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This Day In History | October 5th

On October 5, 1892, the Dalton Gang, notorious for its train robberies, was practically wiped out while attempting to rob a pair of banks in Coffeyville, Kansas.

In 1947, President Harry S. Truman delivered the first televised White House address as he spoke on the world food crisis.

1953, Earl Warren was sworn in as the 14th chief justice of the United States, succeeding Fred M. Vinson.

In 1958, racially-desegregated Clinton High School in Clinton, Tennessee, was nearly leveled by an early morning bombing.

In 1983, Solidarity founder Lech Walesa (lek vah-WEN’-sah) was named winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

In 1989, a jury in Charlotte, North Carolina, convicted former P-T-L evangelist Jim Bakker of using his television show to defraud followers. (Sentenced to 45 years in prison, Bakker was freed in December 1994 after serving 4 1/2 years.)

In 1994, 48 people were found dead in an apparent murder-suicide carried out simultaneously in two Swiss villages by members of a secret religious doomsday cult known as the Order of the Solar Temple.

In 2001, tabloid photo editor Robert Stevens died from inhaled anthrax, the first of a series of anthrax cases in Florida, New York, New Jersey and Washington.

In 2005, defying the White House, senators voted 90-9 to approve an amendment sponsored by Republican Sen. John McCain that would prohibit the use of “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” against anyone in U.S. government custody.

In 2011, Steve Jobs the Apple founder and former chief executive who’d invented and master-marketed ever sleeker gadgets that transformed everyday technology from the personal computer to the iPod and iPhone, died in Palo Alto, California at age 56.

In 2015, the United States, Japan and 10 other nations in Asia and the Americas reached agreement on the landmark Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal.

In 2017, Hollywood executive Harvey Weinstein announced that he was taking a leave of absence from his company after a New York Times article detailed decades of alleged sexual harassment against women.

In 2018, a jury in Chicago convicted white police officer Jason Van Dyke of second-degree murder in the 2014 shooting of Black teenager Laquan McDonald.

In 2020, President Donald Trump made a dramatic return to the White House after leaving the military hospital where he was receiving an unprecedented level of care for COVID-19.

In 2021, a former Facebook employee, data scientist Frances Haugen, told a Senate panel that the company knew that its platform spread misinformation and content that harmed children, but that it refused to make changes that could hurt its profits.

In 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the final papers to annex four regions of Ukraine while his military struggled to control the new territory.

This Day In History | October 4th

On October 4 1777, Gen. George Washington’s troops launched an assault on the British at Germantown, Pennsylvania, resulting in heavy American casualties.

In 1887, the International Herald Tribune had its beginnings as the Paris Herald, a European edition of the New York Herald.

In 1940, Germany’s Adolf Hitler and Italy’s Benito Mussolini conferred at Brenner Pass in the Alps.

In 1957, the Space Age began as the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, into orbit.

In 1965, Pope Paul VI became the first pope to visit the Western Hemisphere as he addressed the U.N. General Assembly.

In 1970, rock singer Janis Joplin was found dead in her Hollywood hotel room at age 27.

In 1990, for the first time in nearly six decades, German lawmakers met in the Reichstag for the first meeting of the nation’s reunified parliament.

In 1991, 26 nations, including the United States, signed the Madrid Protocol, which imposed a 50-year ban on oil exploration and mining in Antarctica.

In 2001, a Russian airliner flying from Israel to Siberia was accidentally downed by a Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile over the Black Sea, killing all 78 people aboard.

In 2002, “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh received a 20-year sentence after a sobbing plea for forgiveness before a federal judge in Alexandria, Virginia. (He was released from prison in May, 2019.) In a federal court in Boston, a laughing Richard Reid pleaded guilty to trying to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight with explosives in his shoes (the British citizen was later sentenced to life in prison).

In 2004, the SpaceShipOne rocket plane broke through Earth’s atmosphere to the edge of space for the second time in five days, capturing the $10 million Ansari X prize aimed at opening the final frontier to tourists.

In 2010, the Supreme Court began a new era with three women serving together for the first time as Elena Kagan took her place at the end of the bench.

