Post by farmgal on Oct 22, 2012 23:14:24 GMT -5
October 24 is the 298th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar.
There are 68 days remaining until the end of the year.
Days left until November 06, 2012 14
Countdown until Obama leaves Office
www.obamaclock.org/
U.S. Debt Clock: www.usdebtclock.org/
1147 After a siege of 4 months crusader knights led by Afonso Henriques, reconquered Lisbon from the Moors.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afonso_Henriques
1260 According to both modern and medieval Muslim historians, Qutuz, Mamluk sultan of Egypt, was assassinated by a fellow Mamluk leader, Baibars, who then seized power for himself.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qutuz
1590 John White, The governor of the second Roanoke Colony, returns to England after an unsuccessful search for the "lost" colonists.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_White_(colonist_and_artist)
1648 Thirty Years War ends. The Treaty of Westphalia is signed, ending the Thirty Years War and radically shifting the balance of power in Europe.
The Thirty Years War, a series of wars fought by European nations for various reasons, ignited in 1618 over an attempt by the king of Bohemia (the future Holy Roman emperor Ferdinand II) to impose Catholicism throughout his domains. Protestant nobles rebelled, and by the 1630s most of continental Europe was at war.
As a result of the Treaty of Westphalia, the Netherlands gained independence from Spain, Sweden gained control of the Baltic and France was acknowledged as the preeminent Western power. The power of the Holy Roman Emperor was broken and the German states were again able to determine the religion of their lands.
The principle of state sovereignty emerged as a result of the Treaty of Westphalia and serves as the basis for the modern system of nation-states.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Westphalia
1683 Germans settled in Germantown, Pennsylvania.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germantown,_Philadelphia,_Pennsylvania
1774 British naval fleet attacks Norfolk, Virginia. On this day in 1775, Virginia's last royal governor, Lord John Murray Dunmore, orders a British naval fleet of six ships to sail up the James River and into Hampton Creek to attack Patriot troops and destroy the town of Norfolk, Virginia. British Captain Matthew Squire led the six ships into Hampton Creek and began bombarding the town with artillery and cannon fire, while a second contingent of British troops sailed ashore to begin engaging the Patriots.
Expecting the Patriots and local militia to come charging and to engage in open combat, the British were surprised to come under fire from expert riflemen, who began striking down British troops at a distance. Hearing of the British attack, Virginia's local militia leader, Colonel William Woodford, marched an additional 100 members of the militia to defend Norfolk.
With reinforcements in place, the Patriots and militia pushed the British back to their ships, where the riflemen again began picking off British troops from the decks of their vessels. Facing a humiliating defeat at the hands of an outnumbered local militia, Captain Squire ordered a full British retreat. In the unorganized and hurried withdrawal that followed, two British ships ran aground and were captured. The Patriots, meanwhile, did not suffer a single fatality.
1785 - A four day rain swelled the Merrimack River in New Hampshire and Massachusetts to the greatest height of record causing extensive damage to bridges and mills. (David Ludlum)
1836 Alonzo Dwight Phillips of Springfield, Massachusetts, received the first U.S. patent for the phosphorous friction safety match (No. 68). The first friction matches, using a mixture of chemicals for their heads, were made and sold in England in 1827. Phillips' match, which could be struck on any rough surface, was the first genuine friction match made in America. Known as "loco focos," and later as "lucifers," these matches were made entirely by hand from a mixture of chalk, phosphorus, glue and brimstone (sulphur). The introduction of gas for lighting and cooking, and the spread of cigar smoking, made the lucifer almost a necessity. By the time of the Civil War, about a million matches a day were being manufactured.
1861 The first transcontinental telegraph message was sent by Justice Stephen J. Field of California to President Abraham Lincoln, on the same day the first transcontinental telegraph system was completed. The section, built during 1861 by the Western Union Telegraph Co. and its associates, connected St. Joseph, Missouri and Sacramento, California. The Civil War had made obtaining labor and supplies difficult. Nature's obstacles had included the Rocky Mountains, the Sierra Nevada, and the Great Plains where timber for telephone poles was in short supply. Now it had become possible to transmit messages so rapidly from coast to coast, the Pony Express, previously the fastest communication between the East and the West, closed two days later.
1862 Rosencrans replaces Buell. Union General Don Carlos Buell is replaced because of his ineffective pursuit of the Confederates after the Battle of Perryville, Kentucky, on October 8. He was replaced by William Rosecrans, who had distinguished himself in western Virginia in 1861 and provided effective leadership at the battle of Corinth, Mississippi, just prior to Perryville.
Buell, an Ohio native, served with distinction in the Mexican War. When the Civil War began, he became a brigadier general in the Army of the Potomac. In November 1861, General George McClellan recommended Buell to replace William T. Sherman as commander of the Department of the Ohio. Arriving too late to mount an overland offensive, Buell sent troops up the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers in the winter, resulting in the capture of Forts Henry and Donelson by General Ulysses S. Grant. In 1862, Buell fought at Shiloh and Corinth in Tennessee and Mississippi before returning to Kentucky to head a Confederate invasion in fall 1862.
At Perryville, Buell's army met Braxton Bragg's force as Bragg was driving northward. In a bloody but indecisive engagement, the Yankees halted Bragg's advance. Buell's force outnumbered Bragg's, so the Confederates began to retreat back to Tennessee. Buell offered a weak and slow pursuit, so Bragg's army slipped safely away. President Lincoln was distressed by Buell's inaction. He was already frustrated with both Buell and McClellan, who allowed General Robert E. Lee's army to escape to Virginia just three weeks prior to Perryville. Lincoln also saw the Democrat Buell, who was outspoken in his criticism of the Emancipation Proclamation, as a political liability.
Buell was upset with his removal and demanded a trial to clear his reputation. After five months of testimony, Buell was cleared of any wrongdoing or army mismanagement. His military career was effectively over, however. He settled in Kentucky after the war and died in 1898.
1876 A U.S. patent was issued for the metal case of a one-day back-winding alarm clock to the Seth E. Thomas of New York City, NY (No. 183,725), being the first American patent for an alarm clock of this familiar type. It was manufactured from that that year by the Seth Thomas Clock Company of Thomaston, Connecticut. Seth was born in 1816 and died in 1888 in Conneticut. His father Seth Thomas was also a clock maker in Plymouth Hollow, Connecticut, which was renamed Thomaston in his honor in about 1860. (The first alarm clock made in the U.S. appeared in Concord, NH, in 1787. That clock was made by Levi Hutchins with a pine case, 29-in high and 14-in wide, but the alarm was for a preset time that could not be altered.)
