Post by farmgal on Oct 1, 2012 20:40:07 GMT -5
October 3 is the 277th day of this leap year in the Gregorian calendar.
There are 89 days remaining until the end of the year.
Days until Election Day, Tuesday November 6, 2012: 34
Countdown until Obama leaves Office www.obamaclock.org/
U.S. Debt Clock: www.usdebtclock.org/
1692 - In Massachusetts, Increase Mather published his "Cases of Conscience Concerning Evil Spirits," which effectively brought an end to the Salem Witch Trials which had begun earlier this year.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Increase_Mather
1781 - French and Americans cut off British supplies at Gloucester. On this day in 1781, British Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Dundas of the 80th Foot, leading 1,000 British troops, encounters French Brigadier General Marquis de Choisy, leading French troops and a battalion of the Virginia militia totaling 800 men. The action takes place in Gloucester, Virginia, across the York River from British-occupied Yorktown, which was under Patriot siege.
On September 28, 17,000 combined Continental and French forces commanded jointly on land by General George Washington and French Lieutenant General Count de Rochambeau and at sea by French Admiral Count de Grasse had arrived to encircle British General Charles Cornwallis’ camp at Yorktown and began the siege. Prior to the encounter as Gloucester, Dundas and the British had enjoyed complete control of a strategic countryside position on the Gloucester side of the York River. The control of this area allowed the British to forage for nearly unlimited food and supplies, not only for themselves, but for Cornwallis and his British troops located across the river in Yorktown, which limited the success of the Patriot siege.
While returning to camp on the evening of October 3, 1781, Dundas and the British were engaged in battle by General de Choisy. Although the ensuing battle between British and Patriot-allied forces was relatively small, it was nonetheless important, because it cut off supplies to General Cornwallis and the British troops across the river in Yorktown. The capture of Gloucester, Virginia, was one of the final steps toward the eventual Patriot victory at Yorktown just 16 days later.
1789 - Washington proclaims the first national Thanksgiving Day on Nov 26. In 1789 the federal Congress authorized and requested President George Washington to proclaim a day of thanksgiving for the whole nation. Washington did this in a message setting aside November 26, 1789 as National Thanksgiving Day.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanksgiving_Day
1805 - The first U.S. pharmacopoeia prepared by a medical society in the U.S. was authorized by the members of the Massachusetts Medical Society of Boston, Mass. It became the 286-page The Pharmacopoeia of the Massachusetts Medical Society (1808), edited by Drs. James Jackson and John Collins Warren. The earliest pharmacopoeia produced in the U.S. was prepared for army use. It had 32 pages, with a type area on the page of 4.25 x 2.5 in. Published in 1778 in Philadelphia, Pa., its name - Pharmacopoeia simpliciorum et efficiorum, in usum noscomii militaris, etc. - reflected the use of Latin in the text. Dr. William Brown, Physician-General to the Hospitals of the U.S. wrote it for use in the U.S. Army Military Hospital at Lititz, Pa..
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Pharmacopeia
1875 - Hebrew Union College was founded in Cincinnati, Ohio under Jewish auspices. It was the first Jewish college in America to train men for the rabbinate.
huc.edu/
1895 - The Red Badge of Courage is published. On this day, The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane, is published in book form. The story of a young man's experience of battle was the first American novel to portray the Civil War from the ordinary soldier's point of view. The tale originally appeared as a serial published by a newspaper syndicate.
Crane, the youngest of 14 children, was born in 1871 and grew up in New York and New Jersey. His father died when Crane was 9, and the family settled in Asbury Park, New Jersey. He attended Syracuse University, where he played baseball for a year, but then left. He became a journalist in New York, taking short stints for various newspapers and living in near-poverty.
Immersed in the hand-to-mouth life of lower-class New York, Crane closely observed the characters around him, and in 1893, at age 23, he published Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, about a poor girl's decline into prostitution and suicide. Finding a publisher was difficult given the book's scandalous content, so Crane ultimately published it himself. The book was a critical success but failed to sell well. He turned his attention to more popular topics and began writing The Red Badge of Courage, which made him into an international celebrity at age 24.
The newspaper syndicate that serialized the novel sent him on assignment to cover the West and Mexico. In 1897, he went to Cuba to write about the insurrection against Spain. On the way there, he stayed at a dingy hotel where he met Cora Howard Taylor, who became his lifelong companion. In 1897, his boat to Cuba sank, and he barely survived. His short story "The Open Boat" is based on his experiences in a lifeboat with the captain and the cook. Crane later covered the war between Greece and Turkey, and finally settled in England, where he made friends with Joseph Conrad, H.G. Wells, and Henry James.
Crane contracted tuberculosis in his late 20s. Cora Howard Taylor nursed him while he wrote furiously in an attempt to pay off his debts. He exhausted himself and exacerbated his condition. He died in June 1900, at the age of 28.
1841 - An October gale, the worst of record for Nantucket, MA, caught the Cap Cod fishing fleet at sea. Forty ships were driven ashore on Cape Cod, and 57 men perished from the town of Truro alone. Heavy snow fell inland, with 18 inches near Middletown, CT. (David Ludlum)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Gale_of_1841
1863 - Lincoln designates last Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day. In the midst of the Civil War, President Lincoln proclaims a national Thanksgiving Day on the last Thursday in November. The proclamation reads, in part: "I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens...
1873 - U.S. Army hangs four Modoc Indians for the murder of a Civil War hero. On this day in 1873, the United States military hangs four Indians found guilty of murdering the Civil War hero, General Edward Canby, during the Modoc War in Oregon. Canby was the highest ranking military official--and the only general--ever killed by Indians.
As with most of the American military conflicts with Indians, the Modoc war began with a struggle over land. A treaty signed in 1864 had forced a band of Modoc Indians under the leadership of Chief Keintpoos-known to Americans as Captain Jack--to move to a reservation in southeastern Oregon dominated by Klamath Indians, who viewed the Modoc as unwelcome intruders on their traditional lands. Frustrated with the ill--treatment they received at the hands of the Klamath, Captain Jack and his followers abandoned the reservation in 1870 and returned to their former territory and traditional hunter-gatherer life.
But during their six-year absence, white settlers had flooded into the Modoc's former territory. Despite Captain Jack's repeated assurances that his people wanted only peace, many feared the Indians. In 1872, bowing to public pressure, the U.S. dispatched military forces to remove the Modoc and force them back onto the reservation. When some of the more hotheaded Modoc resisted, war broke out; and the Modoc fled to a stronghold among the Lava Beds south of Tule Lake, where they succeeded in holding off U.S. forces for almost half a year.
During the early months of the Modoc War, Captain Jack had strongly opposed armed resistance and continuously searched for a peaceful solution. But under pressure from more aggressive Modoc who were challenging his leadership, he made the fatal error of agreeing to a plan to kill the leader of the American forces, General Edward Canby. On April 11, 1873, Canby and two other men entered the Modoc stronghold under a flag of truce, hoping to negotiate a peaceful end to the conflict. Captain Jack murdered Canby, and other Modoc killed one of his companions. The third man escaped to give a detailed report of the Modoc's treachery.
Outraged by the murder of an honored Civil War hero, Americans demanded swift retribution. The Army stepped up its attacks on the Modoc, and by early June Captain Jack and his followers had been captured. After a military trial at Fort Klamath, Oregon, Captain Jack and three other Modoc leaders were found guilty of murder and hanged. As a result of the Modoc War and the murder of Canby, the U.S. began to take a much more aggressive approach to dealing with Indian problems throughout the nation.
1875 Hebrew Union College was founded in Cincinnati, Ohio. It was the first Jewish college in the U.S. established to train men for the rabbinate.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_Union_College
1899 - The motor-driven vacuum cleaner was patented (U.S. No. 634,042) as a "pneumatic carpet renovator" by John S. Thurman of St. Louis, Mo. Thurman developed a gasoline powered vacuum cleaner and the General Compressed Air Company. In a newspaper advertisement from the St. Louis Dispatch Thurman offered his invention of the horse drawn (which went door to door) vacuum system there in St. Louis. He offered vacuuming services at $4 per visit - a significant amount in that era. By 1906, Thurman was offering built-in central vacuum systems. They actually used compress air, though, and featured no dust collection.
1901 - The Victor Talking Machine Company was incorporated. The Victor Talking Machine Company, as we have seen, was incorporated on October 3, 1901, and organized two days later. It was not a new enterprise, but a merger of the interests of Eldridge R. Johnson with those of the Consolidated Talking Machine Company of America. The Consolidated Company was a holding company set up over The United States Gramophone Company, which controlled the Berliner patents, and The Berliner Gramophone Company of Philadelphia, which was the manufacturing company.
1906 - The second international conference on wireless telegraphy in Berlin adopts SOS as international distress signal, replacing the call sign CQD. By 1904 many Trans-Atlantic British ships were equipped with wireless. "CQ" originated in England as a general call on a landline wire. "CQ" preceded time signals and special notices as a sign for "all stations". The Marconi company suggested "CQD" for a distress signal. Established 1 Feb 1904, and sometimes thought to mean, "Come Quick Danger," its origin was simply a general call, "CQ," with "D," meaning distress. Unfortunately, the 1906 Conference proceedings do not give an account of the discussions nor the origin of SOS; the proceedings merely specify what the signal will be.
1906 - W.T. Grant opened a 25-cent department store on this day
1912 - The longest dry spell of record in the U.S. commenced as Bagdad, CA, went 767 days without rain. (David Ludlum)
1913 - Federal Income Tax signed into law (at 1%)
1917 - War Revenue Act passed in U.S. On October 3, 1917, six months after the United States declared war on Germany and began its participation in the First World War, the U.S. Congress passes the War Revenue Act, increasing income taxes to unprecedented levels in order to raise more money for the war effort.
The 13th Amendment, which gave Congress the power to levy an income tax, became part of the Constitution in 1913; in October of that year, a new income tax law introduced a graduated tax system, with rates starting at 1 percent and rising to 7 percent for taxpayers with income above $500,000. Though less than 1 percent of the population paid income tax at the time, the amendment marked an important shift, as before most citizens had carried on their economic affairs without government knowledge. In an attempt to assuage fears of excessive government intervention into private financial affairs, Congress added a clause in 1916 requiring that all information from tax returns be kept confidential.