In 2013, Vo Nguyen Giap, the military commander who’d led Vietnamese Communist forces against the French and then the Americans, died in Hanoi at age 102.

In 2017, President Donald Trump visited hospital bedsides and a police base in Las Vegas in the aftermath of the shooting rampage three nights earlier that left 58 people dead.

In 2020, infected and contagious, President Donald Trump briefly ventured out in an SUV from the hospital where he was being treated for COVID-19 to salute cheering supporters. Trump’s medical team reported that his blood oxygen level had dropped suddenly twice in recent days and that they gave him a steroid typically only recommended for the very sick.

In 2022, Elon Musk abandoned his legal battle to back out of buying Twitter and offered to go through with his original $44 billion bid for the social media platform.

This Day In History | October 3rd

On Oct. 3, 1941, Adolf Hitler declared in a speech in Berlin that Russia had been “broken” and would “never rise again.”

In 1944, during World War II, U.S. Army troops cracked the Siegfried Line north of Aachen, Germany.

In 1951, the New York Giants captured the National League pennant by a score of 5-4 as Bobby Thomson hit a three-run homer off Ralph Branca of the Brooklyn Dodgers in the “shot heard ’round the world.”

In 1961, “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” also starring Mary Tyler Moore, made its debut on CBS.

In 1970, the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) was established under the Department of Commerce.

In 1974, Frank Robinson was named major league baseball’s first Black manager as he was placed in charge of the Cleveland Indians.

In 1981, Irish nationalists at the Maze Prison near Belfast, Northern Ireland, ended seven months of hunger strikes that had claimed 10 lives.

In 1990, West Germany and East Germany ended 45 years of postwar division, declaring the creation of a reunified country.

In 1995, the jury in the O.J. Simpson murder trial in Los Angeles found the former football star not guilty of the 1994 slayings of his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ronald Goldman. (Simpson was later found liable for damages in a civil trial).

In 2001, the Senate approved an agreement normalizing trade between the United States and Vietnam.

In 2003, a tiger attacked magician Roy Horn of duo “Siegfried & Roy” during a performance in Las Vegas, leaving the superstar illusionist in critical condition on his 59th birthday.

In 2008, O.J. Simpson was found guilty of robbing two sports-memorabilia dealers at gunpoint in a Las Vegas hotel room. (Simpson was later sentenced to nine to 33 years in prison; he was granted parole in July 2017 and released from prison in October of that year.)

In 2011, an Italian appeals court freed Amanda Knox of Seattle after four years in prison, tossing murder convictions against Knox and an ex-boyfriend in the stabbing of their British roommate, Meredith Kercher.

This Day In History | October 2nd

In 1869, political and spiritual leader Mohandas K. Gandhi was born in Porbandar, India.

In 1919, President Woodrow Wilson suffered a serious stroke at the White House that left him paralyzed on his left side.

In 1941, during World War II, German armies launched an all-out drive against Moscow; Soviet forces succeeded in holding onto their capital.

In 1944, German troops crushed the two-month-old Warsaw Uprising, during which a quarter of a million people had been killed.

In 1959, Rod Serling’s “The Twilight Zone” made its debut on CBS-TV with the episode “Where Is Everybody?” starring Earl Holliman.

In 1967, Thurgood Marshall was sworn as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court as the court opened its new term.

In 1970, one of two chartered twin-engine planes flying the Wichita State University football team to Utah crashed into a mountain near Silver Plume, Colorado, killing 31 of the 40 people on board.

In 1984, Richard W. Miller became the first FBI agent to be arrested and charged with espionage. (Miller was tried three times; he was sentenced to 20 years in prison, but was released after nine years.)

In 1986, the Senate joined the House in voting to override President Reagan’s veto of stiff economic sanctions against South Africa.

In 2006, an armed milk truck driver took a group of girls hostage in an Amish schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, killing five of them and wounding five others before taking his own life.

