Tuesday, October 4

This Day In History

• 1777   George Washington's troops launched an assault on the British at Germantown, Penn., resulting in heavy American casualties.
  
• 1822   Rutherford B. Hayes, the 19th president of the United States, was born in Delaware, Ohio.
  
• 1854   Honest Abe Lincoln made his first great political speech while attending the Illinois State Fair in Springfield.
  
• 1895   Silent film comedian Buster Keaton was born in Piqua, Kan.
  
• 1895   The first U.S. Open golf tournament was held, at the Newport Country Club in Rhode Island.
  
• 1931   The comic strip ''Dick Tracy'' by Chester Gould made its debut.
  
• 1940   Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini conferred at Brenner Pass in the Alps, where the Nazi leader sought Italy's help in fighting the British.
  
• 1957   The first earth satellite was launched into space this day by the Soviet Union. The craft circled the earth every 95 minutes at almost 2,000 miles per hour. "Sputnik I" fell from the sky on January 4, 1958.
  
• 1958   The first trans-Atlantic passenger jetliner service was begun by British Overseas Airways Corp. with flights between London and New York.
  
• 1965   Pope Paul VI became the first reigning pontiff to travel to North America when he flew to New York and addressed the U.N. General Assembly.
  
• 1970   Rock singer Janis Joplin, 27, was found dead in her Hollywood hotel room.
  
• 1985   Islamic Jihad issued a statement saying it had killed American hostage William Buckley.
  
• 1990   German lawmakers met in the Reichstag in Berlin for the first meeting of reunified Germany's parliament.
  
• 1993   Dozens of cheering, dancing Somalis dragged the body of an American soldier through the streets of Mogadishu.
  
• 1997   Hundreds of thousands of men attended a Promise Keepers rally on the Mall in Washington, D.C., in one of the largest religious gatherings in U.S. history.
  
• 2001   Barry Bonds hit his 70th home run in a game against the Houston Astros to tie Mark McGwire's single-season record.
  
• 2001   NATO approved a U.S. request for military assistance in the anti-terror campaign.
  
• 2001   Authorities confirmed that a photo editor at the supermarket tabloid The Sun in Boca Raton, Fla., had contracted the inhaled form of anthrax; he died the following day.
  
• 2002   John Walker Lindh, the so-called ''American Taliban,'' received a 20-year sentence after a sobbing, halting plea for forgiveness before a federal judge in Alexandria, Va.
  
• 2002   Richard Reid pleaded guilty in a federal court in Boston to trying to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight with explosives hidden in his shoes.
  

Happy Birthday To

• 1822   Rutherford B. Hayes (19th U.S. President [1877-1881]; married to Lucy Webb [seven sons, one daughter]; nickname: Dark-Horse President; died Jan 17, 1893)
  
• 1861   Frederic Remington (artist: captured the American West on his canvases; died Dec 26, 1909)
  
• 1895   Buster (Joseph Frank) Keaton (VI) (actor: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Hollywood Clowns, Man in the Silk Hat, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, When Comedy was King, Sunset Boulevard, God’s Country, Doughboys, The Saphead; grandfather of actor Michael Keaton; died Feb 1, 1966)
  
• 1924   Charlton Heston (John Charlton Carter) (Academy Award-winning actor: Ben-Hur [1959]; In the Mouth of Madness, A Thousand Heroes, Tombstone, El Cid, Earthquake, The Ten Commandments, Planet of the Apes, Khartoum, Airport 1975, Midway, Omega Man, Antony & Cleopatra, True Lies; president: National Rifle Association [NRA])
  
• 1941   Lori Saunders (Hines) (actress: Petticoat Junction, Dusty’s Trail)
  
• 1946   Susan Sarandon (Tomaling) (Academy Award-winning actress)