Post by farmgal on Oct 22, 2012 14:34:32 GMT -5
October 23 is the 296th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar.
There are 70 days remaining until the end of the year.
Days left until November 06, 2012 15
Countdown until Obama leaves Office
www.obamaclock.org/
U.S. Debt Clock: www.usdebtclock.org/
787 The Second Council of Nicaea closed.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Council_of_Nicaea
1694 British/American colonial forces, led by Sir William Phipps, fail to seize Quebec from the French.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Phips
1761 - A hurricane struck southeastern New England. It was the most violent in thirty years. Thousands of trees blocked roads in Massachsuetts and Rhode Island. (David Ludlum)
1777 British fleet suffers defeat at Fort Mifflin, Pennsylvania. On this day in 1777, a British Royal Navy fleet of ships, trying to open up supply lines along the Delaware River and the occupying British army in Philadelphia, is bombarded by American cannon fire and artillery from Fort Mifflin, Pennsylvania.
Six British ships were severely damaged, including the 64-gun battleship HMS Augusta and the 20-gun sloop Merlin, which both suffered direct hits before they were run aground and subsequently destroyed. More than 60 British troops aboard the Augusta were killed, while the crewmembers aboard the Merlin abandoned ship, narrowly avoiding a similar fate.
Although the American forces defending Fort Mifflin were undoubtedly victorious on October 23, 1777, the battle continued throughout the month of October and into November. With much of the fort destroyed and under continuous artillery and cannon fire, the American forces abandoned Fort Mifflin on November 16, 1777.
The capture of Fort Mifflin gave the British Royal Navy near complete control of the Delaware River up to Red Bank, New Jersey. Fearing that the fall of Fort Mercer, located across the Delaware from Fort Mifflin, was imminent, Continental Army Colonel Christopher Greene ordered a full retreat off all Patriot troops from the fort and the burning of all buildings and ships to prevent their capture by the British. General Charles Cornwallis took over the evacuated fort, guaranteeing a safe winter for the British forces occupying Philadelphia, while their disheartened Continental counterparts froze at Valley Forge.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Mifflin#American_Revolutionary_War
1813 American fur traders turn over Astoria, Oregon, to the British. On this day in 1813, the Americans operating the Pacific Fur Company trading post in Astoria, Oregon, turn the post over to their rivals in the British North West Company, and for the next three decades Britons dominate the fur trade of the Pacific Northwest.
The town and fur trading post at Astoria were founded in 1811 at the behest of John Jacob Astor, a German-born American immigrant who had hoped to beat out his British rivals and develop the Pacific Northwest fur trade for America. Unfortunately for Astor, the outbreak of the War of 1812 between the U.S. and Great Britain threw the fate of his enterprise into doubt, raising the threat that at any moment a British warship might arrive and seize Astoria as a spoil of war. Astor's partners in the Pacific Fur Company were mostly Canadian, and they saw little reason to risk losing their entire investment in a British takeover so they sold their interests to the British North West Company in early October 1813. Just as they had feared, within weeks of the sale a man-of-war arrived and took possession of Astoria for Great Britain. In December 1813, the stars and strips came down, the Union Jack went up, and Astoria became Fort George.
Although Great Britain gave the settlement of Astoria back to the United States after the War of 1812, the British maintained control of Fort George and the Pacific Northwest fur trade, primarily through the royally chartered Hudson Bay Company. For the next 20 years the Hudson Bay Company's British representatives ruled as benevolent despots over the traders, settlers, and Indians of the Pacific Northwest. By the 1840s, the beaver population had dwindled, while American settlement in the area was on the rise. Unwilling to protect the Hudson Bay Company's claim to the region, the British agreed to accept American control of the territory below the 49th parallel in 1846 and ceded to the U.S. the territory encompassing the future states of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astoria,_Oregon#History
1819 The first boat passed through the Erie canal. The trial trip and excursion was made by the Chief Engineer of Rome, from Utica to Rome and returned the next day. Governor DeWitt Clinton and state officials with ladies and gentlemen about seventy persons on board, composed the party. The boat was named in compliment to Benjamin Wright, then chief engineer of the Erie canal.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erie_Canal
1843 "Indian Summer" was routed by cold and snow that brought sleighing from the Poconos to Vermont. A foot of snow blanketed Haverhill NH and Newberry VT, and 18 to 24 inches were reported in some of the higher elevations. Snow stayed on the ground until the next spring. (22nd-23rd) (Sandra and TI Richard Sanders - 1987) (The Weather Channel)
1850 The first National Women's Rights Convention begins in Worcester, Massachusetts, United States.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Women%27s_Rights_Convention
1855 Rival governments in bleeding Kansas. In opposition to the fraudulently elected pro-slavery legislature of Kansas, the Kansas Free State forces set up a governor and legislature under their Topeka Constitution, a document that outlaws slavery in the territory.
Trouble in territorial Kansas began with the signing of the Kansas-Nebraska Act by President Franklin Pierce in 1854. The act stipulated that settlers in the newly created territories of Nebraska and Kansas would decide by popular vote whether their territory would be free or slave. In early 1855, Kansas' first election proved a violent affair, as more than 5,000 so-called Border Ruffians invaded the territory from western Missouri and forced the election of a pro-slavery legislature. To prevent further bloodshed, Andrew H. Reeder, the territorial governor appointed by President Pierce, reluctantly approved the election. A few months later, the Kansas Free State forces were formed, armed by supporters in the North and featuring the leadership of militant abolitionist John Brown.
In May 1856, Border Ruffians sacked the abolitionist town of Lawrence, and in retaliation a small Free State force under John Brown massacred five pro-slavery Kansans along the Pottawatomie Creek. During the next four years, raids, skirmishes, and massacres continued in "Bleeding Kansas," as it became popularly known. In 1861, the irrepressible differences in Kansas were swallowed up by the outbreak of full-scale civil war in America.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleeding_Kansas
1857 Delegates from eight states met in Nashville and organized the Southern Baptist Sunday School Union. The organization proved short-lived, when it was nullified by the onset of the American Civil War.
www.baptisthistory.org/sbaptistbeginnings.htm
1861 U.S. President Abraham Lincoln suspends the writ of habeas corpus in Washington, D.C., for all military-related cases.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habeas_corpus_in_the_United_States#Suspension_during_the_Civil_War
1864 Battle of Westport, Missouri. Confederate General Sterling Price's raid on Missouri nearly turns into disaster when his army is pinned between two Union forces at Westport, near Kansas City. Although outnumbered two to one, Price managed to slip safely away after the Battle of Westport, which was the biggest battle west of the Mississippi River.
Price's six-week raid on Missouri was intended to capture a state that had been firmly in Union hands during much of the war. Price hoped to divert attention from the East, where Confederate armies had not done well in the late summer of 1864. A blow against Northern territory could also hurt the Republicans in the fall elections, and it could raise much-needed supplies.
Price entered Missouri from Arkansas in mid-September. His force moved through the state with little opposition, but Price failed to capture either St. Louis or Jefferson City. In mid-October, Price turned west up the Missouri River and captured several small Federal outposts. At Byram's Ford on October 22, Price's men pushed aside a small Union force attached to General Samuel Curtis's army. The rest of Curtis's men waited at Westport to the northwest. Price also faced a threat to his rear because Yankee cavalry under Alfred Pleasonton were moving in from the southeast. In short, Union troops were converging on Price from two directions.
On October 23, Price tried to fight his way out of his predicament by first attacking Curtis's troops along Brush Creek. The Confederates enjoyed some initial success as they drove the Federals across Brush Creek, but Price did not have sufficient reserves to continue the drive. Meanwhile, Pleasonton's men were attacking on the other side of the battlefield, placing Price in a dangerous position. As Pleasonton's men pushed the Confederates back, Curtis's men also turned the tide on the northwestern side of the battlefield. Price's troops broke, and a mad retreat to the southwest ensued. Price's army might have been completely destroyed if the two Union forces could have coordinated pursuit. Instead, the exhausted Yankees halted, hesitant to continue the fight.
Price's force was soundly defeated, though each side lost about 1,500 men. That was only about 10 percent of the Union troops, but it was 20 percent of the Rebel force. Price's men retreated into Kansas before the remnants of the force dispersed back into Texas and Oklahoma. In the end, Price's raid did little to disrupt the fall elections.
[a href="en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Westport"]en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Westport[/a][/url]
1890 President Benjamin Harrison extends borders of Nebraska. On this day in 1890, Benjamin Harrison issues a proclamation that extends the northern boundary of Nebraska into the Dakota territory. The decree also declares that all Indian claims to Nebraska territory have been officially "extinguished."