1878 A hurricane produced widespread damage across North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. At Philadelphia PA, the hurricane was the worst of record. (David Ludlum)
1897 "The New York Journal American"carries the "The Yellow Kid" comic strip. The Yellow Kid was the creation of Richard Felton Outcault and is considered the first American comic strip character to be a popular star. The character first appeared in Truth magazine in 1894. By 1895 Outcault had a steady gig at the New York World newspaper, drawing a strip called "Hogan's Alley." Outcault moved The Yellow Kid to William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal American in 1897.
1901 Anna Edson Taylor became the first person to survive going over Niagara Falls in a barrel. On October 24, 1901 a daredevil named Anna Edson Taylor did a very daring stunt. She went over Niagara Falls in a wooden barrel. Ms. Taylor went over Niagara Falls and dropped 175 feet! The barrel was four and a half feet high and three feet across. She also wore a leather harness and soft cushions were on the inside of the barrel to protect her during her fall. After the fall, Ms. Edson was shaken up but not badly hurt.
1911 Orville Wright remains in the air 9 minutes and 45 seconds in a Wright Glider at Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina.
1911 Missionary widow Aimee Elizabeth Kennedy Semple, 21, married Harold Stewart McPherson, also 21. Afterward, Aimee Semple McPherson went on to establish the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel in 1918. (She and Harold would divorce in 1921).
1912 First Balkan War: Serbian forces defeated the Ottoman army at the Battle of Kumanovo in Vardar Macedonia.
1917 Battle of Caporetto On this day in 1917, a combined German and Austro-Hungarian force scores one of the most crushing victories of World War I, decimating the Italian line along the northern stretch of the Isonzo River in the Battle of Caporetto, also known as the Twelfth Battle of the Isonzo, or the Battle of Karfreit (to the Germans).
By the autumn of 1917, Italian Commander in Chief Luigi Cadorna’s strategy of successive offensives near the Isonzo River in northern Italy—11 Italian attacks since May 1915 preceded the Austrian assault at Caporetto—had cost the Italians heavy casualties for an advance of less than seven miles, only one third of the way towards their preliminary objective, the city of Trieste on the Adriatic Sea. Despite this, the wave of Italian attacks had also taken a serious toll on Austro-Hungarian resources in the region. Indeed, in the wake of the Eleventh Battle of the Isonzo in August 1917, Austria’s positions around the city of Gorizia were dangerously close to collapse. As a result, the German Supreme Command, led by Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff, determined with their Austrian counterpart, Arz von Straussenberg, to launch a combined operation against the Italians, intended for mid-September.
In preparation for the offensive, Germany transported seven divisions of troops to reinforce the Austrians on the upper banks of the Isonzo. Cadorna, learning by aerial reconnaissance of the Austro-German movements, pushed back his own army’s scheduled September offensive to prepare a defensive position for the scheduled attacks that month. Unfavorable weather, however, pushed back the plans, and by the time Germany and Austria-Hungary were ready to attack, they were able to catch the Italians by surprise. On October 24, after a brief, effective artillery bombardment, the German and Austrian infantry moved ahead against the damaged Italian lines, using grenades and flamethrowers to exploit their advantage and achieve a quick and decisive breakthrough. By the end of the day, they had advanced an impressive 25 kilometers.
Though the Italians managed to harden their defensives over the coming weeks, by mid-November the Germans and Austrians had driven them back some 60 miles to the River Piave, just 30 kilometers north of Venice. Italian casualties at Caporetto totaled almost 700,000—40,000 killed or wounded, 280,000 captured by the enemy and another 350,000 deserted. In the wake of the battle, violent anti-war protests reached a peak in Italy, as Cadorna was forced to resign his command. His successor, General Armando Diaz, would oversee a new Italian strategy—defensive, as opposed to offensive—for the remainder of the war, including a greater reliance on the resources of the stronger Allied powers.
1926 Harry Houdini's last performance, which is at the Garrick Theatre in Detroit, Michigan.
1929 "Black Thursday" on Wall Street. "Black Thursday" occurred in the New York Stock Exchange as nearly 13 million shares were sold in panic selling. Five days later "Black Tuesday" saw 16 million shares sold. A then-record of 12.9 million shares were traded that day. At 1 p.m. on Black Thursday, several leading Wall Street bankers met to find a solution to the panic and chaos on the trading floor. They purchased large numbers of "Blue Chip" stocks above the market price to slow the selling frenzy.
1929 "The Rudy Vallee Show" debuted on NBC radio. Vallee began hosting The Fleischmann's Yeast Hour. Beginning October 24, 1929, the show quickly became a top-rated program, second only to Amos 'n' Andy. Host Valle appeared along with regulars Ole Olsen and Chic Johnson (1932), followed by Tom Howard and George Shelton (1935). On this show, the American listening audience heard many future stars for the first time, as it introduced such talents as Eddie Cantor, Kate Smith, Milton Berle and Alice Faye.
1931 George Washington Bridge is dedicated. On this day in 1931, eight months ahead of schedule, President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicates the George Washington Bridge over the Hudson River. The 4,760-foot–long suspension bridge, the longest in the world at the time, connected Fort Lee, New Jersey with Washington Heights in New York City. "This will be a highly successful enterprise," FDR told the assembled crowd at the ceremony. "The great prosperity of the Holland Tunnel and the financial success of other bridges recently opened in this region have proven that not even the hardest times can lessen the tremendous volume of trade and traffic in the greatest of port districts."
Workers built the six-lane George Washington Bridge in sections. They carried the pieces to the construction site by rail, then hauled them into the river by boat, then hoisted them into place by crane. Though the bridge was gigantic, engineer Othmar Amman had found a way to make it look light and airy: in place of vertical trusses, he used horizontal plate girders in the roadway to keep the bridge steady. Amman used such strong steel that these plate girders could be relatively thin and as a result, the bridge deck was only 12 feet deep. From a distance, it looked as flimsy as a magic carpet. Meanwhile, thanks to Amman's sophisticated suspension system, that magic carpet seemed to be floating: The bridge hung from cables made of steel wires--107,000 miles and 28,100 tons of steel wires, to be exact--that were much more delicate-looking than anything anyone had ever seen.
The bridge opened to traffic on October 25, 1931. One year later, it had carried 5 million cars from New York to New Jersey and back again. In 1946, engineers added two lanes to the bridge. In 1958, city officials decided to increase its capacity by 75 percent by adding a six-lane lower level. This deck (the New York Times called it "a masterpiece of traffic engineering," while other, more waggish observers referred to it as the "Martha Washington") opened in August 1962.
Today, the George Washington Bridge is one of the world's busiest bridges. In 2008, it carried some 105,894,000 vehicles.