In 2016, Colombians rejected a peace deal with leftist rebels by a razor-thin margin in a national referendum, scuttling years of painstaking negotiations and delivering a stunning setback to President Juan Manuel Santos. Hall of Fame broadcaster Vin Scully signed off for the last time, ending 67 years behind the mic for the Dodgers, as he called the team’s 7-1 loss to the Giants in San Francisco.

In 2019, House Democrats threatened to make White House defiance of a congressional request for testimony and documents potential grounds for an article of impeachment against President Donald Trump. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo acknowledged for the first time that he had been on the phone call in which Trump pressed Ukraine’s president to investigate Democrat Joe Biden.

In 2020, stricken by COVID-19, President Donald Trump was injected with an experimental drug combination at the White House before being flown to a military hospital, where he was given Remdesivir, an antiviral drug.

This Day in History | October 1st

On Oct. 1, 1908, Henry Ford introduced his Model T automobile to the market.

In 1910, the offices of the Los Angeles Times were destroyed by a bomb explosion and fire; 21 Times employees were killed.

In 1949, Mao Zedong proclaimed the People’s Republic of China during a ceremony in Beijing. Also in 1949, a 42-day strike by the United Steelworkers of America began over the issue of retirement benefits.

In 1955, the situation comedy “The Honeymooners,” starring Jackie Gleason, Art Carney, Audrey Meadows and Joyce Randolph, premiered on CBS-TV.

In 1957, the motto “In God We Trust” began appearing on U.S. paper currency.

In 1964, the Free Speech Movement began at the University of California, Berkeley.

In 1971, Walt Disney World opened near Orlando, Florida.

In 1987, eight people were killed when an earthquake measuring magnitude 5.9 struck the Los Angeles area.

In 1994, National Hockey League team owners began a 103-day lockout of their players.

In 1996, a federal grand jury indicted Unabomber suspect Theodore Kaczynski in the 1994 mail bomb slaying of advertising executive Thomas Mosser. (Kaczynski was later sentenced to four life terms plus 30 years.) Also in 1996, the federal minimum wage rose 50 cents to four dollars, 75 cents an hour.

In 2015, a gunman opened fire at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, killing nine people and then himself. Officials in Michigan declared a public health emergency over the city of Flint’s water in response to tests that showed children with elevated levels of lead.

In 2017, a gunman opened fire from a room at the Mandalay Bay casino hotel in Las Vegas on a crowd of 22,000 country music fans at a concert below, leaving 58 people dead and more than 800 injured in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history; the gunman, 64-year-old Stephen Craig Paddock, killed himself before officers arrived.

In 2019, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders was diagnosed with a heart attack at a Las Vegas hospital, where he’d been taken after experiencing chest discomfort at a campaign event; doctors inserted two stents to open up a blocked artery.

This Day in History | September 30th

On Sept. 30, 1777, the Continental Congress — forced to flee in the face of advancing British forces — moved to York, Pennsylvania.

In 1791, Mozart’s opera “The Magic Flute” premiered in Vienna, Austria.

In 1938, after co-signing the Munich Agreement allowing Nazi annexation of Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain said, “I believe it is peace for our time.”

In 1947, the World Series was broadcast on television for the first time; the New York Yankees defeated the Brooklyn Dodgers 5-3 in Game 1 (the Yankees went on to win the Series four games to three).

In 1949, the Berlin Airlift came to an end.

In 1954, the first nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Nautilus, was commissioned by the U.S. Navy.

In 1955, actor James Dean was killed at age 24 in a two-car collision near Cholame, California.

In 1960, “The Flintstones,” network television’s first animated prime-time series, debuted on ABC.

In 1962, James Meredith, a Black student, was escorted by federal marshals to the campus of the University of Mississippi, where he enrolled for classes the next day; Meredith’s presence sparked rioting that left two people dead.

In 1972, Pittsburgh Pirates star Roberto Clemente’s had his 3,000th, and final, hit, a double against Jon Matlack of the New York Mets at Three Rivers Stadium.

In 1986, the U.S. released accused Soviet spy Gennadiy Zakharov, one day after the Soviets released American journalist Nicholas Daniloff.

In 1988, Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev retired President Andrei A. Gromyko from the Politburo and fired other old-guard leaders in a Kremlin shake-up.