By then, however, preparation for and entry into World War I had greatly increased the government’s need for revenue. Congress responded to this need by passing an initial Revenue Act in 1916, raising the lowest tax rate from 1 percent to 2 percent; those with incomes above $1.5 million were taxed at 15 percent. The act also imposed new taxes on estates and excess business profits.
By 1917, largely due to the new income tax rate, the annual federal budget was almost equal to the total budget for all the years between 1791 and 1916. Still more was required, however, and in October 1917 Congress passed the War Revenue Act, lowering the number of exemptions and greatly increasing tax rates. Under the 1917 act, a taxpayer with an income of only $40,000 was subject to a 16 percent tax rate, while one who earned $1.5 million faced a rate of 67 percent. While only five percent of the U.S. population was required to pay taxes, U.S. tax revenue increased from $809 million in 1917 to a whopping $3.6 billion the following year. By the time World War I ended in 1918, income tax revenue had funded a full one-third of the cost of the war effort.
1922 - City telephone lines were used for the first time in the U.S. for the transmission of a facsimile photo in Washington, DC. Charles F. Jenkins sent an image from 1519 Connecticut Ave to the U.S. Navy Radio Staion NOF at Anacostia, D.C. Witnesses from the U.S.Navy and the Post Office Dept. attended the transmission. A photographic plate was used to record the signals at 5502 16th St, N.W. Washington, D.C. Earlier in the year, on 11 Jun 1922, a photograph had been sent by radio across the Atlantic from Rome to Bar Harbor, Maine. That transmission reproduced a 7 x 9.5 in. halftone picture, using light falling on a selenium cell to form the dots.
1941 - The movie "The Maltese Falcon" opened in New York. Director John Huston actually used much of the dialogue from the original novel, removing all references to sex which the Hays Office had now deemed to be un-American. In 1936, Warner Brothers attempted to re-release the original 1931 version, but was denied approval by the Production Code Office due to the film's "lewd" content. This is probably the reason why a cleaned-up version of the film was produced in 1941. It wasn't until after 1966 that unedited copies of the original film could be legally shown in the United States. The role of Sam Spade was, in fact, not offered first to Bogart, but rather to George Raft who turned it down because he thought this remake "was not an important picture." Bogart's role became the character archetype for a private detective in the Film Noir genre, providing him near-instant acclaim.
1941 - The first aerosol can used in a commercial application was patented, invented by two U.S. Dept. of Agriculture researchers, a chemist and an entomologist, L.D. Goodhue and W.N. Sullivan. They were looking for a way to apply oil-free insecticides in mushroom houses. They dissolved an insecticide in a nonflammable, liquefied gas under pressure in a steel container. The insecticide was allowed to escape in a fine spray through an oil burner nozzle. During WW II such cans, dubbed "bug bombs," were used to protect troops from malaria-carrying mosquitoes. Under the public service patent, royalty-free licenses were issued for the manufacture of insecticidal aerosols until the patent expired in 1960. Many improvements followed.
1942 - Launch of the first A-4/V-2 rocket to altitude of 53 miles (85 km)
1945 - Following a message from President Truman, a bill sponsored by the war department and known as the May-Johnson bill was introduced into the U.S. Congress. The purpose of this bill was to keep the atomic bomb a secret under stringent security restrictions. Because it failed to provide for the sharing of information with foreign countries, and granted a dominant role to the military, scientists throughout the country were galvanized in opposition. Due in part to lobbying by scientists such as Leo Szilard and other groups, the May-Johnson Bill was tabled in December. The McMahon Act, signed on 1 Aug 1946, mandated civilian control of atomic energy under the auspices of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC).
1945 - Stan Kenton and his orchestra recorded "Painted Rhythm" for Capitol Records. The band was heard on the Bob Hope radio show and recorded such ditties as "Her Tears Flowed Like Wine" and "Across The Alley From The Alamo." Singers Dolly Mitchell and Gene Howard (later the road manager) were used to flutter teenagers' hearts. The book was augmented with humour. Stan used then (and still uses) a routine in which he announces a tune and a shout comes from the trumpet section: "Stan, Stan, your laundry came back!" Stan pretends to look dismayed, and allows a curt "Thank you " Then a trumpeter bellows : "They refused it! " Among the best jazz releases were originals like "Eager Beaver," "Harlem Folk Dance" and "Painted Rhythm." Art Pepper was the alto soloist; Anita O'Day came from the Gene Krupa band; Pete Rugolo became chief arranger.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stan_Kenton
1946 - Dennis Day started his own radio show on NBC
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Day
1947 - After 11 years of grinding and polishing a 200-inch diameter telescope lens for the Mount Palomar Observatory was completed at the California Institute of Technology. This lens, the first of its size made in the U.S., began when 20 tons of molten glass at 2,700 deg. Fahrenheit were poured into a ceramic mold at Corning Glass Works, N.Y. on 2 Dec 1934. The glass lens was allowed to cool only one or two degrees per day over the next eleven months, and then brought to room temperature. The telescope in which the lens was mounted was named the Hale Telescope in recognition of the late Dr. George E. Hale who had initiated the project. The completed telescope was first used on 1 Feb 1949 by taking pictures of a Milky Way constellation.
1950 - First Black lead (Ethel Waters) on TV (Beulah) Beulah, the first nationally broadcast weekly television series starring an African-American in the leading role, ran on ABC from 1950 to 1953. The role had originally been created by white, male actor Marlin Hurt for the Fibber McGee and Molly radio program and the character was spun off onto "her" own radio show in 1945. Beulah is significant in that it was part of a phenomenon in early entertainment television programming which saw more diversity in ethnic and racial depictions than would be seen again at any time until the late 1960s.
1950 - The transistor was patented by Shockley, Bardeen and Brattain. On December 16, 1947 William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain succeeded in building the first practical point-contact transistor at Bell Labs. This work followed from their war-time efforts to produce extremely pure germanium "crystal" mixer diodes, used in radar units as a frequency mixer element in microwave radar receivers. Early tube-based technology did not switch fast enough for this role, leading the Bell team to use solid state diodes instead. With this knowledge in hand they turned to the design of a triode, but found this was not at all easy. Bardeen eventually developed a new branch of surface physics to account for the "odd" behaviour they saw, and Bardeen and Brattain eventually succeeded in building a working device.
1951 - Bobby Thomson HR-The Giants win the pennant defeating Dodgers. The Giants' Bobby Thomson hits the most famous home run in history, off Ralph Branca. His "shot heard round the world" with two runners on and trailing 4-2 in the bottom of the 9th defeats Brooklyn 5-4 and sends the jubilant Giants into the World Series. For Branca, it is his 6th loss of the season against the Giants, who have now hit 11 home runs off him this year. Whitey Lockman sets up Thomson's blast by hitting a double off Don Newcombe with Al Dark on 3B and Don Mueller on 1B. Mueller breaks his ankle sliding into 3B and is carried off the field.
1952 - The first U.S. video recording on magnetic tape giving credible results of off-air black and white recordings was made by John T. Mullin at the electronics division of Bing Crosby Enterprises, Inc., Los Angeles, Cal. Using a Video Tape Recorder, the images on magnetic tape were not only one-third less costly than photographic methods, but were also immediately available to reproduce on a standard TV monitor tube as soon as the tape was rewound. The 12-head VTR used one-inch tape running at 120 inches per second to record ten tracks of monochrome video information, a clock track to control synchronization and an FM audio track. The basic theory was to use frequency division multiplexing with the 10 channels covering the desired video range.
1952 - "Hurricane", the first British atomic bomb was tested at the Monte Bello, Australia, becoming the third country in the world to test such a weapon. The bomb used an improved plutonium implosion bomb similar to the U.S. "Fat Man". The bomb used plutonium produced in Britain at Windscale (now Sellafield) with a low Pu-240 content since hurried production led to short irradiation times, plus some Canadian origin plutonium. To test the effects of a ship-smuggled bomb (a threat of great concern at the time), Hurricane was exploded inside the hull of the HMS Plym (1450 ton frigate) which was anchored in 40 feet of water 400 yards off shore. The explosion, 9-ft below the water line, left a saucer-shaped crater on the seabed 20-ft deep and 1,000-ft across.
1953 - "You You You" by the Ames Brothers topped the charts
1954 "Father Knows Best" premieres
1955 - "Captain Kangaroo" premieres, Good Morning, Captain!
1955 - "Mickey Mouse Club" premieres
1960 - "The Andy Griffith Show" premiered this night on CBS-TV
1961 - "Dick Van d**e Show" premieres on CBS-TV
1961 - "Mr Ed" premieres
1962 - Wally Schirra in Sigma 7 launched into earth orbit
1963 - The X-15 rocket plane achieved a world record speed of Mach 6.7, which is 4,520 mph or over a mile per second, with U.S. Air Force pilot Pete Knight. It reached an altitude of 192,100 feet (58,552 m). Its internal structure of titanium was covered with a skin of Inconel X, a chrome-nickel alloy. To save fuel, the X-15 was air launched from a B-52 aircraft at about 45,000 ft. Test flights between 8 Jun 1959 and 24 Oct 1968 provided data on hypersonic air flow, aerodynamic heating, control and stability at hypersonic speeds and piloting techniques for reentry used in the development of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo spaceflight programs. The X-15 reached 354,200 feet (67 miles) on 22 Aug 1963.
1964 - Hurricane Hilda struck Louisiana spawning many tornadoes, and claimed twenty-two lives. (Sandra and TI Richard Sanders)
1964 - "Oh, Pretty Woman" by Roy Orbison topped the charts
1965 - Whitey Ford notches #232 to become Yankees winningest pitcher.
1967 - Operation Wallowa commences. Elements of the 1st Cavalry Division launch Operation Wallowa in South Vietnam's northernmost provinces. A task force was sent in to relieve pressure on the U.S. Marines, who were fighting a heavy series of engagements along the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). As these operations commenced, U.S. planes raided North Vietnamese supply routes and attacked bridges only 10 miles from the Chinese frontier.
1970 - "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" by Diana Ross topped the charts
1970 - Baseball umpires call their first strike. Minor league umps were pressed into service for the opening LCS games. There had been rumors of a strike for several days as negotiations between the umpires and ML baseball had reached an impasse.