Harrison was the grandson of famed Indian fighter and treaty negotiator William Henry Harrison, who served one month as president in 1841 before succumbing to illness. The proclamation brought an official end to territorial conflicts in Nebraska between Indians and white settlers that had sporadically erupted from the 1860s to the late 1880s. As white settlement increased in Nebraska after the Homestead Act of 1862 (signed by President Abraham Lincoln), tribes such as the Sioux, Fox, Omaha and Ponca were gradually forced farther north onto reservations that could not sustain a traditional tribal way of life. Many Indians died from malaria, exposure or starvation. Members of the Ponca tried to return to their ancestral homelands in Nebraska and even took their case to court in 1879. The case made national headlines and earned the tribe sympathetic supporters. Although President Chester Arthur signed a decree in 1885 that returned a tiny portion of the Ponca's original lands, he stipulated that all other lands "unselected by" any Indian tribes would be returned to the public domain. This included portions of already established Sioux, Omaha and Ponca reservations. Harrison's proclamation of 1890 re-confirmed the boundaries of Ponca territory within the state of Nebraska and settled the rest of the disputed northern border, speeding settlement of Nebraska by whites.
Federal recognition of the Ponca tribe was officially terminated in 1966. Without their status as a recognized tribe, they lost title to what little land had been left to them by Harrison. One hundred years after Harrison's proclamation, on October 31, 1990, President George H.W. Bush reinstated the tribe, giving them the right to reestablish their homeland in the state of Nebraska.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakota_Territory
1915 Woman's suffrage: In New York City, 25,000-33,000 women march on Fifth Avenue to advocate their right to vote.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woman%27s_suffrage
1921 Unknown Soldier is selected. On October 23, 1921, in the French town of Chalons-sur-Marne, an American officer selects the body of the first "Unknown Soldier" to be honored among the approximately 77,000 United States servicemen killed on the Western Front during World War I.
According to the official records of the Army Graves Registration Service deposited in the U.S. National Archives in Washington, four bodies were transported to Chalons from the cemeteries of Aisne-Marne, Somme, Meuse-Argonne and Saint-Mihiel. All were great battlegrounds, and the latter two regions were the sites of two offensive operations in which American troops took a leading role in the decisive summer and fall of 1918. As the service records stated, the identity of the bodies was completely unknown: "The original records showing the internment of these bodies were searched and the four bodies selected represented the remains of soldiers of which there was absolutely no indication as to name, rank, organization or date of death."
The four bodies arrived at the Hotel de Ville in Chalons-sur-Marne on October 23, 1921. At 10 o’clock the next morning, French and American officials entered a hall where the four caskets were displayed, each draped with an American flag. Sergeant Edward Younger, the man given the task of making the selection, carried a spray of white roses with which to mark the chosen casket. According to the official account, Younger "entered the chamber in which the bodies of the four Unknown Soldiers lay, circled the caskets three times, then silently placed the flowers on the third casket from the left. He faced the body, stood at attention and saluted."
Bearing the inscription "An Unknown American who gave his life in the World War," the chosen casket traveled to Paris and then to Le Havre, France, where it would board the cruiser Olympia for the voyage across the Atlantic. Once back in the United States, the Unknown Soldier was buried in Arlington National Cemetery, near Washington, D.C.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomb_of_the_Unknown_Soldier
1921 Green Bay Packers play first NFL game, 7-6 win over Minneapolis. The Green Bay Packers were founded on August 11, 1919 by Curly Lambeau and Green Bay Press-Gazette sports editor George Whitney Calhoun. Lambeau solicited funds for uniforms from his employer, the Indian Packing Company. He was given $500 for uniforms and equipment, on the condition that the team be named for its sponsor. Today "Green Bay Packers" is the oldest team name still in use in the NFL.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Bay_Packers
1929 Great Depression: After a steady decline in stock market prices since a peak in September, the New York Stock Exchange begins to show signs of panic.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression_in_the_United_States
1929 The first North American transcontinental air service begins between New York City and Los Angeles, California.
1930 The first miniature golf tournament was held in Chattanooga, TN.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miniature_golf
1932 "Fred Allen Show" premieres on radio. He made the transition to radio with The Lint Bath Club Revue, which premiered October 23, 1932 on CBS and moved to NBC in 1933. Allen's perfectionism led him to move from sponsor to sponsor. His shows, for which he wrote much of the material himself, included The Salad Bowl Revue (1933), The Sal Hepatica Revue (1933-34), The Hour of Smiles (1934-35), and Town Hall Tonight (1935-40). The Fred Allen Show, his last series, ran from 1942 to 1949.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Allen
1935 Dutch Schultz, Abe Landau, Otto Berman, and Bernard "Lulu" Rosencrantz are fatally shot at a saloon in Newark, New Jersey in what will become known as The Chophouse Massacre.
1941 Walt Disney's "Dumbo" released. "Dumbo" is the fourth animated feature in the Disney animated features canon. Based upon a children's book of the same name by Helen Aberson and illustrated by Harold Perl, Dumbo was produced by Walt Disney, and first released on October 23, 1941 by RKO Radio Pictures. The main character is Jumbo Jr., a semi-anthropomorphic elephant who is cruelly nicknamed Dumbo. He is ridiculed for his big ears, but it turns out that he is capable of flying by using them as wings.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumbo
1941 "Clarinet a la King" was recorded by Benny Goodman and his orchestra -- on Okeh Records
1941 On this day in 1941, chief of the Soviet general staff, Georgi K. Zhukov, assumes command of Red Army operations to stop the German advance into the heart of Russia.
Zhukov's military career began during World War I, when he served with the Imperial Russian Army. He then joined the Red Army in 1918, taking time off to study military science in both the Soviet Union and Germany. By the outbreak of World War II, Zhukov was commander of the Soviet forces stationed on the Manchurian border and led a counteroffensive that beat back the Japanese attack in 1939.
By the time of the German invasion of Russia, Zhukov had been promoted from chief of staff of the Soviet army during the "winter war" against Finland, to commander in chief of the western front. It was in this capacity that he now prepared to beat back the German invaders, first from Moscow, and then from central Russia altogether. He would eventually be promoted to general and become a key player in the planning or execution of virtually every major Soviet engagement until the end of the war. Ultimately, he would represent the USSR at Germany's formal surrender and take command of the Soviet occupation of Germany.
Stalin's wise choice in handing so much power and responsibility to this one man was regretted only after the war, when Zhukov's popularity threatened his own. Stalin "rewarded" the general with obscure positions that wasted his talent and kept him out of the spotlight. Zhukov was finally made minister of defense after Stalin's death in 1953 in Premier Nikita Krushchev's new government. But as the military attempted to remove itself from the iron grip of internal Communist Party politics, Zhukov, who supported autonomy for the army, began to butt heads with the premier, who wanted to keep the Red Army under the Central Committee's collective thumb.
Ironically, when the Presidium, the "conservative" (in this case, Stalinist) legislative body that opposed certain "democratic" reforms proposed by Krushchev, attempted to push the premier from power, it was Zhukov who flew Central Committee members to Moscow to tip the balance of power and keep Krushchev's position secure. As a reward, Zhukov was made a full member of the Presidium, the first professional soldier ever to hold such an office (it also served to have a man who proved himself loyal on a body that was otherwise hostile). But Zhukov's renewed attempt to free the army from party control resulted in his dismissal by Krushchev. Zhukov would once again be lost to public view—until Krushchev's fall from power in 1964. Zhukov would eventually win the Order of Lenin medal (1966) and publish his autobiography (1969).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgi_K._Zhukov
1942 World War II: Second Battle of El Alamein: - At El Alamein in northern Egypt, the British Eighth Army under Field Marshal Montgomery begins a critical offensive to expel the Axis armies from Egypt.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Battle_of_El_Alamein
1942 All 12 passengers and crewmen aboard an American Airlines DC-3 airliner are killed when it is struck by a U.S. Army Air Forces bomber near Palm Springs, California. Amongst the victims is award-winning composer and songwriter Ralph Rainger ("Thanks for the Memory", "Love in Bloom", "Blue Hawaii").