1937 - A snow squall in Buffalo NY tied up traffic in six inches of slush. (David Ludlum)
1939 Benny Goodman records "Let's Dance" In the early 1930s Goodman formed his own orchestra and the Swing Era began. He became a world famous bandleader, appeared in the movies and dominated popular music until the 1950s, with well over 100 hit songs, including "Let's Dance," "Blue Moon," "One O'Clock Jump" and "Six Appeal."
1939 Nylon stockings went on sale in the U.S. for the first time to employees at DuPont's Wilmington, Delaware nylon factory. The modern materials revolution began in 1938 with DuPont's commercialization of their nylon product, which was the first man-made fibre to be made exclusively from mineral sources. The company specifically intended to compete with silk in the women's hosiery market. The fibre was strong, elastic, moth-proof and did not absorb moisture. Years of research led to enormous success. "Nylons," as they were soon called, eventually replaced silk stockings. Covering only about two-thirds of a woman's leg, from the feet to mid-thigh, stockings were fastened with garters and a belt. Nationwide sales began on 15 May 1940.
1940 Japan eliminates US terms (strike, play ball) from baseball
1940 The 40 hour workweek went into effect under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. The Fair Labor Standards Act was passed by Congress on 25th June, 1938. The main objective of the act was to eliminate "labor conditions detrimental to the maintenance of the minimum standards of living necessary for health, efficiency and well-being of workers." The act established maximum working hours of 44 a week for the first year, 42 for the second, and 40 thereafter. Minimum wages of 25 cents an hour were established for the first year, 30 cents for the second, and 40 cents over a period of the next six years.
1944 World War II: The Japanese aircraft carrier Zuikaku, and the battleship Musashi are sunk in the Battle of Leyte Gulf.
1945 United Nations Charter becomes effective. The Charter was signed on June 26, 1945 by the representatives of the 50 countries. Poland, which was not represented at the Conference, signed it later and became one of the original 51 Member States. The United Nations officially came into existence on October 24, 1945, when the Charter had been ratified by China, France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, the United States and by a majority of other signatories.
1946 A camera on board the V-2 No. 13 rocket takes the first photograph of earth from outer space.
1947 The Bar Harbor holocaust occurred in Maine when forest fires consumed homes and a medical research institute. The fires claimed 17 lives, and caused thirty million dollars damage. (David Ludlum)
1947 Walt Disney testifies to the House Un-American Activities Committee, naming Disney employees he believes to be communists.
1951 Truman declares war with Germany officially over. On this day in 1951, President Harry Truman finally proclaims that the nation's war with Germany, begun in 1941, is officially over. Fighting had ended in the spring of 1945.
Most Americans assumed that the war with Germany had ended with the cessation of hostilities six years earlier. In fact, a treaty with Germany had not been signed. Complicating the treaty process was the status of territory within what was formerly the German state. Following the Second World War, the major Western powers (U.S., Britain and France) and the Soviets agreed to divide the country, including the capital city of Berlin, into democratic and communist-controlled sectors. Both East and West Berlin ended up within the Soviet-controlled territory of East Germany and the capital became the epicenter of increasing tensions between the West and Soviet Russia. Each side claimed the other had violated post-war treaties regarding their respective spheres of influence in post-war Europe. The conflict over Berlin came to a head in June 1948 when Stalin ordered a blockade of the city. Truman did not want to abandon Berlin to the Soviets and ordered an airlift to supply the western sectors with food and fuel. The treaty process was put on hold until the Western powers could agree on what to do about Berlin. A Soviet atomic weapons test on October 3, 1951, increased the tension.
In his proclamation on this day, Truman stated that it had always been America's hope to create a treaty of peace with the government of a united and free Germany, but that Soviet policy had "made it impossible." The official end to the war came 10 years and two months after Congress had declared open war with Nazi Germany on December 11, 1941.
1951 Sacramento, CA, reported a barometric pressure of 29.42 inches, to establish a record for October. (The Weather Channel)
1951 United Nations publishes its first postage stamps.
1954 U.S. president pledges support to South Vietnam. President Eisenhower pledges support to Diem's government and military forces.
Eisenhower wrote to South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem and promised direct assistance to his government. Eisenhower made it clear to Diem that U.S. aid to his government during Vietnam's "hour of trial" was contingent upon his assurances of the "standards of performance [he] would be able to maintain in the event such aid were supplied." Eisenhower called for land reform and a reduction of government corruption. Diem agreed to the "needed reforms" stipulated as a precondition for receiving aid, but he never actually followed through on his promises. Ultimately his refusal to make any substantial changes to meet the needs of the people led to extreme civil unrest and eventually a coup by dissident South Vietnamese generals in which Diem and his brother were murdered.
1956 In Syracuse, New York, Margaret Ellen Towner became the first woman ordained in the Presbyterian Church.
1957 The USAF starts the X-20 Dyna-Soar program.
1958 Raymond Chandler starts his last novel. On this day, mystery writer Raymond Chandler starts working on his last novel, The Poodle Springs Story, but he will die before completing it.
Chandler was born in 1888 in Chicago. He was raised in England, where he went to college and worked as a freelance journalist for several newspapers.
During World War I, Chandler served in the Royal Flying Corps. After the war, he moved to California, where he eventually became the director of several independent oil companies. He lost his job during the Depression and turned to writing to support himself at the age of 45. He published his first stories in the early 1930s in the pulp magazine Black Mask and published his first novel, The Big Sleep, in 1939. He published only seven novels, among them Farewell My Lovely (1946) and The Long Goodbye (1953), all featuring tough, cynical detective Philip Marlowe. William Faulkner wrote the screen version of The Big Sleep, which starred Humphrey Bogart as Philip Marlow.
Chandler also wrote Hollywood screenplays in the 1940s and early 50s, including Double Indemnity (1949) and Strangers on a Train (1951). He died in March 1959.
1959 Wilt ‘The Stilt’ Chamberlain launched a pro basketball record streak. Not only did he play in 799 consecutive games; he didn’t foul out in one of them.
1960 "I Want to Be Wanted" by Brenda Lee topped the charts. It wasn't until 1960 when Lee took "Sweet Nothin's" to No. 4 on the pop charts that she made a major impact as a recording artist. Over the next 13 years, she scored two No. 1's ("I'm Sorry" and "I Want to Be Wanted"), four Top 5s and five Top 10s. While its short seasonal nature kept it from ever topping the charts, her "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree," recorded in 1958, has become a holiday classic.