1972 - Steve Carlton wins 27th game for Phillies
1974 - Frank Robinson becomes baseball's first black manager (Cleveland Indians)
1979 - The first killer tornado of record in October in Connecticut destroyed sixteen vintage aircraft at the Bradley Air Museum in Windsor Locks. The tornado damaged more than one hundred homes causing 200 million dollars damage. Three persons were killed, and 500 others were injured. (The Weather Channel)
1980 - ‘The Boss’, Bruce Springsteen, forgot some of the words to "Born to Run" before an enthusiastic opening night crowd in Ann Arbor, MI
1981 - "Endless Love" by Diana Ross & Lionel Richie topped the charts.
1964 - First Buffalo Wings are made at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York.
1985 - Space shuttle Atlantis makes all-military maiden flight
1986 - Remnants of Hurricane Paine deluged Oklahoma and southeastern Kansas with 6 to 10 inch overnight rains. Hardy, OK, was drenched with 21.79 inches. Heavy rain between September 26th and October 4th caused 350 million dollars damage in Oklahoma. (The Weather Channel)
1987 - Twenty-five cities in the Upper Midwest, including ten in Iowa, reported record low temperatures for the date. Duluth MN, Eau Claire, WI, and Spencer, IA, dipped to 24 degrees. Temperatures warmed into the 80s in the Northern and Central High Plains Region. At Chadron, NE, the mercury soared from a morning low of 29 degrees to an afternoon high of 88 degrees. Temperatures soared above 100 degrees in southern California. The high of 108 degrees at Downtown Los Angeles was a record for October. (The National Weather Summary)
1988 - Cold Canadian air invaded the north central U.S. bringing an end to the growing season across those states. Unseasonably warm weather prevailed in the southwestern U.S. Phoenix, AZ, reported a record high of 105 degrees. (The National Weather Summary)
1989 - Unseasonably cold weather prevailed from the Pacific Northwest to the Upper Mississippi Valley. A dozen cities reported record low temperatures for the date, including Bismarck, ND, and Williston, ND, with readings of 16 degrees above zero. An upper level weather disturbance brought snow to parts of Idaho, Wyoming and Montana, with five inches reported at West Yellowstone, MT. (Storm Data) (The National Weather Summary
1990 - George Brett becomes first to lead league in batting in 3 decades
1990 - East and West Germany reunite after 45 years. Less than one year after the destruction of the Berlin Wall, East and West Germany come together on what is known as "Unity Day." Since 1945, when Soviet forces occupied eastern Germany, and the United States and other Allied forces occupied the western half of the nation at the close of World War II, divided Germany had come to serve as one of the most enduring symbols of the Cold War. Some of the most dramatic episodes of the Cold War took place there. The Berlin Blockade (June 1948--May 1949), during which the Soviet Union blocked all ground travel into West Berlin, and the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 were perhaps the most famous. With the gradual waning of Soviet power in the late 1980s, the Communist Party in East Germany began to lose its grip on power. Tens of thousands of East Germans began to flee the nation, and by late 1989 the Berlin Wall started to come down. Shortly thereafter, talks between East and West German officials, joined by officials from the United States, Great Britain, France, and the USSR, began to explore the possibility of reunification. Two months following reunification, all-German elections took place and Helmut Kohl became the first chancellor of the reunified Germany. Although this action came more than a year before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, for many observers the reunification of Germany effectively marked the end of the Cold War.
1993 - Battle of Mogadishu: In an attempt to capture officials of warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid's organisation in Mogadishu, Somalia, 18 US Soldiers and about 1,000 Somalis are killed in heavy fighting.
1994 - The Food and Drug Administration approved the Left Ventricular Assist Device, which helps failing hearts continue to function.
1995 - O.J.Simpson acquitted. At the end of a sensational trial, former football star O.J. Simpson is acquitted of the brutal 1994 double murder of his estranged wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman. In the epic 252-day trial, Simpson's "dream team" of lawyers employed creative and controversial methods to convince jurors that Simpson's guilt had not been proved "beyond a reasonable doubt," thus surmounting what the prosecution called a "mountain of evidence" implicating him as the murderer.
Orenthal James Simpson--a Heisman Trophy winner, star running back with the Buffalo Bills, and popular television personality--married Nicole Brown in 1985. He reportedly regularly abused his wife and in 1989 pleaded no contest to a charge of spousal battery. In 1992, she left him and filed for divorce. On the night of June 12, 1994, Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were stabbed and slashed to death in the front yard of Mrs. Simpson's condominium in Brentwood, Los Angeles. By June 17, police had gathered enough evidence to charge O.J. Simpson with the murders.
Simpson had no alibi for the time frame of the murders. Some 40 minutes after the murders were committed, a limousine driver sent to take Simpson to the airport saw a man in dark clothing hurrying up the drive of his Rockingham estate. A few minutes later, Simpson spoke to the driver though the gate phone and let him in. During the previous 25 minutes, the driver had repeatedly called the house and received no answer.
A single leather glove found outside Simpson's home matched a glove found at the crime scene. In preliminary DNA tests, blood found on the glove was shown to have come from Simpson and the two victims. After his arrest, further DNA tests would confirm this finding. Simpson had a wound on his hand, and his blood was a DNA match to drops found at the Brentwood crime scene. Nicole Brown Simpson's blood was discovered on a pair of socks found at the Rockingham estate. Simpson had recently purchased a "Stiletto" knife of the type the coroner believed was used by the killer. Shoe prints in the blood at Brentwood matched Simpson's shoe size and later were shown to match a type of shoe he had owned. Neither the knife nor shoes were found by police.
On June 17, a warrant was put out for Simpson's arrest, but he refused to surrender. Just before 7 p.m., police located him in a white Ford Bronco being driven by his friend, former teammate Al Cowlings. Cowlings refused to pull over and told police over his cellular phone that Simpson was suicidal and had a gun to his head. Police agreed not to stop the vehicle by force, and a low-speed chase ensued. Los Angeles news helicopters learned of the event unfolding on their freeways, and live television coverage began. As millions watched, the Bronco was escorted across Los Angeles by a phalanx of police cars. Just before 8 p.m., the dramatic journey ended when Cowlings pulled into the Rockingham estate. After an hour of tense negotiation, Simpson emerged from the vehicle and surrendered. In the vehicle was found a travel bag containing, among other things, Simpson's passport, a disguise kit consisting of a fake moustache and beard, and a revolver. Three days later, Simpson appeared before a judge and pleaded not guilty.
Simpson's subsequent criminal trial was a sensational media event of unprecedented proportions. It was the longest trial ever held in California, and courtroom television cameras captured the carnival-like atmosphere of the proceedings. The prosecution's mountain of evidence was systemically called into doubt by Simpson's team of expensive attorneys, who made the dramatic case that their client was framed by unscrupulous and racist police officers. Citing the questionable character of detective Mark Fuhrman and alleged blunders in the police investigation, defense lawyers painted Simpson as yet another African American victim of the white judicial system. The jurors' reasonable doubt grew when the defense spent weeks attacking the damning DNA evidence, arguing in overly technical terms that delays and other anomalies in the gathering of evidence called the findings into question. Critics of the trial accused Judge Lance Ito of losing control of his courtroom.
In polls, a majority of African Americans believed Simpson to be innocent of the crime, while white America was confident of his guilt. However, the jury--made up of nine African Americans, two whites, and one Hispanic--was not so divided; they took just four hours of deliberation to reach the verdict of not guilty on both murder charges. On October 3, 1995, an estimated 140 million Americans listened in on radio or watched on television as the verdict was delivered.
In February 1997, Simpson was found liable for several charges related to the murders in a civil trial and was forced to award $33.5 million in compensatory and punitive damages to the victims' families. However, with few assets remaining after his long and costly legal battle, he has avoided paying the damages. In September 2007, Simpson was again arrested on felony robbery charges related to the theft of sports memorabilia in Las Vegas
2003 - Roy Horn of Siegfried & Roy is attacked by one of the show's tigers, canceling the show until 2009, when they rejoined the tiger that mauled Roy just six years earlier.
2008 – The $700 billion bailout bill for the US financial system is signed by President Bush.
Births
1610 - Gabriel Lallemant, French-born Jesuit missionary (North American Martyrs) (d. 1649)
1790 - John Ross, also known as Guwisguwi (a mythological or rare migratory bird), was Principal Chief of the Cherokee Native American Nation from 1828-1866. Described as the Moses of his people, Ross led the Nation through tumultuous years of development, relocation to Oklahoma, and the American Civil War. (d. 1866)
1800- George Bancroft (d 1891) American historian and statesman who was prominent in promoting secondary education both in his home state and at the national level. During his tenure as U.S. Secretary of the Navy, he established the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1845. Among his best-known writings is the magisterial series, History of the United States, from the Discovery of the American Continent.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bancroft
1803 - John Gorrie (d 1855) American physician and early pioneer in the invention of the artificial manufacture of ice, refrigeration, and air conditioning. While he was a Naval officer stationed at Apalachicola Florida when he needed ice to treat malaria patients with fever, for, he reasoned, people living in cold climates never got malaria. He built a small steam engine to drive a piston in a cylinder immersed in brine. The piston first compressed the air, and then on the second stroke, when the air expanded, it drew heat from the brine. The chilled brine was used to cool air or make ice. He was granted the first U.S. Patent for mechanical refrigeration in 1851. Dr. Gorrie was posthumously honored by Florida, when his statue was placed in Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gorrie
1804 - Townsend Harris (d 1878) New York City merchant and minor politician, and the first United States Consul General to Japan. He negotiated the "Harris Treaty" between the US and Japan and is credited as the diplomat who first opened the Empire of Japan to foreign trade and culture in the Edo period.
1806 Oliver Cowdery, early Mormon leader, (d. 3 March 1850).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Cowdery
1830 - George Bailey Brayton (d 1892). American engineer who invented the first commercial gas internal combustion engine (patented 2 Apr 1872), which he manufactured and sold in the Providence, Rhode Island, area. Its principle of continuous ignition later became the basis for the turbine engine. A pressurized air-fuel mixture from a reservoir was ignited upon entering a water-cooled cylinder. The Brayton engine was given trials powering watercraft, one of John Holland's submarines and one used for a few months installed in a carriage (1872-3). His earlier career included developing steam engines.