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_28
1942 World War II: The Battle for Henderson Field begins during the Guadalcanal Campaign and ends on October 26.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_for_Henderson_Field
1944 World War II: Battle of Leyte Gulf --The largest naval battle in history begins in the Philippines.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Leyte_Gulf
1944 World War II: The Soviet Red Army enters Hungary.
1945 Jackie Robinson signs Montreal Royal contract. In 1945, Branch Rickey, the manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, requested a meeting with Robinson. Rickey wanted to integrate the major leagues and was looking for a player who could withstand the hostility that would be faced. After determining that Robinson was up to the task, he asked him to first play for the minor league team, the Montreal Royals. On October 23, 1945, it became official when Robinson signed a contract with the team.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackie_Robinson
1946 The United Nations General Assembly convenes for the first time, at an auditorium in Flushing, Queens, New York City.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assembly
1947 The first American husband and wife team to win a Nobel Prize, Carl and Gerty Cori (née Radnitz) of Washington University Medical School, were awarded the Physiology or Medicine Prize for "the discovery on how glycogen is converted to glucose in the body, and for the effects of hypophysis hormones on sugar metabolism." The prize was shared with Bernardo Alberto Houssay who worked on another aspect of sugar metabolism. In 1903, the French couple Pierre and Marie Curie were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics "in recognition of the extraordinary services they have rendered by their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel." (Marie was born in Poland.)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerty_Cori
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Ferdinand_Cori
1954 "Hey There" by Rosemary Clooney topped the charts. Clooney joined the Columbia roster in 1950 and made several hits for them, among them "You're Just in Love," "Beautiful Brown Eyes," "Half As Much," "Hey There," the number one hit "Come on-A My House," and "If Teardrops Were Pennies." Clooney had 13 Top 40 hits in the early '50s, among them duets with Guy Mitchell and Marlene Dietrich.
1956 First video recording on magnetic tape televised coast-to-coast. The first network use of RCA magnetic tape for color or black-and-white was presented on the "The Jonathan Winters Show." It consisted of a pre-recorded song sequence in color by Dorothy Collins during the program.
1956 Thousands of Hungarians protest against the government and Soviet occupation. (The Hungarian Revolution is crushed on November 4).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_Revolution_of_1956
1958 The Springhill Mine Bump -- An underground earthquake traps 174 miners in the No. 2 colliery at Springhill, Nova Scotia, the deepest coal mine in North America at the time. By November 1, rescuers from around the world had dug out 100 of the victims, marking the death toll at 74.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springhill_mining_disaster#1958_Bump
1958 The Smurfs, a fictional race of blue dwarves, later popularized in a Hanna-Barbera animated cartoon series, appear for the first time in the story La flute à six schtroumpfs, a Johan and Peewit adventure by Peyo which is serialized in the weekly comics magazine Spirou.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smurfs
1961 "Runaround Sue" by Dion topped the charts. The Del Satins ("In the Still of the Nite," "To the Aisle") backed up Dion instead of the Belmonts in his #1 hit Runaround Sue. Dion's career in popular music began in the 1950s with his group Dion & the Belmonts (named after his northern Bronx neighborhood, Belmont). He went solo in the early 1960s and continued to have hits with songs like "Runaround Sue", "The Wanderer" and "Ruby Baby."
1962 USAF Major Robert A Rushworth takes X-15 to 133,865 feet. Rushworth was selected for the X-15 program in 1958, and made his first flight on November 4, 1960. Over the next six years, he made 34 flights in the X-15, the most of any pilot. This included a flight to an altitude of 285,000 feet, made on June 27, 1963. This flight above 50 miles qualified Rushworth for astronaut wings, though he would have attained that honor sooner had the Man In Space Soonest project proceeded according to plan. On a later X-15 flight, he was awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross for successfully landing an X-15 after its nose wheel extended while flying at nearly Mach 5.
1965 “Yesterday” by the Beatles topped the charts.
1965 1st Cavalry Division launches Operation Silver Bayonet. In action following the clash at the Plei Me Special Forces camp 30 miles southwest of Pleiku earlier in the month, the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) launches Operation Silver Bayonet.
U.S. troops, in conjunction with South Vietnamese forces, sought to destroy North Vietnamese forces operating in Pleku Province in II Corps Tactical Zone (the Central Highlands). The operation concluded in November with a week of bitter fighting when fleeing North Vietnamese troops decided to protect an important staging area and supply base in the Ia Drang Valley. It was the bloodiest battle of the war to date. In one engagement, 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry fought a desperate three-day battle at Landing Zone X-Ray with the North Vietnamese 33rd and 66th Regiments; when the fighting was over, 834 Communists lay dead on the battlefield. In an associated engagement, 500 North Vietnamese ambushed another battalion from the 1st Cavalry Division at Landing Zone Albany, wiping out almost an entire company. Reported enemy casualties for Operation Silver Bayonet totaled 1,771. U.S. casualties included 240 killed in action.
1970 Gary Gabelich sets auto speed record 622.4 mph (1,002 kph). Reaction Dynamics, Inc., was looking for a driver about that time for the Blue Flame, a 37-foot-long, 4,950-pound vehicle powered by a liquid natural gas-hydrogen peroxide rocket engine. Gabelich jumped at the chance. The first attempt took place on September 22, 1970. It was a dismal failure, reaching a speed of only 426 mph compared to Breedlove's five-year-old record of 600.601 mph. A lot of tinkering and testing took place. Gabelich hit 609 mph on the first of two mandatory runs on October 15, but a mechanical problem prevented the second run. The same thing happened on October 23, when the first run reached 621 mph. Finally, on October 28, Gabelich and the Blue Flame averaged 617.602 mph on the first run and 627.207 on the second for a new land speed record of 622.407.
1970 Aretha Franklin, won a gold record for "Don’t Play that Song." The chart statistics are impressive in and of themselves: ten Top Ten hits in a roughly 18-month span between early 1967 and late 1968, for instance, and a steady stream of solid mid- to large-size hits for the next five years after that. Her Atlantic albums were also huge sellers, and far more consistent artistically than those of most soul stars of the era. "Don't Play That Song (You Lied)", a Ben E. King song covered by Aretha Franklin.
1971 "Maggie May" by Rod Stewart topped the charts. Stewart's record company didn't think this was a hit, so they released it as the B-side of "Reason To Believe." Disc jockeys liked this better, so they played it as the single instead. "Maggie May" became a huge hit in England and America. Stewart had a following in England as a member of The Faces, but was mostly unknown in the US. Stewart was the lead singer of The Faces when this was released. He put out solo albums while he was with the band because of contract obligations. When this became a hit, Faces shows were billed as "The Faces with Rod Stewart."
1972 Operation Linebacker, a US bombing campaign against North Vietnam in response to its Easter Offensive, ends after five months.
1973 Nixon agrees to turn over White House tape recordings to Judge Sirica.
1973 U.S. negotiators ask for further talks in Paris. Citing difficulties with South Vietnamese President Thieu, U.S. negotiators cable Hanoi requesting further negotiations in Paris over the proposed draft peace accord.
Thieu felt that he was being sold out by the United States to secure a peace agreement at any terms. President Richard Nixon and chief negotiator Henry Kissinger were attempting to craft a peace agreement that would satisfy Thieu but also bring the war to an end so that the rest of U.S. forces could be disengaged. In an attempt to show good faith to the North Vietnamese, Nixon suspended the Linebacker raids against Hanoi and Haiphong that had been initiated when the North Vietnamese had launched their Easter Offensive earlier in the year.
1976 Chicago has its first #1 hit with "If You Leave Me Now"Chicago—one of history's most prolific rock bands—has its first #1 hit on October 23, 1976, with "If You Leave Me Now."
The rock band Chicago churned out full-length albums at a rate that's never been surpassed by a pop group of their stature. Not only did the group release nine albums in their first seven years of existence (1969-75), but among those nine releases were four double albums and one quadruple album, Chicago at Carnegie Hall (1971). That's 16 LPs in seven years, all of them selling at an incredible rate, which means that in terms of sheer tonnage, Chicago probably shipped more vinyl than any other American rock band in the 1970s. It was a feat made all the more incredible by the fact that the members of Chicago could have walked through O'Hare Airport at the height of their success without attracting so much as a single screaming fan.
It's not that Chicago's fans didn't love them, for the certainly did. But the collective ethos of the band was to keep individual egos out of things, even to the point of using a logo rather than a picture of the band on nearly every one of their albums. "Chicago is the most successful experiment in group therapy ever to go down in history," founding member Robert Lamm has said. Critics may never have embraced the group's jazzy, middle-of-the road sound, but with upwards of 150 million albums sold worldwide, it's impossible to refute the quantitative argument for Chicago's greatness.
Chicago's success as album-sellers may overshadow their success on the singles charts, but not by very much. "If You Leave Me Now" became their first #1 hit on this day in 1976, but the group had already placed nine singles in the Billboard Top 10 by the time that Peter Cetera-penned ballad reached the top of the charts. Among those early hits were "25 Or 6 To 4" (1970), "Saturday In The Park" (1972) and "Just You 'N' Me" (1973), and many more were to follow. Chicago earned two more #1 hits post-1976 with "Hard To Say I'm Sorry" (1982) and "Look Away" (1988), and seven other Top 10s, including "Baby What A Big Surprise" (1977), "Hard Habit To Break" and "You're The Inspiration" (both 1982).