1960 Nedelin catastrophe: An R-16 ballistic missile explodes on the launch pad at the Soviet Union's Baikonur Cosmodrome space facility, killing over 100. Among the dead is Field Marshal Mitrofan Nedelin, whose death is reported to have occurred in a plane crash
1962 The U.S. blockade of Cuba began under a proclamation signed by President Kennedy. Acutely aware that miscalculation by either side could spark nuclear war, Kennedy settled upon a blockade of Cuba in tandem with an ultimatum to the Soviets to remove the missiles, both to be announced during a special national broadcast on television during the evening of October 22. In that broadcast, Kennedy declared that a naval quarantine of Cuba would go into effect on the morning of October 24 and would not be lifted until all offensive weapons had been removed. He also announced that he had ordered increased surveillance of Cuba and, ominously, that he had directed the armed forces "to prepare for any eventualities."
1962 James Brown records breakthrough Live at the Apollo album. James Brown began his professional career at a time when rock and roll was opening new opportunities for black artists to connect with white audiences. But the path he took to fame did not pass through Top 40 radio or through The Ed Sullivan Show and American Bandstand. James Brown would make his appearance in all of those places eventually, but only after a decade spent performing almost exclusively before black audiences and earning his reputation as the Hardest Working Man in Show Business. On this day in 1962, he took a major step toward his eventual crossover and conquest of the mainstream with an electrifying performance on black America's most famous stage—a performance recorded and later released as Live at the Apollo (1963), the first breakthrough album of James Brown's career.
By the time 1962 rolled around, James Brown was one of the most popular figures on the R&B scene, not so much on the strength of his recordings, but on the strength of his live act. As he would throughout his long career, Brown ran his band, the Famous Flames, like a military unit, demanding of his instrumentalists and backing vocalists the same perfection he demanded of himself. Even in the middle of a performance, Brown would turn around and dish out fines for missed or flubbed notes, all without missing or flubbing a dance step himself. At the midnight show at the Apollo on October 24, 1962, however, every member of Brown's band knew that the fines they faced would be far greater than normal. "You made a mistake that night," band member Bobby Byrd told Rolling Stone magazine, "the fine would move from five or ten dollars to fifty or a hundred dollars."
The reason was simple. Having failed to convince the head of his label, King Records, to record and release the performance as a live album, James Brown, a man who was famously wise to the value of a dollar, was financing the Apollo recording himself. In the end, the show went off not only without a hitch, but with such success that the famously tough Apollo crowd was in a state of rapture. Released in May 1963, Live at the Apollo ended up spending an astonishing 66 weeks on the Billboard album chart and selling upwards of a million copies, giving James Brown his first smash hit album and setting him on a course for his incredible crossover success in the mid-1960s and beyond.
1964 "Do Wah Diddy Diddy" by Manfred Mann topped the charts. "Do Wah Diddy Diddy" was written by the songwriting team of Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich. It was originally recorded by The Exciters as the follow-up to their hit "Tell Him." However, the British invasion had begun and once Manfred Mann recorded it, the Exciters were out of luck.
1969 - Unseasonably cold air gripped the northeastern U.S. Lows of 10 degrees at Concord, NH, and 6 degrees at Albany NY established October records. (The Weather Channel)
1969 Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid opens. On this day in 1969, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford as a team of bank robbers in the Old West, opens in theaters around the United States. The film was a commercial and critical success, receiving seven Oscar nominations (including Best Picture and Best Director) and winning in the categories of Best Screenplay (William Goldman), Best Song (Burt Bacharach’s “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head”), Best Score and Best Cinematography.
Prior to Butch Cassidy, Paul Newman, who was born on January 26, 1925, appeared in such films as Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), The Hustler (1961), Hud (1963) and Cool Hand Luke (1967), each of which earned him a Best Actor Academy Award nomination. He teamed up with Redford again in 1973’s The Sting, which collected seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture. The famously blue-eyed Newman went on to star in such movies as Absence of Malice (1981) and The Verdict (1982), both of which earned him Best Actor Oscar nominations, and The Color of Money (1986), for which he took home his first Best Actor Oscar. He received Oscar nominations again for his performances in Nobody’s Fool (1994) and Road to Perdition (2002). The screen legend died at the age of 83 on September 26, 2008, after battling cancer.
Redford, born on August 18, 1936, made his breakthrough performance on Broadway with Barefoot in the Park in 1963. Following the success of Butch Cassidy, he starred in such movies as The Candidate (1972), The Great Gatsby (1974), All the President’s Men (1976) and The Natural (1984). Redford made his directorial debut with 1980’s Ordinary People, which won four Oscars, including Best Director and Best Picture. Redford went on to helm The Milagro Beanfield War (1988), A River Runs Through It (1992) and Quiz Show (1994), which received four Oscar nominations, including Best Director and Best Picture. Later features included The Horse Whisperer (1998), in which he also starred; The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000) and Lions for Lambs (2007), in which he co-starred with Tom Cruise and Meryl Streep.
1969 Burton buys Liz a diamond. Movie star Richard Burton dazzles wife Elizabeth Taylor—and their legions of fans—when he buys her a 69-carat Cartier diamond ring costing $1.5 million. It was just another chapter in a tempestuous marriage that began on the Ides of March and continued thereafter in the public eye.
Taylor and Burton met and fell in the love during the filming of Cleopatra (1963). She was a 30-year-old London-born American starlet who was already on her fourth marriage, and he was a former British stage actor, also married but known to fool around and drink on the set. Cleopatra made them both superstars, and on March 15, 1964, they were married at the Ritz in Montreal. As one of the most famous married couples in the world, they commanded high salaries to appear in nearly a dozen movies together. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) and The Taming of the Shrew (1967) were the only two to receive critical acclaim.
The couple's stormy private life often drew more attention than their movie roles, and their extravagance was legendary. During the 1960s, they earned a combined $88 million and spent more than $65 million. They bought a fleet of Rolls Royces, whole floors of luxury hotels, a private jet, a helicopter, and a multimillion-dollar yacht. They were American royalty, and the world watched as their lives began to fall apart. Taylor appropriated Burton's alcohol-abuse problem and also mixed drugs into the stew. By 1969, their marriage was a constant cycle of verbal and physical battles that was only interrupted by the mutual presentation of expensive gifts. The famous Cartier diamond was the product of a fight they had in a restaurant one night. Burton called Taylor's hands large and ugly, and she responded that in that case, he'd better buy her the 69-carat ring she wanted so that her hands looked smaller and more attractive.
The flawless, pear-shaped diamond had 58 facets and was unearthed from the Premier mine of South Africa in 1966. It went up for auction in October 1969 and was bought by the Cartier jewelry firm for $1.05 million. The very next day, on October 24, Burton bought the diamond for an estimated $1.5 million; although the exact sum was undisclosed. The diamond—christened the "Taylor-Burton"—remained at Cartier for several days before Burton took it home and presented it to Taylor. Thousands of people lined the street outside Cartier every day to view it.