1832 Carolina (Lina) Vilhelmina Sandell Berg, Swedish Lutheran hymnist (d. 27 July 1903). Carolina Sandell (1832 to 1903) Miraculously healed of paralysis, she sang. Carolina "Lina" Sandell was born in Froderyd, Sweden. At the age of twelve she was miraculously healed of a paralysis and from this experience began writing hymns of love and gratitude. She authored obout 650 hymns before her death at age 71 and is called the Swedish Fanny Crosby. She credited the popularity of her hymns to the music written for them by Oscar Arnfelt a "spiritual troubadour" of his day. Jenny Lind, a famous Swedish soprano, published many of Lina's hymns. Two that we sing are "Day by Day" and "Children of the Heavenly Father." In 1867 Carolina married C. Berg.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lina_Sandell
1854 - Major William Crawford Gorgas (d 1920). U.S. Army surgeon who contributed greatly to the building of the Panama Canal by introducing mosquito control to prevent yellow fever and malaria. Originally, Gorgas doubted the conclusion of Walter Reed's Yellow Fever Commission in Cuba (1900) that the mosquito was the only means by which the disease spread. Nevertheless, Gorgas supported the new policy and eventually became the most active proponent of the mosquito theory in the United States. In Cuba, he assisted in eliminating mosquito breeding grounds. In 1904, Gorgas led the ten-year anti-mosquito campaign to wipe out yellow fever in Panama.
1898 - Thomas Leo McCarey (d 1969) was an American film director, screenwriter and producer. During his lifetime he was involved in nearly 200 movies, especially comedies, a devout Roman Catholic and deeply concerned with social issues. During the 1940s, his work became more serious and his politics more conservative. In 1944 he directed Going My Way, a story about an enterprising priest, the youthful Father Chuck O'Malley, played by Bing Crosby, for which he won his second Best Director Oscar. His share in the profits of this smash hit gave McCarey the highest reported income in the U.S. for the year 1944, and its follow-up, The Bells of St. Mary's (1945), which was made by McCarey's own production company, was similarly successful.
1899 - Gertrude Berg Harlem NYC, actress (Molly Goldberg-The Goldbergs)
1900 - Thomas Clayton Wolfe American novelist (Look Homeward Angel) (d. 1938)
1904 - Charles J. Pedersen (d 1989). Korean-American chemist who, along with Jean-Marie Lehn and Donald J. Cram, was awarded the 1987 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his synthesis of the crown ethers - a group of organic compounds with structure-specific interactions of high selectivity when reacting with other atoms and molecules much as do the molecules in living organisms, i.e. molecules that can "recognize" each other and choose with which other molecules they will form complexes. The three researchers studied chemical and physical properties of these complexes and have elucidated the factors that determine the ability of the molecules to recognize each other and fit into one another like a key fits a lock.
1919 - James M. Buchanan, American Nobel Prize-winning economist
1925 - Gore Vidal writer/playwright (Myra Breckinridge, Lincoln)
1935 - Charles M Duke Jr Charlotte NC, Brig Gen USAF/astronaut (Apol 16)
1938 - Eddie Cochran, American singer and guitarist, (C'Mon Everybody)(d. 1960)
1938 - David Ross "Dave" Obey Wisconsin politician, Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives since 1969, representing Wisconsin's 7th congressional district.
1941 - Chubby Checker, American singer-songwriter
1943 - Jeff Bingaman, Democratic U.S. Senator of New Mexico
1951 - David Mark Winfield American former Major League Baseball player, currently Executive Vice President/Senior Advisor of the San Diego Padres and an analyst for the ESPN program Baseball Tonight. Over his 22-year career, he played for six teams: the San Diego Padres, New York Yankees, California Angels, Toronto Blue Jays, Minnesota Twins, and Cleveland Indians. In 2004, ESPN named him the third-best all-around athlete of all time in any sport. He is a member of both the Baseball Hall of Fame and the College Baseball Hall of Fame.
1951 - Kathryn D Sullivan Paterson NJ, geologist, PhD/astro (STS 41-G, 28, 31, 45), first American woman to walk in space.
1954 - Dennis Lee "Eck" Eckersley , former American Major League Baseball player who was born in Oakland, California. Eckersley had success as a starter, but gained his greatest fame as a closer, becoming the first of only two pitchers in Major League history to have both a 20-win season and a 50-save season in a career (the other being John Smoltz), elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2004, his first year of eligibility.
1954 - Al Sharpton, American Baptist minister
1954 - Stevie Ray Vaughan, American blues musician (d. 1990)
1959 - Fred Couples, American golfer
1962 - Tommy Lee, American Drummer
1984 - Ashlee Simpson-Wentz, American singer
Deaths
1226 - Saint Francis of Assisi (born Giovanni Francesco di Bernardone, 1181)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_of_Assisi
1656 - Myles Standish Plymouth Colony leader, dies (birth date unknown)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myles_Standish
1838 - Black Hawk (chief), Leader of the Sauk Native American tribe (b. 1767)
1873 - Captain Jack, or Kintpuash Modoc tribal leader
1877 - James Roosevelt Bayley, first Bishop of Newark, New Jersey, and the eighth Archbishop of Baltimore (b. 1814)
1867 - Elias Howe (b 1819) American inventor, was born in Spencer, Mass. It was Walter Hunt, in 1834, who built America's first sewing machine, then thought about it a destroyer of home stitchers' jobs, and didn't pursue it. Howe did. Howe was granted a patent on his own machine on 10 Sep 1846. Commercial success came slowly, requiring the defense of his patent against Isaac Singer's better marketed machine. Eventually he gained riches, but died young at 49. By then, his sewing machine helped revolutionize garment manufacture in the factory and in the home.
1881 - Orson Pratt (b 1811) leader in the Latter Day Saint movement and an original member of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orson_Pratt
1892 Samuel Longfellow, American clergyman and brother of poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882), (b 18 Jun1819). Like his brother, Samuel also wrote and published collections of verse.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orson_Pratt
1910 - Lucy Beaman Taylor (née Hobbs) (b 1833) first woman dentist in America to graduate (1866) from a dental college as a Doctor of Dental Surgery. Earlier, being long refused admission to dental schools (1859-65), she had acquired the skills of dentistry, and practiced without a diploma, as was common at the time. Then the Iowa State Dental Society supported Lucy's ambition for a college degree, demanded her admission, and she was accepted by the Ohio College of Dentistry. After graduation, she practiced for a short time in Chicago, then married James M. Taylor and taught him dentistry. The couple moved to Lawrence, Kansas, in December, 1867, opened a joint office and soon enjoyed a prosperous practice (1867-86).
home.comcast.net/~thorsdag/LucyHobbsTaylor.html
1919 Daniel B. Towner (b. 5 Apr 1850), American music evangelist
www.cyberhymnal.org/bio/t/o/w/towner_db.htm
1936 - John Heisman, American football coach (b. 1869)
1953 - Florence Rena Sabin (b 1871) American anatomist who was one of the first women physicians to pursue a research career. Her investigation of the lymphatic system proved that it developed from the veins in the embryo and grew out into tissues, the reverse of then prevailing understanding. In 1903, she became the first woman on the faculty at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. It had initially been reluctant to hire a woman, but she had shown exceptional skill in papers published during a fellowship there. She moved in 1925 to head the cellular immunology section at the Rockefeller Institute, where she researched the body's white blood cells reaction to tuberculosis infection. In 1926, she was the first woman elected to the National Academy of Sciences.«
1967 - Writer, singer and folk icon Woody Guthrie dies. On October 3, 1967, Woody Guthrie, godfather of the 1950s folk revival movement, dies.
In 1963, Bob Dylan was asked by the authors of a forthcoming book on Woody Guthrie to contribute a 25-word comment summarizing his thoughts on the man who had probably been his greatest formative influence. Dylan responded instead with a 194-line poem called "Thoughts on Woody Guthrie," which took as its theme the eternal human search for hope. "And where do you look for this hope that yer seekin'?" Dylan asks in the poem, before proceeding to a kind of answer:
You can either go to the church of your choice
Or you can go to Brooklyn State Hospital
You'll find God in the church of your choice
You'll find Woody Guthrie in Brooklyn State Hospital
Woodrow Wilson Guthrie, whom Dylan would later call "the true voice of the American spirit," was a native of Okemah, Oklahoma, who was born in 1912 and thus entered adulthood just as America entered the Great Depression. Already an accomplished, self-taught musician, Woody Guthrie began writing music in earnest following his experiences traveling west to California with other Dust Bowl refugees in the 1930s. His first public exposure came during the latter part of that decade as a regular on radio station KFVD Los Angeles, but his most important work took place following a move to New York City in 1939.
In his first two years in New York, Guthrie made a series of landmark recordings for Alan Lomax of the Library of Congress as well as the album Dust Bowl Ballads, which served as the first introduction for many to a form that Guthrie helped pioneer: protest folk. Most famously in "This Land Is Your Land"—written in 1940 and first recorded in 1944—Guthrie fused long-established American musical traditions with a populist, left-wing political sensibility to create an entirely new template for contemporary folk. In so doing, of course, he laid the groundwork not only for the great folk revival of the 1950s and 60s, but also for such iconoclastic heirs to that movement as Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen.
In his late 30s, Woody Guthrie began to fall ill, displaying the ambiguous physical and psychological symptoms of what would eventually be diagnosed as Huntington's chorea, a genetic disorder that had probably killed his mother in 1930. In the 1950s, treatment for Huntington's generally meant institutionalization in a psychiatric hospital, and Woody Guthrie spent his final 12 years in such facilities. In fact, it was in New Jersey's Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital that a young Bob Dylan first encountered the man he'd traveled all the way from Minnesota to see.
Woody Guthrie was moved to Brooklyn State Hospital in 1961 and again in 1966 to Creedmore Psychiatric Center in the borough of Queens. He died at Creedmore on this day in 1967, at the age of 55.
1986 - Vince DiMaggio, American Baseball Player (b. 1912)
1993 - Sgt. First Class Randy Shughart, Medal of Honor recipient (b. 1958)
1993 - Master Sgt. Gary Gordon, Medal of Honor recipient (b. 1960)
Christian Feast Day:
Abd-al-Masih (martyr)
Ewald the Black and Ewald the Fair
akaCG
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_03
www.scopesys.com/cgi-bin/today2.cgi
www.history.com/this-day-in-history/ojsimpson-acquitted
www.amug.org/~jpaul/oct03.html
www.weatherforyou.com/cgi-bin/weather_history/today2S.pl
www.todayinsci.com/10/10_03.htm
daysuntil.com/Election-Day/index.html
www.lutheranhistory.org/history/tih1003.htm
www.cyberhymnal.org/index.htm#lk
www.christianity.com/church/church-history/birthdays/10-03.html
There are 89 days remaining until the end of the year.