1977 American paleontologist Elso S. Barghoorn of Harvard announced the discovery of Pre-Cambian spherical one-celled algae microfossils (named Eobacterium) 3.4 billion years old, earth's earliest life forms. Barghoorn, with J. William Schopf, studied the 3.2 billion year old chert (a flintlike or quartz-like rock) of the Fig Tree formation in Transvaal, South Africa. Rubidium and strontium ratios in the chert suggested an age of over 3 billion years. The fossils are examples of Prokaryotes, organisms with simple cell wall containing organic chemicals. A huge number of varieties exist today. They all produce oxygen; and, in the Precambrian period, began to change the earth's primoidal reducing atmosphere to the oxygenated one we have today.
1981 US national debt hits $1 trillion
1982 "Jack and Diane" by John Cougar topped the charts. Mellencamp wrote this as a tribute to life in the rural working class. It's about a High School couple falling in love.Some of Mellencamp's high school photos and home movies were used to make the video. Mellencamp was known as "John Cougar" when he recorded this. His manager, Tony De Fries, convinced him that "Mellencamp" wouldn't work.
1983 U.S. Embassy in Beirut hit by massive car bomb. On this day, a suicide bomber drives a truck filled with 2,000 pounds of explosives into a U.S. Marine Corps barracks at the Beirut International Airport. The explosion killed 220 Marines, 18 sailors and three soldiers. A few minutes after that bomb went off, a second bomber drove into the basement of the nearby French paratroopers' barracks, killing 58 more people. Four months after the bombing, American forces left Lebanon without retaliating.
The Marines in Beirut were part of a multinational peacekeeping force that was trying to broker a truce between warring Christian and Muslim Lebanese factions. In 1981, American troops had supervised the withdrawal of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from Beirut and then had withdrawn themselves. They returned the next year, after Israel's Lebanese allies slaughtered nearly 1,000 unarmed Palestinian civilian refugees. Eighteen hundred Marine peacekeepers moved into an old Israeli Army barracks near the airport—a fortress with two-foot–thick walls that could, it seemed, withstand anything. Even after a van bomb killed 46 people at the U.S. Embassy in April, the American troops maintained their non-martial stance: their perimeter fence remained relatively unfortified, for instance and their sentries' weapons were unloaded.
At about 6:20 in the morning on October 23, 1983, a yellow Mercedes truck charged through the barbed-wire fence around the American compound and plowed past two guard stations. It drove straight into the barracks and exploded. Eyewitnesses said that the force of the blast caused the entire building to float up above the ground for a moment before it pancaked down in a cloud of pulverized concrete and human remains. FBI investigators said that it was the largest non-nuclear explosion since World War II and certainly the most powerful car bomb ever detonated.
After the bombing, President Ronald Reagan expressed outrage at the "despicable act" and vowed that American forces would stay in Beirut until they could forge a lasting peace. In the meantime, he devised a plan to bomb the Hezbollah training camp in Baalbek, Lebanon, where intelligence agents thought the attack had been planned. However, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger aborted the mission, reportedly because he did not want to strain relations with oil-producing Arab nations. The next February, American troops withdrew from Lebanon altogether.
The first real car bomb—or, in this case, horse-drawn-wagon bomb—exploded on September 16, 1920 outside the J.P. Morgan Company's offices in New York City's financial district. Italian anarchist Mario Buda had planted it there, hoping to kill Morgan himself; as it happened, the robber baron was out of town, but 40 other people died (and about 200 were wounded) in the blast. There were occasional car-bomb attacks after that—most notably in Saigon in 1952, Algiers in 1962, and Palermo in 1963—but vehicle weapons remained relatively uncommon until the 1970s and 80s, when they became the terrifying trademark of groups like the Irish Republican Army and Hezbollah. In 1995, right-wing terrorists Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols used a bomb hidden in a Ryder truck to blow up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_United_States_embassy_bombing
1987 - Thirteen cities in the southeastern U.S. reported record low temperatures for the date. It marked the sixth record low of the month for Greer SC and Columbia SC, and the ninth of the month for Montgomery AL. Showers and thunderstorms deluged Corpus Christi TX with five inches of rain. Winnemucca NV reported their first measurable rain in ninety-two days, while Yakima WA reported a record 96 days in a row without measurable rainfall. (Storm Data) (The National Weather Summary)
1988 Denver, CO, reported their first freeze of the autumn, and Chicago, IL, reported their first snow. In Texas, afternoon highs of 93 degrees at Austin and San Antonio were records for the date. (The National Weather Summary)
1989 - A storm moving out of the Gulf of Alaska brought rain and high winds to the Central Pacific Coast Region. High winds in Nevada gusted to 67 mph at Reno, and thunderstorms around Redding CA produced wind gusts to 66 mph. Locally heavy rains in the San Francisco area caused numerous mudslides, adding insult to injury for earthquake victims. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data)
1989 Gas leak kills 23 at plastics factory. On this day in 1989, 23 people die in a series of explosions sparked by an ethylene leak at a factory in Pasadena, Texas. The blasts, which took place at a Phillips Petroleum Company plant, were caused by inadequate safety procedures.
A polyethylene reactor at the Phillips 66 Chemical Complex in Pasadena created chemical compounds necessary for the production of plastics. The plant produced millions of pounds of plastics daily for use in toys and containers.
In an effort to cut costs, Phillips subcontracted much of the necessary maintenance work in the plant. Fish Engineering and Construction, the primary subcontractor, did not enjoy a stellar reputation even prior to the October 23 disaster. In August, a Fish employee opened gas piping for maintenance without isolating the line. This caused flammable solvents and gas to be sent into a work area where they ignited, killing one worker and injuring four others.
Fish was undertaking maintenance work on the plant's polyethylene reactor on October 23 when, once again, problems arose. A valve was not secured properly, and at approximately 1 p.m., 85,000 pounds of highly flammable ethylene-isobutane gas were released into the plant. There were no detectors or warning systems in place to give notice of the impending disaster. Within two minutes, the large gas cloud ignited with the power of two-and-a-half tons of dynamite.
The explosion could be heard for miles in every direction and the resulting fireball was visible at least 15 miles away. Twenty-three workers at Phillips were killed and another 130 were seriously injured as the first explosion set off a chain reaction of blasts.
A subsequent investigation found that although the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) had cited Phillips for several serious safety violations in previous years, it had not done a comprehensive inspection of the plant since 1975. Other testimony revealed that inadequate safety procedures used during the maintenance process had left the plant vulnerable to disaster. However, no criminal charges were filed against Phillips or its managers.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillips_Disaster_of_1989
1998 An abortion-performing doctor is murdered. Doctor Barnett Slepian is shot to death inside his home in Amherst, New York, by an anti-abortion radical, marking the fifth straight year that a doctor who was willing to perform abortions in upstate New York and Canada had been the victim of a sniper attack. Slepian and his family had just returned from religious services at their synagogue when a bullet shattered the kitchen window and struck him in the back. Each of the five attacks, the first four of which did not result in fatal wounds, occurred in late October or early November. It is believed that the dates were intentionally picked to center around Canada's Remembrance Day (November 11).
Investigators in both Canada and the United States believe that James Charles Kopp, known among abortion opponents as "Atomic Dog," was responsible for Slepian's murder. Although he had been seen in the vicinity of Slepian's home in the weeks before the killing, Kopp, a member of the terrorist group Army of God, was nowhere to be found after the incident.
In the aftermath of Slepian's murder, at least four abortion doctors in upstate New York quit practicing, and countless other clinic staff members left their jobs. Because groups such as the American Coalition of Life Activists have openly promoted violence against abortion providers, there is some reason to believe that the atmosphere of fear has limited women's ability to choose abortion in certain areas of the nation.
Following Slepian's murder, a serious crackdown on anti-abortion terror helped to cut down the number of violent incidents. In 1999, for the first time in six years, there were no sniper attacks against any doctors during the course of the year. As the 20th century came to an end, Kopp remained at large, despite a $500,000 reward for information leading to his capture from the Justice Department and his place on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List. In March 2001, the authorities caught up with Kopp in Europe, and he was extradited from France on the condition he would not receive the death penalty. On May 9, 2003, he was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnett_Slepian
2001 A relieved NASA team celebrated as the 2001 Mars Odyssey slipped into orbit around the Red Planet, two years after back-to-back failures by Mars missions
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_Mars_Odyssey
2001 Apple releases the iPod.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod
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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_23
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There are 70 days remaining until the end of the year.