Taylor and Burton became estranged in 1970, in 1973 they formally separated, and in 1974 they divorced. They remarried in 1975 but stayed together just a few months. The next year, they divorced for the second and last time. Three years later, Taylor put the Taylor-Burton diamond up for auction. The jeweler Henry Lambert bought it for $3 million and then sold it to an anonymous buyer in Saudi Arabia. Elizabeth Taylor went on to have two more husbands, both of whom she divorced. She is currently single. Richard Burton died of a brain aneurysm in 1984.
1970 President Richard Nixon asked radio broadcasters to screen songs containing lyrics that promoted drug use
1970 Nancy Walker creates Ida Morgenstein role on Mary Tyler Moore Show
1970 "I'll Be There" by the Jackson 5 topped the charts
1971 Harry Drake sets longest arrow flight by a footbow (1 mile 268 yds)
1977 Veterans Day is observed on the fourth Monday in October for the seventh and last time. (The holiday is once again observed on November 11 beginning the following year.)
1979 Guinness Book of Records presents Paul McCartney with a rhodium disc for selling over 200 million albums
1980 Government of Poland legalizes Solidarity trade union
1987 Snow fell across northeast Minnesota and northwest Wisconsin overnight, with five inches reported at Poplar Lake MN and Gunflint Trail MN. Thunderstorm rains caused flash flooding in south central Arizona, with street flooding reported around Las Vegas NV. Strong northwesterly winds gusting to 50 mph downed some trees and power lines in western Pennsylvania and the northern panhandle of West Virginia. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data)
1987 "Bad" by Michael Jackson topped the charts
1988 Strong winds circulating around a deep low pressure centered produced snow squalls in the Great Lakes Region, with six inches reported at Ironwood MI. Wind gusts to 80 mph were reported at State College PA. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data)
1989 A storm in the western U.S. produced up to three feet of snow in the mountains around Lake Tahoe, with 21 inches reported at Donner Summit. Thunderstorms in northern California produced 3.36 inches of rain at Redding to establish a 24 hour record for October, and bring their rainfall total for the month to a record 5.11 inches. Chiefly "Indian Summer" type weather prevailed across the rest of the nation. Fifteen cities in the north central U.S. reported record high temperatures for the date as readings soared into the 70s and 80s. Record highs included 74 degrees at International Falls MN, and 86 degrees at Yankton SD. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data)
1992 Toronto Blue Jays finally win a World Series for Canada. On October 24, 1992, the Toronto Blue Jays beat the Atlanta Braves in the sixth game of the World Series to win the championship. It was the first time a Canadian team had ever won the trophy, and it was a truly international victory—the Blue Jays’ 25-man roster included several players of Puerto Rican descent, a Jamaican, three Dominicans and no actual Canadians.
The series itself was a bit of a nail-biter: Four of the six games were decided by a single run, and three were won in the last at-bat. The Braves won the first game relatively handily (that is, by two runs). The Jays won the second 5-4 (they were trailing 4-3 when they came to bat in the ninth), the third 3-2 (thanks to a bases-loaded single at the bottom of the last inning) and the fourth 2-1. The Braves won Game 5 easily, as John Smoltz and Mike Stanton pitched to a 7-2 victory.
In Game 6, the Braves were losing by one run at the beginning of the ninth inning. They put runners on first and second, and then pinch-hitter Francisco Cabrera scorched a line drive to left that, if Candy Maldonado hadn’t made an impossible catch at the last minute, would have scored at least two runs. As it happened, the next batter singled to tie the game and force it into extra innings.
At the top of the 11th, with two out and two on, 41-year-old Blue Jay Dave Winfield cranked a 3-2 pitch low down the left-field line, sending two of his teammates home. At the bottom of the inning, the Braves managed to score once and even got the tying run to third, but it wasn’t enough. Toronto reliever Mike Timlin got Otis Nixon to bunt, then charged the blooper and tossed the ball to first in plenty of time. It was a rather anti-climactic ending to a highly climactic series, but it did the job: The Blue Jays were the champions. "No one can say we choke anymore," Toronto’s Roberto Alomar told reporters in the locker room after the game. "This is a great club. We won like champions."
1998 Launch of Deep Space 1 comet/asteroid mission.
2002 Police arrest spree killers John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, ending the Beltway sniper attacks in the area around Washington, DC.
2005 Hurricane Wilma reached the U.S. coastline near Everglades City in Florida with maximum sustained winds near 120 mph. The hurricane accelerated across south Florida and the Miami/Fort Lauderdale area, exiting the coast later the same day. There were 10 fatalities in Florida, and nearly 6 million people lost power, the most widespread power outage in Florida history. Preliminary estimates of insured losses in Florida were over $6 billion, while uninsured losses were over $12 billion.
2008 "Bloody Friday" saw many of the world's stock exchanges experience the worst declines in their history, with drops of around 10% in most indices.
Births
1632 Anton van Leeuwenhoek, microscope pioneer, was born on this day. He turned the microscope onto all sorts of life and objects, and was not believed when he first described what he saw, which included single-cell organisms. He was, by the way, a steady, church-going man who viewed what he was seeing as God's handiwork.
1788 Sarah Josepha Buell Hale (d 1879) American writer and an influential editor. She is the author of the nursery rhyme "Mary Had a Little Lamb" and editor of Ladies' Magazine. She famously campaigned for the creation of the American holiday known as Thanksgiving, and for the completion of the Bunker Hill Monument, .
1855 James Schoolcraft Sherman (d 1912) United States Representative from New York and the 27th Vice President of the United States. He was a member of the Baldwin, Hoar, and Sherman families.
1890 Main Rousseau Bocher (d 1976), also known as Mainbocher courtier, established in 1929, the house of Mainbocher successfully operated in Paris (1929-1939) and then in New York (1940-1971), uniform designer (Red Cross, Girl Scouts, Waves).
1903 Melvin Purvis, American FBI agent, led the manhunts that tracked such outlaws as Baby Face Nelson and Pretty Boy Floyd, and most famously John Dillinger, which ended in Chicago on July 22, 1934. (d. 1960)
1904 Moss Hart, American dramatist, (Once in a Lifetime, You Can't Take It With You, The Man Who Came to Dinner, Washington Slept Here) (d. 1961)
1908 J. Tuzo Wilson (d 1993) Canadian geologist and geophysicist who established global patterns of faulting and the structure of the continents. Wilson did much to establish the new discipline of plate tectonics during the early 1960s and was the first to use the term 'plate' to refer to the rigid portions (oceanic, continental, or a combination of both) into which the Earth's crust is divided. In 1963 he produced some of the earliest evidence in favour of the sea-floor spreading hypothesis of Harry H. Hess when he pointed out that the further away an island lay from the mid-ocean ridge the older it proved to be. In 1965, he introduced the new concept of a transform fault where plates slide past each other without any creation or destruction of material.