Days until Election Day, Tuesday November 6, 2012: 34
Countdown until Obama leaves Office www.obamaclock.org/
U.S. Debt Clock: www.usdebtclock.org/
1692 - In Massachusetts, Increase Mather published his "Cases of Conscience Concerning Evil Spirits," which effectively brought an end to the Salem Witch Trials which had begun earlier this year.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Increase_Mather
1781 - French and Americans cut off British supplies at Gloucester. On this day in 1781, British Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Dundas of the 80th Foot, leading 1,000 British troops, encounters French Brigadier General Marquis de Choisy, leading French troops and a battalion of the Virginia militia totaling 800 men. The action takes place in Gloucester, Virginia, across the York River from British-occupied Yorktown, which was under Patriot siege.
On September 28, 17,000 combined Continental and French forces commanded jointly on land by General George Washington and French Lieutenant General Count de Rochambeau and at sea by French Admiral Count de Grasse had arrived to encircle British General Charles Cornwallis’ camp at Yorktown and began the siege. Prior to the encounter as Gloucester, Dundas and the British had enjoyed complete control of a strategic countryside position on the Gloucester side of the York River. The control of this area allowed the British to forage for nearly unlimited food and supplies, not only for themselves, but for Cornwallis and his British troops located across the river in Yorktown, which limited the success of the Patriot siege.
While returning to camp on the evening of October 3, 1781, Dundas and the British were engaged in battle by General de Choisy. Although the ensuing battle between British and Patriot-allied forces was relatively small, it was nonetheless important, because it cut off supplies to General Cornwallis and the British troops across the river in Yorktown. The capture of Gloucester, Virginia, was one of the final steps toward the eventual Patriot victory at Yorktown just 16 days later.
1789 - Washington proclaims the first national Thanksgiving Day on Nov 26. In 1789 the federal Congress authorized and requested President George Washington to proclaim a day of thanksgiving for the whole nation. Washington did this in a message setting aside November 26, 1789 as National Thanksgiving Day.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanksgiving_Day
1805 - The first U.S. pharmacopoeia prepared by a medical society in the U.S. was authorized by the members of the Massachusetts Medical Society of Boston, Mass. It became the 286-page The Pharmacopoeia of the Massachusetts Medical Society (1808), edited by Drs. James Jackson and John Collins Warren. The earliest pharmacopoeia produced in the U.S. was prepared for army use. It had 32 pages, with a type area on the page of 4.25 x 2.5 in. Published in 1778 in Philadelphia, Pa., its name - Pharmacopoeia simpliciorum et efficiorum, in usum noscomii militaris, etc. - reflected the use of Latin in the text. Dr. William Brown, Physician-General to the Hospitals of the U.S. wrote it for use in the U.S. Army Military Hospital at Lititz, Pa..
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Pharmacopeia
1875 - Hebrew Union College was founded in Cincinnati, Ohio under Jewish auspices. It was the first Jewish college in America to train men for the rabbinate.
huc.edu/
1895 - The Red Badge of Courage is published. On this day, The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane, is published in book form. The story of a young man's experience of battle was the first American novel to portray the Civil War from the ordinary soldier's point of view. The tale originally appeared as a serial published by a newspaper syndicate.
Crane, the youngest of 14 children, was born in 1871 and grew up in New York and New Jersey. His father died when Crane was 9, and the family settled in Asbury Park, New Jersey. He attended Syracuse University, where he played baseball for a year, but then left. He became a journalist in New York, taking short stints for various newspapers and living in near-poverty.
Immersed in the hand-to-mouth life of lower-class New York, Crane closely observed the characters around him, and in 1893, at age 23, he published Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, about a poor girl's decline into prostitution and suicide. Finding a publisher was difficult given the book's scandalous content, so Crane ultimately published it himself. The book was a critical success but failed to sell well. He turned his attention to more popular topics and began writing The Red Badge of Courage, which made him into an international celebrity at age 24.
The newspaper syndicate that serialized the novel sent him on assignment to cover the West and Mexico. In 1897, he went to Cuba to write about the insurrection against Spain. On the way there, he stayed at a dingy hotel where he met Cora Howard Taylor, who became his lifelong companion. In 1897, his boat to Cuba sank, and he barely survived. His short story "The Open Boat" is based on his experiences in a lifeboat with the captain and the cook. Crane later covered the war between Greece and Turkey, and finally settled in England, where he made friends with Joseph Conrad, H.G. Wells, and Henry James.
Crane contracted tuberculosis in his late 20s. Cora Howard Taylor nursed him while he wrote furiously in an attempt to pay off his debts. He exhausted himself and exacerbated his condition. He died in June 1900, at the age of 28.
1841 - An October gale, the worst of record for Nantucket, MA, caught the Cap Cod fishing fleet at sea. Forty ships were driven ashore on Cape Cod, and 57 men perished from the town of Truro alone. Heavy snow fell inland, with 18 inches near Middletown, CT. (David Ludlum)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Gale_of_1841
1863 - Lincoln designates last Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day. In the midst of the Civil War, President Lincoln proclaims a national Thanksgiving Day on the last Thursday in November. The proclamation reads, in part: "I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens...
1873 - U.S. Army hangs four Modoc Indians for the murder of a Civil War hero. On this day in 1873, the United States military hangs four Indians found guilty of murdering the Civil War hero, General Edward Canby, during the Modoc War in Oregon. Canby was the highest ranking military official--and the only general--ever killed by Indians.
As with most of the American military conflicts with Indians, the Modoc war began with a struggle over land. A treaty signed in 1864 had forced a band of Modoc Indians under the leadership of Chief Keintpoos-known to Americans as Captain Jack--to move to a reservation in southeastern Oregon dominated by Klamath Indians, who viewed the Modoc as unwelcome intruders on their traditional lands. Frustrated with the ill--treatment they received at the hands of the Klamath, Captain Jack and his followers abandoned the reservation in 1870 and returned to their former territory and traditional hunter-gatherer life.
But during their six-year absence, white settlers had flooded into the Modoc's former territory. Despite Captain Jack's repeated assurances that his people wanted only peace, many feared the Indians. In 1872, bowing to public pressure, the U.S. dispatched military forces to remove the Modoc and force them back onto the reservation. When some of the more hotheaded Modoc resisted, war broke out; and the Modoc fled to a stronghold among the Lava Beds south of Tule Lake, where they succeeded in holding off U.S. forces for almost half a year.
During the early months of the Modoc War, Captain Jack had strongly opposed armed resistance and continuously searched for a peaceful solution. But under pressure from more aggressive Modoc who were challenging his leadership, he made the fatal error of agreeing to a plan to kill the leader of the American forces, General Edward Canby. On April 11, 1873, Canby and two other men entered the Modoc stronghold under a flag of truce, hoping to negotiate a peaceful end to the conflict. Captain Jack murdered Canby, and other Modoc killed one of his companions. The third man escaped to give a detailed report of the Modoc's treachery.
Outraged by the murder of an honored Civil War hero, Americans demanded swift retribution. The Army stepped up its attacks on the Modoc, and by early June Captain Jack and his followers had been captured. After a military trial at Fort Klamath, Oregon, Captain Jack and three other Modoc leaders were found guilty of murder and hanged. As a result of the Modoc War and the murder of Canby, the U.S. began to take a much more aggressive approach to dealing with Indian problems throughout the nation.
1875 Hebrew Union College was founded in Cincinnati, Ohio. It was the first Jewish college in the U.S. established to train men for the rabbinate.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_Union_College
1899 - The motor-driven vacuum cleaner was patented (U.S. No. 634,042) as a "pneumatic carpet renovator" by John S. Thurman of St. Louis, Mo. Thurman developed a gasoline powered vacuum cleaner and the General Compressed Air Company. In a newspaper advertisement from the St. Louis Dispatch Thurman offered his invention of the horse drawn (which went door to door) vacuum system there in St. Louis. He offered vacuuming services at $4 per visit - a significant amount in that era. By 1906, Thurman was offering built-in central vacuum systems. They actually used compress air, though, and featured no dust collection.
1901 - The Victor Talking Machine Company was incorporated. The Victor Talking Machine Company, as we have seen, was incorporated on October 3, 1901, and organized two days later. It was not a new enterprise, but a merger of the interests of Eldridge R. Johnson with those of the Consolidated Talking Machine Company of America. The Consolidated Company was a holding company set up over The United States Gramophone Company, which controlled the Berliner patents, and The Berliner Gramophone Company of Philadelphia, which was the manufacturing company.
1906 - The second international conference on wireless telegraphy in Berlin adopts SOS as international distress signal, replacing the call sign CQD. By 1904 many Trans-Atlantic British ships were equipped with wireless. "CQ" originated in England as a general call on a landline wire. "CQ" preceded time signals and special notices as a sign for "all stations". The Marconi company suggested "CQD" for a distress signal. Established 1 Feb 1904, and sometimes thought to mean, "Come Quick Danger," its origin was simply a general call, "CQ," with "D," meaning distress. Unfortunately, the 1906 Conference proceedings do not give an account of the discussions nor the origin of SOS; the proceedings merely specify what the signal will be.
1906 - W.T. Grant opened a 25-cent department store on this day
1912 - The longest dry spell of record in the U.S. commenced as Bagdad, CA, went 767 days without rain. (David Ludlum)
1913 - Federal Income Tax signed into law (at 1%)
1917 - War Revenue Act passed in U.S. On October 3, 1917, six months after the United States declared war on Germany and began its participation in the First World War, the U.S. Congress passes the War Revenue Act, increasing income taxes to unprecedented levels in order to raise more money for the war effort.
The 13th Amendment, which gave Congress the power to levy an income tax, became part of the Constitution in 1913; in October of that year, a new income tax law introduced a graduated tax system, with rates starting at 1 percent and rising to 7 percent for taxpayers with income above $500,000. Though less than 1 percent of the population paid income tax at the time, the amendment marked an important shift, as before most citizens had carried on their economic affairs without government knowledge. In an attempt to assuage fears of excessive government intervention into private financial affairs, Congress added a clause in 1916 requiring that all information from tax returns be kept confidential.
By then, however, preparation for and entry into World War I had greatly increased the government’s need for revenue. Congress responded to this need by passing an initial Revenue Act in 1916, raising the lowest tax rate from 1 percent to 2 percent; those with incomes above $1.5 million were taxed at 15 percent. The act also imposed new taxes on estates and excess business profits.