Days left until November 06, 2012 15
Countdown until Obama leaves Office
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U.S. Debt Clock: www.usdebtclock.org/
787 The Second Council of Nicaea closed.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Council_of_Nicaea
1694 British/American colonial forces, led by Sir William Phipps, fail to seize Quebec from the French.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Phips
1761 - A hurricane struck southeastern New England. It was the most violent in thirty years. Thousands of trees blocked roads in Massachsuetts and Rhode Island. (David Ludlum)
1777 British fleet suffers defeat at Fort Mifflin, Pennsylvania. On this day in 1777, a British Royal Navy fleet of ships, trying to open up supply lines along the Delaware River and the occupying British army in Philadelphia, is bombarded by American cannon fire and artillery from Fort Mifflin, Pennsylvania.
Six British ships were severely damaged, including the 64-gun battleship HMS Augusta and the 20-gun sloop Merlin, which both suffered direct hits before they were run aground and subsequently destroyed. More than 60 British troops aboard the Augusta were killed, while the crewmembers aboard the Merlin abandoned ship, narrowly avoiding a similar fate.
Although the American forces defending Fort Mifflin were undoubtedly victorious on October 23, 1777, the battle continued throughout the month of October and into November. With much of the fort destroyed and under continuous artillery and cannon fire, the American forces abandoned Fort Mifflin on November 16, 1777.
The capture of Fort Mifflin gave the British Royal Navy near complete control of the Delaware River up to Red Bank, New Jersey. Fearing that the fall of Fort Mercer, located across the Delaware from Fort Mifflin, was imminent, Continental Army Colonel Christopher Greene ordered a full retreat off all Patriot troops from the fort and the burning of all buildings and ships to prevent their capture by the British. General Charles Cornwallis took over the evacuated fort, guaranteeing a safe winter for the British forces occupying Philadelphia, while their disheartened Continental counterparts froze at Valley Forge.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Mifflin#American_Revolutionary_War
1813 American fur traders turn over Astoria, Oregon, to the British. On this day in 1813, the Americans operating the Pacific Fur Company trading post in Astoria, Oregon, turn the post over to their rivals in the British North West Company, and for the next three decades Britons dominate the fur trade of the Pacific Northwest.
The town and fur trading post at Astoria were founded in 1811 at the behest of John Jacob Astor, a German-born American immigrant who had hoped to beat out his British rivals and develop the Pacific Northwest fur trade for America. Unfortunately for Astor, the outbreak of the War of 1812 between the U.S. and Great Britain threw the fate of his enterprise into doubt, raising the threat that at any moment a British warship might arrive and seize Astoria as a spoil of war. Astor's partners in the Pacific Fur Company were mostly Canadian, and they saw little reason to risk losing their entire investment in a British takeover so they sold their interests to the British North West Company in early October 1813. Just as they had feared, within weeks of the sale a man-of-war arrived and took possession of Astoria for Great Britain. In December 1813, the stars and strips came down, the Union Jack went up, and Astoria became Fort George.
Although Great Britain gave the settlement of Astoria back to the United States after the War of 1812, the British maintained control of Fort George and the Pacific Northwest fur trade, primarily through the royally chartered Hudson Bay Company. For the next 20 years the Hudson Bay Company's British representatives ruled as benevolent despots over the traders, settlers, and Indians of the Pacific Northwest. By the 1840s, the beaver population had dwindled, while American settlement in the area was on the rise. Unwilling to protect the Hudson Bay Company's claim to the region, the British agreed to accept American control of the territory below the 49th parallel in 1846 and ceded to the U.S. the territory encompassing the future states of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astoria,_Oregon#History
1819 The first boat passed through the Erie canal. The trial trip and excursion was made by the Chief Engineer of Rome, from Utica to Rome and returned the next day. Governor DeWitt Clinton and state officials with ladies and gentlemen about seventy persons on board, composed the party. The boat was named in compliment to Benjamin Wright, then chief engineer of the Erie canal.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erie_Canal
1843 "Indian Summer" was routed by cold and snow that brought sleighing from the Poconos to Vermont. A foot of snow blanketed Haverhill NH and Newberry VT, and 18 to 24 inches were reported in some of the higher elevations. Snow stayed on the ground until the next spring. (22nd-23rd) (Sandra and TI Richard Sanders - 1987) (The Weather Channel)
1850 The first National Women's Rights Convention begins in Worcester, Massachusetts, United States.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Women%27s_Rights_Convention
1855 Rival governments in bleeding Kansas. In opposition to the fraudulently elected pro-slavery legislature of Kansas, the Kansas Free State forces set up a governor and legislature under their Topeka Constitution, a document that outlaws slavery in the territory.
Trouble in territorial Kansas began with the signing of the Kansas-Nebraska Act by President Franklin Pierce in 1854. The act stipulated that settlers in the newly created territories of Nebraska and Kansas would decide by popular vote whether their territory would be free or slave. In early 1855, Kansas' first election proved a violent affair, as more than 5,000 so-called Border Ruffians invaded the territory from western Missouri and forced the election of a pro-slavery legislature. To prevent further bloodshed, Andrew H. Reeder, the territorial governor appointed by President Pierce, reluctantly approved the election. A few months later, the Kansas Free State forces were formed, armed by supporters in the North and featuring the leadership of militant abolitionist John Brown.
In May 1856, Border Ruffians sacked the abolitionist town of Lawrence, and in retaliation a small Free State force under John Brown massacred five pro-slavery Kansans along the Pottawatomie Creek. During the next four years, raids, skirmishes, and massacres continued in "Bleeding Kansas," as it became popularly known. In 1861, the irrepressible differences in Kansas were swallowed up by the outbreak of full-scale civil war in America.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleeding_Kansas
1857 Delegates from eight states met in Nashville and organized the Southern Baptist Sunday School Union. The organization proved short-lived, when it was nullified by the onset of the American Civil War.
www.baptisthistory.org/sbaptistbeginnings.htm
1861 U.S. President Abraham Lincoln suspends the writ of habeas corpus in Washington, D.C., for all military-related cases.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habeas_corpus_in_the_United_States#Suspension_during_the_Civil_War
1864 Battle of Westport, Missouri. Confederate General Sterling Price's raid on Missouri nearly turns into disaster when his army is pinned between two Union forces at Westport, near Kansas City. Although outnumbered two to one, Price managed to slip safely away after the Battle of Westport, which was the biggest battle west of the Mississippi River.
Price's six-week raid on Missouri was intended to capture a state that had been firmly in Union hands during much of the war. Price hoped to divert attention from the East, where Confederate armies had not done well in the late summer of 1864. A blow against Northern territory could also hurt the Republicans in the fall elections, and it could raise much-needed supplies.
Price entered Missouri from Arkansas in mid-September. His force moved through the state with little opposition, but Price failed to capture either St. Louis or Jefferson City. In mid-October, Price turned west up the Missouri River and captured several small Federal outposts. At Byram's Ford on October 22, Price's men pushed aside a small Union force attached to General Samuel Curtis's army. The rest of Curtis's men waited at Westport to the northwest. Price also faced a threat to his rear because Yankee cavalry under Alfred Pleasonton were moving in from the southeast. In short, Union troops were converging on Price from two directions.
On October 23, Price tried to fight his way out of his predicament by first attacking Curtis's troops along Brush Creek. The Confederates enjoyed some initial success as they drove the Federals across Brush Creek, but Price did not have sufficient reserves to continue the drive. Meanwhile, Pleasonton's men were attacking on the other side of the battlefield, placing Price in a dangerous position. As Pleasonton's men pushed the Confederates back, Curtis's men also turned the tide on the northwestern side of the battlefield. Price's troops broke, and a mad retreat to the southwest ensued. Price's army might have been completely destroyed if the two Union forces could have coordinated pursuit. Instead, the exhausted Yankees halted, hesitant to continue the fight.
Price's force was soundly defeated, though each side lost about 1,500 men. That was only about 10 percent of the Union troops, but it was 20 percent of the Rebel force. Price's men retreated into Kansas before the remnants of the force dispersed back into Texas and Oklahoma. In the end, Price's raid did little to disrupt the fall elections.
[a href="en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Westport"]en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Westport[/a][/url]
1890 President Benjamin Harrison extends borders of Nebraska. On this day in 1890, Benjamin Harrison issues a proclamation that extends the northern boundary of Nebraska into the Dakota territory. The decree also declares that all Indian claims to Nebraska territory have been officially "extinguished."
