York.
  
• 1958   Pope Pius XII died, 19 years after he was elevated to the papacy. He was succeeded by Pope John XXIII.
  
• 1967   Guerrilla leader Che Guevara was executed in Bolivia while attempting to incite revolution.
  
• 1975   Soviet scientist Andrei Sakharov was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
  
• 1985   The hijackers of the Achille Lauro cruise liner surrendered after the ship arrived in Port Said, Egypt.
  
• 1990   David Souter was sworn in as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
  
• 2001   Letters postmarked in Trenton, N.J., that later tested positive for anthrax spores were mailed to Sens. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.
  
• 2002   A man was gunned down moments after filling his tank at a gas station near Manassas, Va., in the latest sniper shooting in the Washington D.C. area.
  

Happy Birthday To

• 1891   Otto Schnering (candy bar mogul: founded Curtiss Candy Co.: Kandy Kake, Baby Ruth, Butterfinger)
  
• 1940   John (Winston) Lennon (singer, songwriter: group: The Beatles)
  
• 1954   Scott Bakula (actor: Quantum Leap)