1911 Nathaniel Convers Wyeth (d 1990) American chemist and inventor of the PET plastic beverage bottle. His patent was asssigned to Du Pont for the "Biaxially Oriented Poly(Ethylene Terephthalate) Bottle" and described these bottles as "useful in bottling liquids under pressure such as ... carbonated beverages" which had "excellent strength properties, are impact resistant, and are capable of holding liquids under pressures as high as about 100 p.s.i.g." (U.S. No. 3,733,309, issued 15 May 1973). It was the first plastic suitable to hold carbonated beverages that was safe enough to satisfy the food safety requirements. His other career contributions include development of polymer processing equipment, synthetic textile fibres, and other plastic products. Andrew Wyeth, distinguished American painter, was his brother.
1911 Clarence M. Kelley (d 1997) public servant and former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
1915 Bob Kane, born Robert Kahn, (d 1998) American comic book artist and writer, credited as the creator of the DC Comics superhero Batman.
1919 Frank Piasecki, American engineer and helicopter aviation pioneer, pioneered tandem rotor helicopter designs and created the compound helicopter concept of vectored thrust using a ducted propeller. (d. 2008)
1926 Y. A. Tittle, American football player, quarterback in the National Football League and All-America Football Conference who played for the Baltimore Colts, San Francisco 49ers, and the New York Giants. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1971.
1929 George Crumb Charleston WV, composer (Pulitzer 1968-Echoes of Time)
1929 James Patrick Brosnan, Cincinnati, Ohio, Major League Baseball player from 1954 and 1956 through 1963. He was a pitcher for the Chicago Cubs, St. Louis Cardinals, Cincinnati Reds and Chicago White Sox, author The Long Season.
1930 J.P. Richardson, The Big Bopper, American singer, best known for his recording of "Chantilly Lace". On February 3, 1959, on what has become known as The Day the Music Died, Richardson was killed in a small-plane crash in Iowa, along with Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens. (d. 1959)
1935 Malcolm Bilson American pianist specializing in performance on the fortepiano, which is the 18th century version of the piano.
1935 David Oswald Nelson American actor, director, producer, and son of bandleader/TV actor Ozzie Nelson and singer Harriet Hilliard and the older brother of late singer Ricky Nelson.
1939 Fahrid Murray Abraham American actor, became known during the 1980s after winning the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Antonio Salieri in Amadeus. He appeared in many roles, both leading and supporting, in films such as All the President's Men and Scarface.
1941 William H. Dobelle (d 2004) biomedical researcher who developed experimental technologies that restored limited sight to blind patients. He is also credited as Dr. William Dobelle, Dr. William H. Dobelle, William Harvey Dobelle, Bill Dobelle and Dr. Bill Dobelle. He was nominated with Dr. Willem Johan Kolff for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2003.
1944 Ray Downs American author and musician
1948 Kweisi Mfume, American politician and activist, former President/CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), as well as a five-term Democratic Congressman from Maryland's 7th congressional district, serving in the 100th through 104th Congress. On September 12, 2006, he lost a primary campaign for the United States Senate seat that was being vacated by Maryland U.S. Senator Paul Sarbanes.
1957 Ronald Clyde "Gardy" Gardenhire in Butzbach, Hesse, West Germany, former Major League Baseball infielder and the current manager of the MLB's Minnesota Twins.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Gardenhire
1961 Mary Bono Mack, American politician and since 1998 has been a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives, representing California's 45th congressional district. The district, numbered as the 44th District for her first three terms, is based in Palm Springs and includes most of central and eastern Riverside County. Bono Mack is California's only Republican woman in Washington.
Deaths
1821 Elias Boudinot, lawyer and statesman from Elizabeth, New Jersey who was a delegate to the Continental Congress and a U.S. Congressman for New Jersey. He also served as President of the Continental Congress from 1782 to 1783 and Director of the United States Mint from 1795 until 1805. (b. 1740)
1826 Ann Hasseltine Judson, wife of Burma missionary Adoniram Judson, died (b. 22 Dec 1789).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Hasseltine_Judson
1852 Daniel Webster, leading American statesman during the nation's Antebellum Period. He first rose to regional prominence through his defense of New England shipping interests. His increasingly nationalistic views and the effectiveness with which he articulated them led Webster to become one of the most famous orators and influential Whig leaders of the Second Party System. As a leader of the Whig Party, he was one of the nation's most prominent conservatives, leading opposition to Democrat Andrew Jackson and the Democratic party. He was a spokesman for modernization, banking and industry. During his forty years in national politics Webster served in the House of Representatives for ten years (representing New Hampshire), the Senate for nineteen years (representing Massachusetts), and served as Secretary of State for three presidents. He aspired to the White House but was an elitist, not a "man of the people," and the people knew it. (b. 1782)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Webster
1932 Palmer Hartsough (b. 7 May 1844), American sacred music chorister,
www.cyberhymnal.org/bio/h/a/r/hartsough_p.htm
www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/i/a/iamresol.htm
1935 Dutch Schultz, born Arthur Flegenheimer, (b 1902) New York City-area Jewish-American gangster of the 1920s and 1930s who made his fortune in organized crime-related activities such as bootlegging alcohol and the numbers racket.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Schultz
1972 Jackie Robinson, American baseball player, and the first black player in Major League Baseball (b. 1919)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackie_Robinson
1991 Eugene Wesley "Gene" Roddenberry (b 1921) American television screenwriter, producer and futurist, best known for creating the American science fiction series Star Trek.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Roddenberry
2002 Winton M. Blount, United States Postmaster General (b. 1921)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winton_M._Blount
2005 Rosa Parks, American civil rights activist, the U.S. Congress later called her "the first lady of civil rights", and "the mother of the freedom movement" (b. 1913)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Parks
2006 Enolia McMillan, American civil rights activist, first woman to be national president of NAACP. (b. 1904)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enolia_McMillan
Christian Feast Day
Anthony Mary Claret
October 24 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
Saints
Saint Arethas (martyr) (523)
Blessed Elesbaan, king of Ethiopia (ca. 540)
www.amug.org/~jpaul/oct24.html
www.todayinsci.com/10/10_24.htm
daysuntil.com/Election-Day/index.html
www.weatherforyou.com/cgi-bin/weather_history/today2S.pl
www.history.com/this-day-in-history
www.christianhistorytimeline.com/lives_events/birthday/index.php
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_24
www.scopesys.com/cgi-bin/today2.cgi
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_24_(Eastern_Orthodox_liturgics)
www.cyberhymnal.org/index.htm#lk
www.lutheranhistory.org/history/tih1024.htm
There are 68 days remaining until the end of the year.