Harrison was the grandson of famed Indian fighter and treaty negotiator William Henry Harrison, who served one month as president in 1841 before succumbing to illness. The proclamation brought an official end to territorial conflicts in Nebraska between Indians and white settlers that had sporadically erupted from the 1860s to the late 1880s. As white settlement increased in Nebraska after the Homestead Act of 1862 (signed by President Abraham Lincoln), tribes such as the Sioux, Fox, Omaha and Ponca were gradually forced farther north onto reservations that could not sustain a traditional tribal way of life. Many Indians died from malaria, exposure or starvation. Members of the Ponca tried to return to their ancestral homelands in Nebraska and even took their case to court in 1879. The case made national headlines and earned the tribe sympathetic supporters. Although President Chester Arthur signed a decree in 1885 that returned a tiny portion of the Ponca's original lands, he stipulated that all other lands "unselected by" any Indian tribes would be returned to the public domain. This included portions of already established Sioux, Omaha and Ponca reservations. Harrison's proclamation of 1890 re-confirmed the boundaries of Ponca territory within the state of Nebraska and settled the rest of the disputed northern border, speeding settlement of Nebraska by whites.
Federal recognition of the Ponca tribe was officially terminated in 1966. Without their status as a recognized tribe, they lost title to what little land had been left to them by Harrison. One hundred years after Harrison's proclamation, on October 31, 1990, President George H.W. Bush reinstated the tribe, giving them the right to reestablish their homeland in the state of Nebraska.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakota_Territory
1915 Woman's suffrage: In New York City, 25,000-33,000 women march on Fifth Avenue to advocate their right to vote.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woman%27s_suffrage
1921 Unknown Soldier is selected. On October 23, 1921, in the French town of Chalons-sur-Marne, an American officer selects the body of the first "Unknown Soldier" to be honored among the approximately 77,000 United States servicemen killed on the Western Front during World War I.
According to the official records of the Army Graves Registration Service deposited in the U.S. National Archives in Washington, four bodies were transported to Chalons from the cemeteries of Aisne-Marne, Somme, Meuse-Argonne and Saint-Mihiel. All were great battlegrounds, and the latter two regions were the sites of two offensive operations in which American troops took a leading role in the decisive summer and fall of 1918. As the service records stated, the identity of the bodies was completely unknown: "The original records showing the internment of these bodies were searched and the four bodies selected represented the remains of soldiers of which there was absolutely no indication as to name, rank, organization or date of death."
The four bodies arrived at the Hotel de Ville in Chalons-sur-Marne on October 23, 1921. At 10 o’clock the next morning, French and American officials entered a hall where the four caskets were displayed, each draped with an American flag. Sergeant Edward Younger, the man given the task of making the selection, carried a spray of white roses with which to mark the chosen casket. According to the official account, Younger "entered the chamber in which the bodies of the four Unknown Soldiers lay, circled the caskets three times, then silently placed the flowers on the third casket from the left. He faced the body, stood at attention and saluted."
Bearing the inscription "An Unknown American who gave his life in the World War," the chosen casket traveled to Paris and then to Le Havre, France, where it would board the cruiser Olympia for the voyage across the Atlantic. Once back in the United States, the Unknown Soldier was buried in Arlington National Cemetery, near Washington, D.C.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomb_of_the_Unknown_Soldier
1921 Green Bay Packers play first NFL game, 7-6 win over Minneapolis. The Green Bay Packers were founded on August 11, 1919 by Curly Lambeau and Green Bay Press-Gazette sports editor George Whitney Calhoun. Lambeau solicited funds for uniforms from his employer, the Indian Packing Company. He was given $500 for uniforms and equipment, on the condition that the team be named for its sponsor. Today "Green Bay Packers" is the oldest team name still in use in the NFL.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Bay_Packers
1929 Great Depression: After a steady decline in stock market prices since a peak in September, the New York Stock Exchange begins to show signs of panic.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression_in_the_United_States
1929 The first North American transcontinental air service begins between New York City and Los Angeles, California.
1930 The first miniature golf tournament was held in Chattanooga, TN.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miniature_golf
1932 "Fred Allen Show" premieres on radio. He made the transition to radio with The Lint Bath Club Revue, which premiered October 23, 1932 on CBS and moved to NBC in 1933. Allen's perfectionism led him to move from sponsor to sponsor. His shows, for which he wrote much of the material himself, included The Salad Bowl Revue (1933), The Sal Hepatica Revue (1933-34), The Hour of Smiles (1934-35), and Town Hall Tonight (1935-40). The Fred Allen Show, his last series, ran from 1942 to 1949.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Allen
1935 Dutch Schultz, Abe Landau, Otto Berman, and Bernard "Lulu" Rosencrantz are fatally shot at a saloon in Newark, New Jersey in what will become known as The Chophouse Massacre.
1941 Walt Disney's "Dumbo" released. "Dumbo" is the fourth animated feature in the Disney animated features canon. Based upon a children's book of the same name by Helen Aberson and illustrated by Harold Perl, Dumbo was produced by Walt Disney, and first released on October 23, 1941 by RKO Radio Pictures. The main character is Jumbo Jr., a semi-anthropomorphic elephant who is cruelly nicknamed Dumbo. He is ridiculed for his big ears, but it turns out that he is capable of flying by using them as wings.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumbo
1941 "Clarinet a la King" was recorded by Benny Goodman and his orchestra -- on Okeh Records
1941 On this day in 1941, chief of the Soviet general staff, Georgi K. Zhukov, assumes command of Red Army operations to stop the German advance into the heart of Russia.
Zhukov's military career began during World War I, when he served with the Imperial Russian Army. He then joined the Red Army in 1918, taking time off to study military science in both the Soviet Union and Germany. By the outbreak of World War II, Zhukov was commander of the Soviet forces stationed on the Manchurian border and led a counteroffensive that beat back the Japanese attack in 1939.
By the time of the German invasion of Russia, Zhukov had been promoted from chief of staff of the Soviet army during the "winter war" against Finland, to commander in chief of the western front. It was in this capacity that he now prepared to beat back the German invaders, first from Moscow, and then from central Russia altogether. He would eventually be promoted to general and become a key player in the planning or execution of virtually every major Soviet engagement until the end of the war. Ultimately, he would represent the USSR at Germany's formal surrender and take command of the Soviet occupation of Germany.
Stalin's wise choice in handing so much power and responsibility to this one man was regretted only after the war, when Zhukov's popularity threatened his own. Stalin "rewarded" the general with obscure positions that wasted his talent and kept him out of the spotlight. Zhukov was finally made minister of defense after Stalin's death in 1953 in Premier Nikita Krushchev's new government. But as the military attempted to remove itself from the iron grip of internal Communist Party politics, Zhukov, who supported autonomy for the army, began to butt heads with the premier, who wanted to keep the Red Army under the Central Committee's collective thumb.
Ironically, when the Presidium, the "conservative" (in this case, Stalinist) legislative body that opposed certain "democratic" reforms proposed by Krushchev, attempted to push the premier from power, it was Zhukov who flew Central Committee members to Moscow to tip the balance of power and keep Krushchev's position secure. As a reward, Zhukov was made a full member of the Presidium, the first professional soldier ever to hold such an office (it also served to have a man who proved himself loyal on a body that was otherwise hostile). But Zhukov's renewed attempt to free the army from party control resulted in his dismissal by Krushchev. Zhukov would once again be lost to public view—until Krushchev's fall from power in 1964. Zhukov would eventually win the Order of Lenin medal (1966) and publish his autobiography (1969).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgi_K._Zhukov
1942 World War II: Second Battle of El Alamein: - At El Alamein in northern Egypt, the British Eighth Army under Field Marshal Montgomery begins a critical offensive to expel the Axis armies from Egypt.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Battle_of_El_Alamein
1942 All 12 passengers and crewmen aboard an American Airlines DC-3 airliner are killed when it is struck by a U.S. Army Air Forces bomber near Palm Springs, California. Amongst the victims is award-winning composer and songwriter Ralph Rainger ("Thanks for the Memory", "Love in Bloom", "Blue Hawaii").