By 1917, largely due to the new income tax rate, the annual federal budget was almost equal to the total budget for all the years between 1791 and 1916. Still more was required, however, and in October 1917 Congress passed the War Revenue Act, lowering the number of exemptions and greatly increasing tax rates. Under the 1917 act, a taxpayer with an income of only $40,000 was subject to a 16 percent tax rate, while one who earned $1.5 million faced a rate of 67 percent. While only five percent of the U.S. population was required to pay taxes, U.S. tax revenue increased from $809 million in 1917 to a whopping $3.6 billion the following year. By the time World War I ended in 1918, income tax revenue had funded a full one-third of the cost of the war effort.
1922 - City telephone lines were used for the first time in the U.S. for the transmission of a facsimile photo in Washington, DC. Charles F. Jenkins sent an image from 1519 Connecticut Ave to the U.S. Navy Radio Staion NOF at Anacostia, D.C. Witnesses from the U.S.Navy and the Post Office Dept. attended the transmission. A photographic plate was used to record the signals at 5502 16th St, N.W. Washington, D.C. Earlier in the year, on 11 Jun 1922, a photograph had been sent by radio across the Atlantic from Rome to Bar Harbor, Maine. That transmission reproduced a 7 x 9.5 in. halftone picture, using light falling on a selenium cell to form the dots.
1941 - The movie "The Maltese Falcon" opened in New York. Director John Huston actually used much of the dialogue from the original novel, removing all references to sex which the Hays Office had now deemed to be un-American. In 1936, Warner Brothers attempted to re-release the original 1931 version, but was denied approval by the Production Code Office due to the film's "lewd" content. This is probably the reason why a cleaned-up version of the film was produced in 1941. It wasn't until after 1966 that unedited copies of the original film could be legally shown in the United States. The role of Sam Spade was, in fact, not offered first to Bogart, but rather to George Raft who turned it down because he thought this remake "was not an important picture." Bogart's role became the character archetype for a private detective in the Film Noir genre, providing him near-instant acclaim.
1941 - The first aerosol can used in a commercial application was patented, invented by two U.S. Dept. of Agriculture researchers, a chemist and an entomologist, L.D. Goodhue and W.N. Sullivan. They were looking for a way to apply oil-free insecticides in mushroom houses. They dissolved an insecticide in a nonflammable, liquefied gas under pressure in a steel container. The insecticide was allowed to escape in a fine spray through an oil burner nozzle. During WW II such cans, dubbed "bug bombs," were used to protect troops from malaria-carrying mosquitoes. Under the public service patent, royalty-free licenses were issued for the manufacture of insecticidal aerosols until the patent expired in 1960. Many improvements followed.
1942 - Launch of the first A-4/V-2 rocket to altitude of 53 miles (85 km)
1945 - Following a message from President Truman, a bill sponsored by the war department and known as the May-Johnson bill was introduced into the U.S. Congress. The purpose of this bill was to keep the atomic bomb a secret under stringent security restrictions. Because it failed to provide for the sharing of information with foreign countries, and granted a dominant role to the military, scientists throughout the country were galvanized in opposition. Due in part to lobbying by scientists such as Leo Szilard and other groups, the May-Johnson Bill was tabled in December. The McMahon Act, signed on 1 Aug 1946, mandated civilian control of atomic energy under the auspices of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC).
1945 - Stan Kenton and his orchestra recorded "Painted Rhythm" for Capitol Records. The band was heard on the Bob Hope radio show and recorded such ditties as "Her Tears Flowed Like Wine" and "Across The Alley From The Alamo." Singers Dolly Mitchell and Gene Howard (later the road manager) were used to flutter teenagers' hearts. The book was augmented with humour. Stan used then (and still uses) a routine in which he announces a tune and a shout comes from the trumpet section: "Stan, Stan, your laundry came back!" Stan pretends to look dismayed, and allows a curt "Thank you " Then a trumpeter bellows : "They refused it! " Among the best jazz releases were originals like "Eager Beaver," "Harlem Folk Dance" and "Painted Rhythm." Art Pepper was the alto soloist; Anita O'Day came from the Gene Krupa band; Pete Rugolo became chief arranger.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stan_Kenton
1946 - Dennis Day started his own radio show on NBC
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Day
1947 - After 11 years of grinding and polishing a 200-inch diameter telescope lens for the Mount Palomar Observatory was completed at the California Institute of Technology. This lens, the first of its size made in the U.S., began when 20 tons of molten glass at 2,700 deg. Fahrenheit were poured into a ceramic mold at Corning Glass Works, N.Y. on 2 Dec 1934. The glass lens was allowed to cool only one or two degrees per day over the next eleven months, and then brought to room temperature. The telescope in which the lens was mounted was named the Hale Telescope in recognition of the late Dr. George E. Hale who had initiated the project. The completed telescope was first used on 1 Feb 1949 by taking pictures of a Milky Way constellation.
1950 - First Black lead (Ethel Waters) on TV (Beulah) Beulah, the first nationally broadcast weekly television series starring an African-American in the leading role, ran on ABC from 1950 to 1953. The role had originally been created by white, male actor Marlin Hurt for the Fibber McGee and Molly radio program and the character was spun off onto "her" own radio show in 1945. Beulah is significant in that it was part of a phenomenon in early entertainment television programming which saw more diversity in ethnic and racial depictions than would be seen again at any time until the late 1960s.
1950 - The transistor was patented by Shockley, Bardeen and Brattain. On December 16, 1947 William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain succeeded in building the first practical point-contact transistor at Bell Labs. This work followed from their war-time efforts to produce extremely pure germanium "crystal" mixer diodes, used in radar units as a frequency mixer element in microwave radar receivers. Early tube-based technology did not switch fast enough for this role, leading the Bell team to use solid state diodes instead. With this knowledge in hand they turned to the design of a triode, but found this was not at all easy. Bardeen eventually developed a new branch of surface physics to account for the "odd" behaviour they saw, and Bardeen and Brattain eventually succeeded in building a working device.
1951 - Bobby Thomson HR-The Giants win the pennant defeating Dodgers. The Giants' Bobby Thomson hits the most famous home run in history, off Ralph Branca. His "shot heard round the world" with two runners on and trailing 4-2 in the bottom of the 9th defeats Brooklyn 5-4 and sends the jubilant Giants into the World Series. For Branca, it is his 6th loss of the season against the Giants, who have now hit 11 home runs off him this year. Whitey Lockman sets up Thomson's blast by hitting a double off Don Newcombe with Al Dark on 3B and Don Mueller on 1B. Mueller breaks his ankle sliding into 3B and is carried off the field.
1952 - The first U.S. video recording on magnetic tape giving credible results of off-air black and white recordings was made by John T. Mullin at the electronics division of Bing Crosby Enterprises, Inc., Los Angeles, Cal. Using a Video Tape Recorder, the images on magnetic tape were not only one-third less costly than photographic methods, but were also immediately available to reproduce on a standard TV monitor tube as soon as the tape was rewound. The 12-head VTR used one-inch tape running at 120 inches per second to record ten tracks of monochrome video information, a clock track to control synchronization and an FM audio track. The basic theory was to use frequency division multiplexing with the 10 channels covering the desired video range.
1952 - "Hurricane", the first British atomic bomb was tested at the Monte Bello, Australia, becoming the third country in the world to test such a weapon. The bomb used an improved plutonium implosion bomb similar to the U.S. "Fat Man". The bomb used plutonium produced in Britain at Windscale (now Sellafield) with a low Pu-240 content since hurried production led to short irradiation times, plus some Canadian origin plutonium. To test the effects of a ship-smuggled bomb (a threat of great concern at the time), Hurricane was exploded inside the hull of the HMS Plym (1450 ton frigate) which was anchored in 40 feet of water 400 yards off shore. The explosion, 9-ft below the water line, left a saucer-shaped crater on the seabed 20-ft deep and 1,000-ft across.
1953 - "You You You" by the Ames Brothers topped the charts
1954 "Father Knows Best" premieres
1955 - "Captain Kangaroo" premieres, Good Morning, Captain!
1955 - "Mickey Mouse Club" premieres
1960 - "The Andy Griffith Show" premiered this night on CBS-TV
1961 - "Dick Van d**e Show" premieres on CBS-TV
1961 - "Mr Ed" premieres
1962 - Wally Schirra in Sigma 7 launched into earth orbit
1963 - The X-15 rocket plane achieved a world record speed of Mach 6.7, which is 4,520 mph or over a mile per second, with U.S. Air Force pilot Pete Knight. It reached an altitude of 192,100 feet (58,552 m). Its internal structure of titanium was covered with a skin of Inconel X, a chrome-nickel alloy. To save fuel, the X-15 was air launched from a B-52 aircraft at about 45,000 ft. Test flights between 8 Jun 1959 and 24 Oct 1968 provided data on hypersonic air flow, aerodynamic heating, control and stability at hypersonic speeds and piloting techniques for reentry used in the development of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo spaceflight programs. The X-15 reached 354,200 feet (67 miles) on 22 Aug 1963.
1964 - Hurricane Hilda struck Louisiana spawning many tornadoes, and claimed twenty-two lives. (Sandra and TI Richard Sanders)
1964 - "Oh, Pretty Woman" by Roy Orbison topped the charts
1965 - Whitey Ford notches #232 to become Yankees winningest pitcher.
1967 - Operation Wallowa commences. Elements of the 1st Cavalry Division launch Operation Wallowa in South Vietnam's northernmost provinces. A task force was sent in to relieve pressure on the U.S. Marines, who were fighting a heavy series of engagements along the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). As these operations commenced, U.S. planes raided North Vietnamese supply routes and attacked bridges only 10 miles from the Chinese frontier.
1970 - "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" by Diana Ross topped the charts
1970 - Baseball umpires call their first strike. Minor league umps were pressed into service for the opening LCS games. There had been rumors of a strike for several days as negotiations between the umpires and ML baseball had reached an impasse.