Days left until November 06, 2012 14
Countdown until Obama leaves Office
www.obamaclock.org/
U.S. Debt Clock: www.usdebtclock.org/
1147 After a siege of 4 months crusader knights led by Afonso Henriques, reconquered Lisbon from the Moors.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afonso_Henriques
1260 According to both modern and medieval Muslim historians, Qutuz, Mamluk sultan of Egypt, was assassinated by a fellow Mamluk leader, Baibars, who then seized power for himself.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qutuz
1590 John White, The governor of the second Roanoke Colony, returns to England after an unsuccessful search for the "lost" colonists.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_White_(colonist_and_artist)
1648 Thirty Years War ends. The Treaty of Westphalia is signed, ending the Thirty Years War and radically shifting the balance of power in Europe.
The Thirty Years War, a series of wars fought by European nations for various reasons, ignited in 1618 over an attempt by the king of Bohemia (the future Holy Roman emperor Ferdinand II) to impose Catholicism throughout his domains. Protestant nobles rebelled, and by the 1630s most of continental Europe was at war.
As a result of the Treaty of Westphalia, the Netherlands gained independence from Spain, Sweden gained control of the Baltic and France was acknowledged as the preeminent Western power. The power of the Holy Roman Emperor was broken and the German states were again able to determine the religion of their lands.
The principle of state sovereignty emerged as a result of the Treaty of Westphalia and serves as the basis for the modern system of nation-states.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Westphalia
1683 Germans settled in Germantown, Pennsylvania.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germantown,_Philadelphia,_Pennsylvania
1774 British naval fleet attacks Norfolk, Virginia. On this day in 1775, Virginia's last royal governor, Lord John Murray Dunmore, orders a British naval fleet of six ships to sail up the James River and into Hampton Creek to attack Patriot troops and destroy the town of Norfolk, Virginia. British Captain Matthew Squire led the six ships into Hampton Creek and began bombarding the town with artillery and cannon fire, while a second contingent of British troops sailed ashore to begin engaging the Patriots.
Expecting the Patriots and local militia to come charging and to engage in open combat, the British were surprised to come under fire from expert riflemen, who began striking down British troops at a distance. Hearing of the British attack, Virginia's local militia leader, Colonel William Woodford, marched an additional 100 members of the militia to defend Norfolk.
With reinforcements in place, the Patriots and militia pushed the British back to their ships, where the riflemen again began picking off British troops from the decks of their vessels. Facing a humiliating defeat at the hands of an outnumbered local militia, Captain Squire ordered a full British retreat. In the unorganized and hurried withdrawal that followed, two British ships ran aground and were captured. The Patriots, meanwhile, did not suffer a single fatality.
1785 - A four day rain swelled the Merrimack River in New Hampshire and Massachusetts to the greatest height of record causing extensive damage to bridges and mills. (David Ludlum)
1836 Alonzo Dwight Phillips of Springfield, Massachusetts, received the first U.S. patent for the phosphorous friction safety match (No. 68). The first friction matches, using a mixture of chemicals for their heads, were made and sold in England in 1827. Phillips' match, which could be struck on any rough surface, was the first genuine friction match made in America. Known as "loco focos," and later as "lucifers," these matches were made entirely by hand from a mixture of chalk, phosphorus, glue and brimstone (sulphur). The introduction of gas for lighting and cooking, and the spread of cigar smoking, made the lucifer almost a necessity. By the time of the Civil War, about a million matches a day were being manufactured.
1861 The first transcontinental telegraph message was sent by Justice Stephen J. Field of California to President Abraham Lincoln, on the same day the first transcontinental telegraph system was completed. The section, built during 1861 by the Western Union Telegraph Co. and its associates, connected St. Joseph, Missouri and Sacramento, California. The Civil War had made obtaining labor and supplies difficult. Nature's obstacles had included the Rocky Mountains, the Sierra Nevada, and the Great Plains where timber for telephone poles was in short supply. Now it had become possible to transmit messages so rapidly from coast to coast, the Pony Express, previously the fastest communication between the East and the West, closed two days later.
1862 Rosencrans replaces Buell. Union General Don Carlos Buell is replaced because of his ineffective pursuit of the Confederates after the Battle of Perryville, Kentucky, on October 8. He was replaced by William Rosecrans, who had distinguished himself in western Virginia in 1861 and provided effective leadership at the battle of Corinth, Mississippi, just prior to Perryville.
Buell, an Ohio native, served with distinction in the Mexican War. When the Civil War began, he became a brigadier general in the Army of the Potomac. In November 1861, General George McClellan recommended Buell to replace William T. Sherman as commander of the Department of the Ohio. Arriving too late to mount an overland offensive, Buell sent troops up the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers in the winter, resulting in the capture of Forts Henry and Donelson by General Ulysses S. Grant. In 1862, Buell fought at Shiloh and Corinth in Tennessee and Mississippi before returning to Kentucky to head a Confederate invasion in fall 1862.
At Perryville, Buell's army met Braxton Bragg's force as Bragg was driving northward. In a bloody but indecisive engagement, the Yankees halted Bragg's advance. Buell's force outnumbered Bragg's, so the Confederates began to retreat back to Tennessee. Buell offered a weak and slow pursuit, so Bragg's army slipped safely away. President Lincoln was distressed by Buell's inaction. He was already frustrated with both Buell and McClellan, who allowed General Robert E. Lee's army to escape to Virginia just three weeks prior to Perryville. Lincoln also saw the Democrat Buell, who was outspoken in his criticism of the Emancipation Proclamation, as a political liability.
Buell was upset with his removal and demanded a trial to clear his reputation. After five months of testimony, Buell was cleared of any wrongdoing or army mismanagement. His military career was effectively over, however. He settled in Kentucky after the war and died in 1898.
1876 A U.S. patent was issued for the metal case of a one-day back-winding alarm clock to the Seth E. Thomas of New York City, NY (No. 183,725), being the first American patent for an alarm clock of this familiar type. It was manufactured from that that year by the Seth Thomas Clock Company of Thomaston, Connecticut. Seth was born in 1816 and died in 1888 in Conneticut. His father Seth Thomas was also a clock maker in Plymouth Hollow, Connecticut, which was renamed Thomaston in his honor in about 1860. (The first alarm clock made in the U.S. appeared in Concord, NH, in 1787. That clock was made by Levi Hutchins with a pine case, 29-in high and 14-in wide, but the alarm was for a preset time that could not be altered.)