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_28
1942 World War II: The Battle for Henderson Field begins during the Guadalcanal Campaign and ends on October 26.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_for_Henderson_Field
1944 World War II: Battle of Leyte Gulf --The largest naval battle in history begins in the Philippines.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Leyte_Gulf
1944 World War II: The Soviet Red Army enters Hungary.
1945 Jackie Robinson signs Montreal Royal contract. In 1945, Branch Rickey, the manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, requested a meeting with Robinson. Rickey wanted to integrate the major leagues and was looking for a player who could withstand the hostility that would be faced. After determining that Robinson was up to the task, he asked him to first play for the minor league team, the Montreal Royals. On October 23, 1945, it became official when Robinson signed a contract with the team.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackie_Robinson
1946 The United Nations General Assembly convenes for the first time, at an auditorium in Flushing, Queens, New York City.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assembly
1947 The first American husband and wife team to win a Nobel Prize, Carl and Gerty Cori (née Radnitz) of Washington University Medical School, were awarded the Physiology or Medicine Prize for "the discovery on how glycogen is converted to glucose in the body, and for the effects of hypophysis hormones on sugar metabolism." The prize was shared with Bernardo Alberto Houssay who worked on another aspect of sugar metabolism. In 1903, the French couple Pierre and Marie Curie were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics "in recognition of the extraordinary services they have rendered by their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel." (Marie was born in Poland.)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerty_Cori
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Ferdinand_Cori
1954 "Hey There" by Rosemary Clooney topped the charts. Clooney joined the Columbia roster in 1950 and made several hits for them, among them "You're Just in Love," "Beautiful Brown Eyes," "Half As Much," "Hey There," the number one hit "Come on-A My House," and "If Teardrops Were Pennies." Clooney had 13 Top 40 hits in the early '50s, among them duets with Guy Mitchell and Marlene Dietrich.
1956 First video recording on magnetic tape televised coast-to-coast. The first network use of RCA magnetic tape for color or black-and-white was presented on the "The Jonathan Winters Show." It consisted of a pre-recorded song sequence in color by Dorothy Collins during the program.
1956 Thousands of Hungarians protest against the government and Soviet occupation. (The Hungarian Revolution is crushed on November 4).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_Revolution_of_1956
1958 The Springhill Mine Bump -- An underground earthquake traps 174 miners in the No. 2 colliery at Springhill, Nova Scotia, the deepest coal mine in North America at the time. By November 1, rescuers from around the world had dug out 100 of the victims, marking the death toll at 74.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springhill_mining_disaster#1958_Bump
1958 The Smurfs, a fictional race of blue dwarves, later popularized in a Hanna-Barbera animated cartoon series, appear for the first time in the story La flute à six schtroumpfs, a Johan and Peewit adventure by Peyo which is serialized in the weekly comics magazine Spirou.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smurfs
1961 "Runaround Sue" by Dion topped the charts. The Del Satins ("In the Still of the Nite," "To the Aisle") backed up Dion instead of the Belmonts in his #1 hit Runaround Sue. Dion's career in popular music began in the 1950s with his group Dion & the Belmonts (named after his northern Bronx neighborhood, Belmont). He went solo in the early 1960s and continued to have hits with songs like "Runaround Sue", "The Wanderer" and "Ruby Baby."
1962 USAF Major Robert A Rushworth takes X-15 to 133,865 feet. Rushworth was selected for the X-15 program in 1958, and made his first flight on November 4, 1960. Over the next six years, he made 34 flights in the X-15, the most of any pilot. This included a flight to an altitude of 285,000 feet, made on June 27, 1963. This flight above 50 miles qualified Rushworth for astronaut wings, though he would have attained that honor sooner had the Man In Space Soonest project proceeded according to plan. On a later X-15 flight, he was awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross for successfully landing an X-15 after its nose wheel extended while flying at nearly Mach 5.
1965 “Yesterday” by the Beatles topped the charts.
1965 1st Cavalry Division launches Operation Silver Bayonet. In action following the clash at the Plei Me Special Forces camp 30 miles southwest of Pleiku earlier in the month, the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) launches Operation Silver Bayonet.
U.S. troops, in conjunction with South Vietnamese forces, sought to destroy North Vietnamese forces operating in Pleku Province in II Corps Tactical Zone (the Central Highlands). The operation concluded in November with a week of bitter fighting when fleeing North Vietnamese troops decided to protect an important staging area and supply base in the Ia Drang Valley. It was the bloodiest battle of the war to date. In one engagement, 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry fought a desperate three-day battle at Landing Zone X-Ray with the North Vietnamese 33rd and 66th Regiments; when the fighting was over, 834 Communists lay dead on the battlefield. In an associated engagement, 500 North Vietnamese ambushed another battalion from the 1st Cavalry Division at Landing Zone Albany, wiping out almost an entire company. Reported enemy casualties for Operation Silver Bayonet totaled 1,771. U.S. casualties included 240 killed in action.
1970 Gary Gabelich sets auto speed record 622.4 mph (1,002 kph). Reaction Dynamics, Inc., was looking for a driver about that time for the Blue Flame, a 37-foot-long, 4,950-pound vehicle powered by a liquid natural gas-hydrogen peroxide rocket engine. Gabelich jumped at the chance. The first attempt took place on September 22, 1970. It was a dismal failure, reaching a speed of only 426 mph compared to Breedlove's five-year-old record of 600.601 mph. A lot of tinkering and testing took place. Gabelich hit 609 mph on the first of two mandatory runs on October 15, but a mechanical problem prevented the second run. The same thing happened on October 23, when the first run reached 621 mph. Finally, on October 28, Gabelich and the Blue Flame averaged 617.602 mph on the first run and 627.207 on the second for a new land speed record of 622.407.
1970 Aretha Franklin, won a gold record for "Don’t Play that Song." The chart statistics are impressive in and of themselves: ten Top Ten hits in a roughly 18-month span between early 1967 and late 1968, for instance, and a steady stream of solid mid- to large-size hits for the next five years after that. Her Atlantic albums were also huge sellers, and far more consistent artistically than those of most soul stars of the era. "Don't Play That Song (You Lied)", a Ben E. King song covered by Aretha Franklin.
1971 "Maggie May" by Rod Stewart topped the charts. Stewart's record company didn't think this was a hit, so they released it as the B-side of "Reason To Believe." Disc jockeys liked this better, so they played it as the single instead. "Maggie May" became a huge hit in England and America. Stewart had a following in England as a member of The Faces, but was mostly unknown in the US. Stewart was the lead singer of The Faces when this was released. He put out solo albums while he was with the band because of contract obligations. When this became a hit, Faces shows were billed as "The Faces with Rod Stewart."
1972 Operation Linebacker, a US bombing campaign against North Vietnam in response to its Easter Offensive, ends after five months.
1973 Nixon agrees to turn over White House tape recordings to Judge Sirica.
1973 U.S. negotiators ask for further talks in Paris. Citing difficulties with South Vietnamese President Thieu, U.S. negotiators cable Hanoi requesting further negotiations in Paris over the proposed draft peace accord.
Thieu felt that he was being sold out by the United States to secure a peace agreement at any terms. President Richard Nixon and chief negotiator Henry Kissinger were attempting to craft a peace agreement that would satisfy Thieu but also bring the war to an end so that the rest of U.S. forces could be disengaged. In an attempt to show good faith to the North Vietnamese, Nixon suspended the Linebacker raids against Hanoi and Haiphong that had been initiated when the North Vietnamese had launched their Easter Offensive earlier in the year.
1976 Chicago has its first #1 hit with "If You Leave Me Now"Chicago—one of history's most prolific rock bands—has its first #1 hit on October 23, 1976, with "If You Leave Me Now."
The rock band Chicago churned out full-length albums at a rate that's never been surpassed by a pop group of their stature. Not only did the group release nine albums in their first seven years of existence (1969-75), but among those nine releases were four double albums and one quadruple album, Chicago at Carnegie Hall (1971). That's 16 LPs in seven years, all of them selling at an incredible rate, which means that in terms of sheer tonnage, Chicago probably shipped more vinyl than any other American rock band in the 1970s. It was a feat made all the more incredible by the fact that the members of Chicago could have walked through O'Hare Airport at the height of their success without attracting so much as a single screaming fan.
It's not that Chicago's fans didn't love them, for the certainly did. But the collective ethos of the band was to keep individual egos out of things, even to the point of using a logo rather than a picture of the band on nearly every one of their albums. "Chicago is the most successful experiment in group therapy ever to go down in history," founding member Robert Lamm has said. Critics may never have embraced the group's jazzy, middle-of-the road sound, but with upwards of 150 million albums sold worldwide, it's impossible to refute the quantitative argument for Chicago's greatness.
Chicago's success as album-sellers may overshadow their success on the singles charts, but not by very much. "If You Leave Me Now" became their first #1 hit on this day in 1976, but the group had already placed nine singles in the Billboard Top 10 by the time that Peter Cetera-penned ballad reached the top of the charts. Among those early hits were "25 Or 6 To 4" (1970), "Saturday In The Park" (1972) and "Just You 'N' Me" (1973), and many more were to follow. Chicago earned two more #1 hits post-1976 with "Hard To Say I'm Sorry" (1982) and "Look Away" (1988), and seven other Top 10s, including "Baby What A Big Surprise" (1977), "Hard Habit To Break" and "You're The Inspiration" (both 1982).