1972 - Steve Carlton wins 27th game for Phillies
1974 - Frank Robinson becomes baseball's first black manager (Cleveland Indians)
1979 - The first killer tornado of record in October in Connecticut destroyed sixteen vintage aircraft at the Bradley Air Museum in Windsor Locks. The tornado damaged more than one hundred homes causing 200 million dollars damage. Three persons were killed, and 500 others were injured. (The Weather Channel)
1980 - ‘The Boss’, Bruce Springsteen, forgot some of the words to "Born to Run" before an enthusiastic opening night crowd in Ann Arbor, MI
1981 - "Endless Love" by Diana Ross & Lionel Richie topped the charts.
1964 - First Buffalo Wings are made at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York.
1985 - Space shuttle Atlantis makes all-military maiden flight
1986 - Remnants of Hurricane Paine deluged Oklahoma and southeastern Kansas with 6 to 10 inch overnight rains. Hardy, OK, was drenched with 21.79 inches. Heavy rain between September 26th and October 4th caused 350 million dollars damage in Oklahoma. (The Weather Channel)
1987 - Twenty-five cities in the Upper Midwest, including ten in Iowa, reported record low temperatures for the date. Duluth MN, Eau Claire, WI, and Spencer, IA, dipped to 24 degrees. Temperatures warmed into the 80s in the Northern and Central High Plains Region. At Chadron, NE, the mercury soared from a morning low of 29 degrees to an afternoon high of 88 degrees. Temperatures soared above 100 degrees in southern California. The high of 108 degrees at Downtown Los Angeles was a record for October. (The National Weather Summary)
1988 - Cold Canadian air invaded the north central U.S. bringing an end to the growing season across those states. Unseasonably warm weather prevailed in the southwestern U.S. Phoenix, AZ, reported a record high of 105 degrees. (The National Weather Summary)
1989 - Unseasonably cold weather prevailed from the Pacific Northwest to the Upper Mississippi Valley. A dozen cities reported record low temperatures for the date, including Bismarck, ND, and Williston, ND, with readings of 16 degrees above zero. An upper level weather disturbance brought snow to parts of Idaho, Wyoming and Montana, with five inches reported at West Yellowstone, MT. (Storm Data) (The National Weather Summary
1990 - George Brett becomes first to lead league in batting in 3 decades
1990 - East and West Germany reunite after 45 years. Less than one year after the destruction of the Berlin Wall, East and West Germany come together on what is known as "Unity Day." Since 1945, when Soviet forces occupied eastern Germany, and the United States and other Allied forces occupied the western half of the nation at the close of World War II, divided Germany had come to serve as one of the most enduring symbols of the Cold War. Some of the most dramatic episodes of the Cold War took place there. The Berlin Blockade (June 1948--May 1949), during which the Soviet Union blocked all ground travel into West Berlin, and the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 were perhaps the most famous. With the gradual waning of Soviet power in the late 1980s, the Communist Party in East Germany began to lose its grip on power. Tens of thousands of East Germans began to flee the nation, and by late 1989 the Berlin Wall started to come down. Shortly thereafter, talks between East and West German officials, joined by officials from the United States, Great Britain, France, and the USSR, began to explore the possibility of reunification. Two months following reunification, all-German elections took place and Helmut Kohl became the first chancellor of the reunified Germany. Although this action came more than a year before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, for many observers the reunification of Germany effectively marked the end of the Cold War.
1993 - Battle of Mogadishu: In an attempt to capture officials of warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid's organisation in Mogadishu, Somalia, 18 US Soldiers and about 1,000 Somalis are killed in heavy fighting.
1994 - The Food and Drug Administration approved the Left Ventricular Assist Device, which helps failing hearts continue to function.
1995 - O.J.Simpson acquitted. At the end of a sensational trial, former football star O.J. Simpson is acquitted of the brutal 1994 double murder of his estranged wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman. In the epic 252-day trial, Simpson's "dream team" of lawyers employed creative and controversial methods to convince jurors that Simpson's guilt had not been proved "beyond a reasonable doubt," thus surmounting what the prosecution called a "mountain of evidence" implicating him as the murderer.
Orenthal James Simpson--a Heisman Trophy winner, star running back with the Buffalo Bills, and popular television personality--married Nicole Brown in 1985. He reportedly regularly abused his wife and in 1989 pleaded no contest to a charge of spousal battery. In 1992, she left him and filed for divorce. On the night of June 12, 1994, Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were stabbed and slashed to death in the front yard of Mrs. Simpson's condominium in Brentwood, Los Angeles. By June 17, police had gathered enough evidence to charge O.J. Simpson with the murders.
Simpson had no alibi for the time frame of the murders. Some 40 minutes after the murders were committed, a limousine driver sent to take Simpson to the airport saw a man in dark clothing hurrying up the drive of his Rockingham estate. A few minutes later, Simpson spoke to the driver though the gate phone and let him in. During the previous 25 minutes, the driver had repeatedly called the house and received no answer.
A single leather glove found outside Simpson's home matched a glove found at the crime scene. In preliminary DNA tests, blood found on the glove was shown to have come from Simpson and the two victims. After his arrest, further DNA tests would confirm this finding. Simpson had a wound on his hand, and his blood was a DNA match to drops found at the Brentwood crime scene. Nicole Brown Simpson's blood was discovered on a pair of socks found at the Rockingham estate. Simpson had recently purchased a "Stiletto" knife of the type the coroner believed was used by the killer. Shoe prints in the blood at Brentwood matched Simpson's shoe size and later were shown to match a type of shoe he had owned. Neither the knife nor shoes were found by police.
On June 17, a warrant was put out for Simpson's arrest, but he refused to surrender. Just before 7 p.m., police located him in a white Ford Bronco being driven by his friend, former teammate Al Cowlings. Cowlings refused to pull over and told police over his cellular phone that Simpson was suicidal and had a gun to his head. Police agreed not to stop the vehicle by force, and a low-speed chase ensued. Los Angeles news helicopters learned of the event unfolding on their freeways, and live television coverage began. As millions watched, the Bronco was escorted across Los Angeles by a phalanx of police cars. Just before 8 p.m., the dramatic journey ended when Cowlings pulled into the Rockingham estate. After an hour of tense negotiation, Simpson emerged from the vehicle and surrendered. In the vehicle was found a travel bag containing, among other things, Simpson's passport, a disguise kit consisting of a fake moustache and beard, and a revolver. Three days later, Simpson appeared before a judge and pleaded not guilty.
Simpson's subsequent criminal trial was a sensational media event of unprecedented proportions. It was the longest trial ever held in California, and courtroom television cameras captured the carnival-like atmosphere of the proceedings. The prosecution's mountain of evidence was systemically called into doubt by Simpson's team of expensive attorneys, who made the dramatic case that their client was framed by unscrupulous and racist police officers. Citing the questionable character of detective Mark Fuhrman and alleged blunders in the police investigation, defense lawyers painted Simpson as yet another African American victim of the white judicial system. The jurors' reasonable doubt grew when the defense spent weeks attacking the damning DNA evidence, arguing in overly technical terms that delays and other anomalies in the gathering of evidence called the findings into question. Critics of the trial accused Judge Lance Ito of losing control of his courtroom.
In polls, a majority of African Americans believed Simpson to be innocent of the crime, while white America was confident of his guilt. However, the jury--made up of nine African Americans, two whites, and one Hispanic--was not so divided; they took just four hours of deliberation to reach the verdict of not guilty on both murder charges. On October 3, 1995, an estimated 140 million Americans listened in on radio or watched on television as the verdict was delivered.
In February 1997, Simpson was found liable for several charges related to the murders in a civil trial and was forced to award $33.5 million in compensatory and punitive damages to the victims' families. However, with few assets remaining after his long and costly legal battle, he has avoided paying the damages. In September 2007, Simpson was again arrested on felony robbery charges related to the theft of sports memorabilia in Las Vegas
2003 - Roy Horn of Siegfried & Roy is attacked by one of the show's tigers, canceling the show until 2009, when they rejoined the tiger that mauled Roy just six years earlier.
2008 – The $700 billion bailout bill for the US financial system is signed by President Bush.
Births
1610 - Gabriel Lallemant, French-born Jesuit missionary (North American Martyrs) (d. 1649)
1790 - John Ross, also known as Guwisguwi (a mythological or rare migratory bird), was Principal Chief of the Cherokee Native American Nation from 1828-1866. Described as the Moses of his people, Ross led the Nation through tumultuous years of development, relocation to Oklahoma, and the American Civil War. (d. 1866)
1800- George Bancroft (d 1891) American historian and statesman who was prominent in promoting secondary education both in his home state and at the national level. During his tenure as U.S. Secretary of the Navy, he established the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1845. Among his best-known writings is the magisterial series, History of the United States, from the Discovery of the American Continent.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bancroft
1803 - John Gorrie (d 1855) American physician and early pioneer in the invention of the artificial manufacture of ice, refrigeration, and air conditioning. While he was a Naval officer stationed at Apalachicola Florida when he needed ice to treat malaria patients with fever, for, he reasoned, people living in cold climates never got malaria. He built a small steam engine to drive a piston in a cylinder immersed in brine. The piston first compressed the air, and then on the second stroke, when the air expanded, it drew heat from the brine. The chilled brine was used to cool air or make ice. He was granted the first U.S. Patent for mechanical refrigeration in 1851. Dr. Gorrie was posthumously honored by Florida, when his statue was placed in Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gorrie
1804 - Townsend Harris (d 1878) New York City merchant and minor politician, and the first United States Consul General to Japan. He negotiated the "Harris Treaty" between the US and Japan and is credited as the diplomat who first opened the Empire of Japan to foreign trade and culture in the Edo period.
1806 Oliver Cowdery, early Mormon leader, (d. 3 March 1850).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Cowdery
1830 - George Bailey Brayton (d 1892). American engineer who invented the first commercial gas internal combustion engine (patented 2 Apr 1872), which he manufactured and sold in the Providence, Rhode Island, area. Its principle of continuous ignition later became the basis for the turbine engine. A pressurized air-fuel mixture from a reservoir was ignited upon entering a water-cooled cylinder. The Brayton engine was given trials powering watercraft, one of John Holland's submarines and one used for a few months installed in a carriage (1872-3). His earlier career included developing steam engines.