In 2001, under threat of U.S. military strikes, Afghanistan’s hardline Taliban rulers said explicitly for the first time that Osama bin Laden was still in the country and that they knew where his hideout was located.

In 2012, Mike Trout of the Los Angeles Angels became the first rookie in Major League history to hit 30 home runs and steal 40 bases in a season.

In 2013, Pope Francis announced during a meeting with cardinals that he would canonize two of his most influential predecessors, John Paul II and John XXIII.

In 2017, Monty Hall, the long-running host of TV’s “Let’s Make a Deal,” died of heart failure at his home in Beverly Hills at the age of 96.

In 2021, with only hours to spare, Congress passed and President Joe Biden signed legislation to avoid a partial federal shutdown and keep the government funded through Dec. 3.

In 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed treaties to illegally annex more occupied Ukrainian territory in a sharp escalation of his seven-month invasion.

This Day in History | September 14th

On Sept. 14, 1836, former Vice President Aaron Burr died in Staten Island, New York, at age 80.

In 1927, modern dance pioneer Isadora Duncan died in Nice France, when her scarf became entangled in a wheel of the sports car she was riding in.

In 1982, Princess Grace of Monaco, formerly film star Grace Kelly, died at age 52 of injuries from a car crash the day before.

In 2011, a government panel released a report saying that BP bore ultimate responsibility for the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

In 2020, in Northern California for a briefing on the wildfires that had killed dozens of people, President Donald Trump dismissed the scientific consensus that climate change was playing a central role in the fires; he renewed his unfounded claim that failure to rake forest floors was to blame.

This Day in History | September 14th

On Sept. 14, 1814, Francis Scott Key was inspired to write the poem “Defence of Fort McHenry” (later “The Star-Spangled Banner”) after witnessing the American flag flying over the Maryland fort following a night of British naval bombardment during the War of 1812.

In 1847, during the Mexican-American War, U.S. forces under Gen. Winfield Scott took control of Mexico City.

In 1861, the first naval engagement of the Civil War took place as the USS Colorado attacked and sank the Confederate private schooner Judah off Pensacola, Florida.

In 1867, the first volume of “Das Kapital” by Karl Marx was published in Hamburg, Germany.

In 1901, President William McKinley died in Buffalo, New York, of gunshot wounds inflicted by an assassin; Vice President Theodore Roosevelt succeeded him.

In 1927, modern dance pioneer Isadora Duncan died in Nice, France, when her scarf became entangled in a wheel of the sports car she was riding in.

In 1982, Princess Grace of Monaco, formerly film star Grace Kelly, died at age 52 of injuries from a car crash the day before; Lebanon’s president-elect, Bashir Gemayel (bah-SHEER’ jeh-MAY’-el), was killed by a bomb.

In 1991, the government of South Africa, the African National Congress and the Inkatha (in-KAH’-tah) Freedom Party signed a national peace pact.

In 1994, on the 34th day of a strike by players, Acting Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig announced the 1994 season was over.

In 2001, Americans packed churches and clogged public squares on a day of remembrance for the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks. President George W. Bush prayed with his Cabinet and attended services at Washington National Cathedral, then flew to New York, where he waded into the ruins of the World Trade Center and addressed rescue workers in a flag-waving, bullhorn-wielding show of resolve.

In 2009, death claimed “Dirty Dancing” star Patrick Swayze at 57; former White House press secretary Jody Powell at age 65; and comic character actor Henry Gibson at age 73.

In 2012, fury over an anti-Muslim film ridiculing the Prophet Muhammad spread across the Muslim world, with deadly clashes near Western embassies in Tunisia and Sudan, an American fast-food restaurant set ablaze in Lebanon, and international peacekeepers attacked in the Sinai.

In 2015, Rowan County, Kentucky, clerk Kim Davis returned to work for the first time since she was jailed for defying a federal court and announced that she would no longer block her deputies from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

In 2018, Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh denied an allegation of sexual misconduct from when he was in high school, saying, “I did not do this back in high school or at any time.” (Kavanaugh would later be confirmed by the Senate.)

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