1977 American paleontologist Elso S. Barghoorn of Harvard announced the discovery of Pre-Cambian spherical one-celled algae microfossils (named Eobacterium) 3.4 billion years old, earth's earliest life forms. Barghoorn, with J. William Schopf, studied the 3.2 billion year old chert (a flintlike or quartz-like rock) of the Fig Tree formation in Transvaal, South Africa. Rubidium and strontium ratios in the chert suggested an age of over 3 billion years. The fossils are examples of Prokaryotes, organisms with simple cell wall containing organic chemicals. A huge number of varieties exist today. They all produce oxygen; and, in the Precambrian period, began to change the earth's primoidal reducing atmosphere to the oxygenated one we have today.
1981 US national debt hits $1 trillion
1982 "Jack and Diane" by John Cougar topped the charts. Mellencamp wrote this as a tribute to life in the rural working class. It's about a High School couple falling in love.Some of Mellencamp's high school photos and home movies were used to make the video. Mellencamp was known as "John Cougar" when he recorded this. His manager, Tony De Fries, convinced him that "Mellencamp" wouldn't work.
1983 U.S. Embassy in Beirut hit by massive car bomb. On this day, a suicide bomber drives a truck filled with 2,000 pounds of explosives into a U.S. Marine Corps barracks at the Beirut International Airport. The explosion killed 220 Marines, 18 sailors and three soldiers. A few minutes after that bomb went off, a second bomber drove into the basement of the nearby French paratroopers' barracks, killing 58 more people. Four months after the bombing, American forces left Lebanon without retaliating.
The Marines in Beirut were part of a multinational peacekeeping force that was trying to broker a truce between warring Christian and Muslim Lebanese factions. In 1981, American troops had supervised the withdrawal of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from Beirut and then had withdrawn themselves. They returned the next year, after Israel's Lebanese allies slaughtered nearly 1,000 unarmed Palestinian civilian refugees. Eighteen hundred Marine peacekeepers moved into an old Israeli Army barracks near the airport—a fortress with two-foot–thick walls that could, it seemed, withstand anything. Even after a van bomb killed 46 people at the U.S. Embassy in April, the American troops maintained their non-martial stance: their perimeter fence remained relatively unfortified, for instance and their sentries' weapons were unloaded.
At about 6:20 in the morning on October 23, 1983, a yellow Mercedes truck charged through the barbed-wire fence around the American compound and plowed past two guard stations. It drove straight into the barracks and exploded. Eyewitnesses said that the force of the blast caused the entire building to float up above the ground for a moment before it pancaked down in a cloud of pulverized concrete and human remains. FBI investigators said that it was the largest non-nuclear explosion since World War II and certainly the most powerful car bomb ever detonated.
After the bombing, President Ronald Reagan expressed outrage at the "despicable act" and vowed that American forces would stay in Beirut until they could forge a lasting peace. In the meantime, he devised a plan to bomb the Hezbollah training camp in Baalbek, Lebanon, where intelligence agents thought the attack had been planned. However, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger aborted the mission, reportedly because he did not want to strain relations with oil-producing Arab nations. The next February, American troops withdrew from Lebanon altogether.
The first real car bomb—or, in this case, horse-drawn-wagon bomb—exploded on September 16, 1920 outside the J.P. Morgan Company's offices in New York City's financial district. Italian anarchist Mario Buda had planted it there, hoping to kill Morgan himself; as it happened, the robber baron was out of town, but 40 other people died (and about 200 were wounded) in the blast. There were occasional car-bomb attacks after that—most notably in Saigon in 1952, Algiers in 1962, and Palermo in 1963—but vehicle weapons remained relatively uncommon until the 1970s and 80s, when they became the terrifying trademark of groups like the Irish Republican Army and Hezbollah. In 1995, right-wing terrorists Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols used a bomb hidden in a Ryder truck to blow up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_United_States_embassy_bombing
1987 - Thirteen cities in the southeastern U.S. reported record low temperatures for the date. It marked the sixth record low of the month for Greer SC and Columbia SC, and the ninth of the month for Montgomery AL. Showers and thunderstorms deluged Corpus Christi TX with five inches of rain. Winnemucca NV reported their first measurable rain in ninety-two days, while Yakima WA reported a record 96 days in a row without measurable rainfall. (Storm Data) (The National Weather Summary)
1988 Denver, CO, reported their first freeze of the autumn, and Chicago, IL, reported their first snow. In Texas, afternoon highs of 93 degrees at Austin and San Antonio were records for the date. (The National Weather Summary)
1989 - A storm moving out of the Gulf of Alaska brought rain and high winds to the Central Pacific Coast Region. High winds in Nevada gusted to 67 mph at Reno, and thunderstorms around Redding CA produced wind gusts to 66 mph. Locally heavy rains in the San Francisco area caused numerous mudslides, adding insult to injury for earthquake victims. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data)
1989 Gas leak kills 23 at plastics factory. On this day in 1989, 23 people die in a series of explosions sparked by an ethylene leak at a factory in Pasadena, Texas. The blasts, which took place at a Phillips Petroleum Company plant, were caused by inadequate safety procedures.
A polyethylene reactor at the Phillips 66 Chemical Complex in Pasadena created chemical compounds necessary for the production of plastics. The plant produced millions of pounds of plastics daily for use in toys and containers.
In an effort to cut costs, Phillips subcontracted much of the necessary maintenance work in the plant. Fish Engineering and Construction, the primary subcontractor, did not enjoy a stellar reputation even prior to the October 23 disaster. In August, a Fish employee opened gas piping for maintenance without isolating the line. This caused flammable solvents and gas to be sent into a work area where they ignited, killing one worker and injuring four others.
Fish was undertaking maintenance work on the plant's polyethylene reactor on October 23 when, once again, problems arose. A valve was not secured properly, and at approximately 1 p.m., 85,000 pounds of highly flammable ethylene-isobutane gas were released into the plant. There were no detectors or warning systems in place to give notice of the impending disaster. Within two minutes, the large gas cloud ignited with the power of two-and-a-half tons of dynamite.
The explosion could be heard for miles in every direction and the resulting fireball was visible at least 15 miles away. Twenty-three workers at Phillips were killed and another 130 were seriously injured as the first explosion set off a chain reaction of blasts.
A subsequent investigation found that although the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) had cited Phillips for several serious safety violations in previous years, it had not done a comprehensive inspection of the plant since 1975. Other testimony revealed that inadequate safety procedures used during the maintenance process had left the plant vulnerable to disaster. However, no criminal charges were filed against Phillips or its managers.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillips_Disaster_of_1989
1998 An abortion-performing doctor is murdered. Doctor Barnett Slepian is shot to death inside his home in Amherst, New York, by an anti-abortion radical, marking the fifth straight year that a doctor who was willing to perform abortions in upstate New York and Canada had been the victim of a sniper attack. Slepian and his family had just returned from religious services at their synagogue when a bullet shattered the kitchen window and struck him in the back. Each of the five attacks, the first four of which did not result in fatal wounds, occurred in late October or early November. It is believed that the dates were intentionally picked to center around Canada's Remembrance Day (November 11).
Investigators in both Canada and the United States believe that James Charles Kopp, known among abortion opponents as "Atomic Dog," was responsible for Slepian's murder. Although he had been seen in the vicinity of Slepian's home in the weeks before the killing, Kopp, a member of the terrorist group Army of God, was nowhere to be found after the incident.
In the aftermath of Slepian's murder, at least four abortion doctors in upstate New York quit practicing, and countless other clinic staff members left their jobs. Because groups such as the American Coalition of Life Activists have openly promoted violence against abortion providers, there is some reason to believe that the atmosphere of fear has limited women's ability to choose abortion in certain areas of the nation.
Following Slepian's murder, a serious crackdown on anti-abortion terror helped to cut down the number of violent incidents. In 1999, for the first time in six years, there were no sniper attacks against any doctors during the course of the year. As the 20th century came to an end, Kopp remained at large, despite a $500,000 reward for information leading to his capture from the Justice Department and his place on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List. In March 2001, the authorities caught up with Kopp in Europe, and he was extradited from France on the condition he would not receive the death penalty. On May 9, 2003, he was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnett_Slepian
2001 A relieved NASA team celebrated as the 2001 Mars Odyssey slipped into orbit around the Red Planet, two years after back-to-back failures by Mars missions
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_Mars_Odyssey
2001 Apple releases the iPod.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod
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