1832 Carolina (Lina) Vilhelmina Sandell Berg, Swedish Lutheran hymnist (d. 27 July 1903). Carolina Sandell (1832 to 1903) Miraculously healed of paralysis, she sang. Carolina "Lina" Sandell was born in Froderyd, Sweden. At the age of twelve she was miraculously healed of a paralysis and from this experience began writing hymns of love and gratitude. She authored obout 650 hymns before her death at age 71 and is called the Swedish Fanny Crosby. She credited the popularity of her hymns to the music written for them by Oscar Arnfelt a "spiritual troubadour" of his day. Jenny Lind, a famous Swedish soprano, published many of Lina's hymns. Two that we sing are "Day by Day" and "Children of the Heavenly Father." In 1867 Carolina married C. Berg.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lina_Sandell
1854 - Major William Crawford Gorgas (d 1920). U.S. Army surgeon who contributed greatly to the building of the Panama Canal by introducing mosquito control to prevent yellow fever and malaria. Originally, Gorgas doubted the conclusion of Walter Reed's Yellow Fever Commission in Cuba (1900) that the mosquito was the only means by which the disease spread. Nevertheless, Gorgas supported the new policy and eventually became the most active proponent of the mosquito theory in the United States. In Cuba, he assisted in eliminating mosquito breeding grounds. In 1904, Gorgas led the ten-year anti-mosquito campaign to wipe out yellow fever in Panama.
1898 - Thomas Leo McCarey (d 1969) was an American film director, screenwriter and producer. During his lifetime he was involved in nearly 200 movies, especially comedies, a devout Roman Catholic and deeply concerned with social issues. During the 1940s, his work became more serious and his politics more conservative. In 1944 he directed Going My Way, a story about an enterprising priest, the youthful Father Chuck O'Malley, played by Bing Crosby, for which he won his second Best Director Oscar. His share in the profits of this smash hit gave McCarey the highest reported income in the U.S. for the year 1944, and its follow-up, The Bells of St. Mary's (1945), which was made by McCarey's own production company, was similarly successful.
1899 - Gertrude Berg Harlem NYC, actress (Molly Goldberg-The Goldbergs)
1900 - Thomas Clayton Wolfe American novelist (Look Homeward Angel) (d. 1938)
1904 - Charles J. Pedersen (d 1989). Korean-American chemist who, along with Jean-Marie Lehn and Donald J. Cram, was awarded the 1987 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his synthesis of the crown ethers - a group of organic compounds with structure-specific interactions of high selectivity when reacting with other atoms and molecules much as do the molecules in living organisms, i.e. molecules that can "recognize" each other and choose with which other molecules they will form complexes. The three researchers studied chemical and physical properties of these complexes and have elucidated the factors that determine the ability of the molecules to recognize each other and fit into one another like a key fits a lock.
1919 - James M. Buchanan, American Nobel Prize-winning economist
1925 - Gore Vidal writer/playwright (Myra Breckinridge, Lincoln)
1935 - Charles M Duke Jr Charlotte NC, Brig Gen USAF/astronaut (Apol 16)
1938 - Eddie Cochran, American singer and guitarist, (C'Mon Everybody)(d. 1960)
1938 - David Ross "Dave" Obey Wisconsin politician, Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives since 1969, representing Wisconsin's 7th congressional district.
1941 - Chubby Checker, American singer-songwriter
1943 - Jeff Bingaman, Democratic U.S. Senator of New Mexico
1951 - David Mark Winfield American former Major League Baseball player, currently Executive Vice President/Senior Advisor of the San Diego Padres and an analyst for the ESPN program Baseball Tonight. Over his 22-year career, he played for six teams: the San Diego Padres, New York Yankees, California Angels, Toronto Blue Jays, Minnesota Twins, and Cleveland Indians. In 2004, ESPN named him the third-best all-around athlete of all time in any sport. He is a member of both the Baseball Hall of Fame and the College Baseball Hall of Fame.
1951 - Kathryn D Sullivan Paterson NJ, geologist, PhD/astro (STS 41-G, 28, 31, 45), first American woman to walk in space.
1954 - Dennis Lee "Eck" Eckersley , former American Major League Baseball player who was born in Oakland, California. Eckersley had success as a starter, but gained his greatest fame as a closer, becoming the first of only two pitchers in Major League history to have both a 20-win season and a 50-save season in a career (the other being John Smoltz), elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2004, his first year of eligibility.
1954 - Al Sharpton, American Baptist minister
1954 - Stevie Ray Vaughan, American blues musician (d. 1990)
1959 - Fred Couples, American golfer
1962 - Tommy Lee, American Drummer
1984 - Ashlee Simpson-Wentz, American singer
Deaths
1226 - Saint Francis of Assisi (born Giovanni Francesco di Bernardone, 1181)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_of_Assisi
1656 - Myles Standish Plymouth Colony leader, dies (birth date unknown)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myles_Standish
1838 - Black Hawk (chief), Leader of the Sauk Native American tribe (b. 1767)
1873 - Captain Jack, or Kintpuash Modoc tribal leader
1877 - James Roosevelt Bayley, first Bishop of Newark, New Jersey, and the eighth Archbishop of Baltimore (b. 1814)
1867 - Elias Howe (b 1819) American inventor, was born in Spencer, Mass. It was Walter Hunt, in 1834, who built America's first sewing machine, then thought about it a destroyer of home stitchers' jobs, and didn't pursue it. Howe did. Howe was granted a patent on his own machine on 10 Sep 1846. Commercial success came slowly, requiring the defense of his patent against Isaac Singer's better marketed machine. Eventually he gained riches, but died young at 49. By then, his sewing machine helped revolutionize garment manufacture in the factory and in the home.
1881 - Orson Pratt (b 1811) leader in the Latter Day Saint movement and an original member of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orson_Pratt
1892 Samuel Longfellow, American clergyman and brother of poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882), (b 18 Jun1819). Like his brother, Samuel also wrote and published collections of verse.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orson_Pratt
1910 - Lucy Beaman Taylor (née Hobbs) (b 1833) first woman dentist in America to graduate (1866) from a dental college as a Doctor of Dental Surgery. Earlier, being long refused admission to dental schools (1859-65), she had acquired the skills of dentistry, and practiced without a diploma, as was common at the time. Then the Iowa State Dental Society supported Lucy's ambition for a college degree, demanded her admission, and she was accepted by the Ohio College of Dentistry. After graduation, she practiced for a short time in Chicago, then married James M. Taylor and taught him dentistry. The couple moved to Lawrence, Kansas, in December, 1867, opened a joint office and soon enjoyed a prosperous practice (1867-86).
home.comcast.net/~thorsdag/LucyHobbsTaylor.html
1919 Daniel B. Towner (b. 5 Apr 1850), American music evangelist
www.cyberhymnal.org/bio/t/o/w/towner_db.htm
1936 - John Heisman, American football coach (b. 1869)
1953 - Florence Rena Sabin (b 1871) American anatomist who was one of the first women physicians to pursue a research career. Her investigation of the lymphatic system proved that it developed from the veins in the embryo and grew out into tissues, the reverse of then prevailing understanding. In 1903, she became the first woman on the faculty at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. It had initially been reluctant to hire a woman, but she had shown exceptional skill in papers published during a fellowship there. She moved in 1925 to head the cellular immunology section at the Rockefeller Institute, where she researched the body's white blood cells reaction to tuberculosis infection. In 1926, she was the first woman elected to the National Academy of Sciences.«
1967 - Writer, singer and folk icon Woody Guthrie dies. On October 3, 1967, Woody Guthrie, godfather of the 1950s folk revival movement, dies.
In 1963, Bob Dylan was asked by the authors of a forthcoming book on Woody Guthrie to contribute a 25-word comment summarizing his thoughts on the man who had probably been his greatest formative influence. Dylan responded instead with a 194-line poem called "Thoughts on Woody Guthrie," which took as its theme the eternal human search for hope. "And where do you look for this hope that yer seekin'?" Dylan asks in the poem, before proceeding to a kind of answer:
You can either go to the church of your choice
Or you can go to Brooklyn State Hospital
You'll find God in the church of your choice
You'll find Woody Guthrie in Brooklyn State Hospital
Woodrow Wilson Guthrie, whom Dylan would later call "the true voice of the American spirit," was a native of Okemah, Oklahoma, who was born in 1912 and thus entered adulthood just as America entered the Great Depression. Already an accomplished, self-taught musician, Woody Guthrie began writing music in earnest following his experiences traveling west to California with other Dust Bowl refugees in the 1930s. His first public exposure came during the latter part of that decade as a regular on radio station KFVD Los Angeles, but his most important work took place following a move to New York City in 1939.
In his first two years in New York, Guthrie made a series of landmark recordings for Alan Lomax of the Library of Congress as well as the album Dust Bowl Ballads, which served as the first introduction for many to a form that Guthrie helped pioneer: protest folk. Most famously in "This Land Is Your Land"—written in 1940 and first recorded in 1944—Guthrie fused long-established American musical traditions with a populist, left-wing political sensibility to create an entirely new template for contemporary folk. In so doing, of course, he laid the groundwork not only for the great folk revival of the 1950s and 60s, but also for such iconoclastic heirs to that movement as Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen.
In his late 30s, Woody Guthrie began to fall ill, displaying the ambiguous physical and psychological symptoms of what would eventually be diagnosed as Huntington's chorea, a genetic disorder that had probably killed his mother in 1930. In the 1950s, treatment for Huntington's generally meant institutionalization in a psychiatric hospital, and Woody Guthrie spent his final 12 years in such facilities. In fact, it was in New Jersey's Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital that a young Bob Dylan first encountered the man he'd traveled all the way from Minnesota to see.
Woody Guthrie was moved to Brooklyn State Hospital in 1961 and again in 1966 to Creedmore Psychiatric Center in the borough of Queens. He died at Creedmore on this day in 1967, at the age of 55.
1986 - Vince DiMaggio, American Baseball Player (b. 1912)
1993 - Sgt. First Class Randy Shughart, Medal of Honor recipient (b. 1958)
1993 - Master Sgt. Gary Gordon, Medal of Honor recipient (b. 1960)
Christian Feast Day:
Abd-al-Masih (martyr)
Ewald the Black and Ewald the Fair
akaCG
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_03
www.scopesys.com/cgi-bin/today2.cgi
www.history.com/this-day-in-history/ojsimpson-acquitted
www.amug.org/~jpaul/oct03.html
www.weatherforyou.com/cgi-bin/weather_history/today2S.pl
www.todayinsci.com/10/10_03.htm
daysuntil.com/Election-Day/index.html
www.lutheranhistory.org/history/tih1003.htm
www.cyberhymnal.org/index.htm#lk
www.christianity.com/church/church-history/birthdays/10-03.html