1878 A hurricane produced widespread damage across North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. At Philadelphia PA, the hurricane was the worst of record. (David Ludlum)
1897 "The New York Journal American"carries the "The Yellow Kid" comic strip. The Yellow Kid was the creation of Richard Felton Outcault and is considered the first American comic strip character to be a popular star. The character first appeared in Truth magazine in 1894. By 1895 Outcault had a steady gig at the New York World newspaper, drawing a strip called "Hogan's Alley." Outcault moved The Yellow Kid to William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal American in 1897.
1901 Anna Edson Taylor became the first person to survive going over Niagara Falls in a barrel. On October 24, 1901 a daredevil named Anna Edson Taylor did a very daring stunt. She went over Niagara Falls in a wooden barrel. Ms. Taylor went over Niagara Falls and dropped 175 feet! The barrel was four and a half feet high and three feet across. She also wore a leather harness and soft cushions were on the inside of the barrel to protect her during her fall. After the fall, Ms. Edson was shaken up but not badly hurt.
1911 Orville Wright remains in the air 9 minutes and 45 seconds in a Wright Glider at Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina.
1911 Missionary widow Aimee Elizabeth Kennedy Semple, 21, married Harold Stewart McPherson, also 21. Afterward, Aimee Semple McPherson went on to establish the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel in 1918. (She and Harold would divorce in 1921).
1912 First Balkan War: Serbian forces defeated the Ottoman army at the Battle of Kumanovo in Vardar Macedonia.
1917 Battle of Caporetto On this day in 1917, a combined German and Austro-Hungarian force scores one of the most crushing victories of World War I, decimating the Italian line along the northern stretch of the Isonzo River in the Battle of Caporetto, also known as the Twelfth Battle of the Isonzo, or the Battle of Karfreit (to the Germans).
By the autumn of 1917, Italian Commander in Chief Luigi Cadorna’s strategy of successive offensives near the Isonzo River in northern Italy—11 Italian attacks since May 1915 preceded the Austrian assault at Caporetto—had cost the Italians heavy casualties for an advance of less than seven miles, only one third of the way towards their preliminary objective, the city of Trieste on the Adriatic Sea. Despite this, the wave of Italian attacks had also taken a serious toll on Austro-Hungarian resources in the region. Indeed, in the wake of the Eleventh Battle of the Isonzo in August 1917, Austria’s positions around the city of Gorizia were dangerously close to collapse. As a result, the German Supreme Command, led by Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff, determined with their Austrian counterpart, Arz von Straussenberg, to launch a combined operation against the Italians, intended for mid-September.
In preparation for the offensive, Germany transported seven divisions of troops to reinforce the Austrians on the upper banks of the Isonzo. Cadorna, learning by aerial reconnaissance of the Austro-German movements, pushed back his own army’s scheduled September offensive to prepare a defensive position for the scheduled attacks that month. Unfavorable weather, however, pushed back the plans, and by the time Germany and Austria-Hungary were ready to attack, they were able to catch the Italians by surprise. On October 24, after a brief, effective artillery bombardment, the German and Austrian infantry moved ahead against the damaged Italian lines, using grenades and flamethrowers to exploit their advantage and achieve a quick and decisive breakthrough. By the end of the day, they had advanced an impressive 25 kilometers.
Though the Italians managed to harden their defensives over the coming weeks, by mid-November the Germans and Austrians had driven them back some 60 miles to the River Piave, just 30 kilometers north of Venice. Italian casualties at Caporetto totaled almost 700,000—40,000 killed or wounded, 280,000 captured by the enemy and another 350,000 deserted. In the wake of the battle, violent anti-war protests reached a peak in Italy, as Cadorna was forced to resign his command. His successor, General Armando Diaz, would oversee a new Italian strategy—defensive, as opposed to offensive—for the remainder of the war, including a greater reliance on the resources of the stronger Allied powers.
1926 Harry Houdini's last performance, which is at the Garrick Theatre in Detroit, Michigan.
1929 "Black Thursday" on Wall Street. "Black Thursday" occurred in the New York Stock Exchange as nearly 13 million shares were sold in panic selling. Five days later "Black Tuesday" saw 16 million shares sold. A then-record of 12.9 million shares were traded that day. At 1 p.m. on Black Thursday, several leading Wall Street bankers met to find a solution to the panic and chaos on the trading floor. They purchased large numbers of "Blue Chip" stocks above the market price to slow the selling frenzy.
1929 "The Rudy Vallee Show" debuted on NBC radio. Vallee began hosting The Fleischmann's Yeast Hour. Beginning October 24, 1929, the show quickly became a top-rated program, second only to Amos 'n' Andy. Host Valle appeared along with regulars Ole Olsen and Chic Johnson (1932), followed by Tom Howard and George Shelton (1935). On this show, the American listening audience heard many future stars for the first time, as it introduced such talents as Eddie Cantor, Kate Smith, Milton Berle and Alice Faye.
1931 George Washington Bridge is dedicated. On this day in 1931, eight months ahead of schedule, President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicates the George Washington Bridge over the Hudson River. The 4,760-foot–long suspension bridge, the longest in the world at the time, connected Fort Lee, New Jersey with Washington Heights in New York City. "This will be a highly successful enterprise," FDR told the assembled crowd at the ceremony. "The great prosperity of the Holland Tunnel and the financial success of other bridges recently opened in this region have proven that not even the hardest times can lessen the tremendous volume of trade and traffic in the greatest of port districts."
Workers built the six-lane George Washington Bridge in sections. They carried the pieces to the construction site by rail, then hauled them into the river by boat, then hoisted them into place by crane. Though the bridge was gigantic, engineer Othmar Amman had found a way to make it look light and airy: in place of vertical trusses, he used horizontal plate girders in the roadway to keep the bridge steady. Amman used such strong steel that these plate girders could be relatively thin and as a result, the bridge deck was only 12 feet deep. From a distance, it looked as flimsy as a magic carpet. Meanwhile, thanks to Amman's sophisticated suspension system, that magic carpet seemed to be floating: The bridge hung from cables made of steel wires--107,000 miles and 28,100 tons of steel wires, to be exact--that were much more delicate-looking than anything anyone had ever seen.
The bridge opened to traffic on October 25, 1931. One year later, it had carried 5 million cars from New York to New Jersey and back again. In 1946, engineers added two lanes to the bridge. In 1958, city officials decided to increase its capacity by 75 percent by adding a six-lane lower level. This deck (the New York Times called it "a masterpiece of traffic engineering," while other, more waggish observers referred to it as the "Martha Washington") opened in August 1962.
Today, the George Washington Bridge is one of the world's busiest bridges. In 2008, it carried some 105,894,000 vehicles.
1937 - A snow squall in Buffalo NY tied up traffic in six inches of slush. (David Ludlum)
1939 Benny Goodman records "Let's Dance" In the early 1930s Goodman formed his own orchestra and the Swing Era began. He became a world famous bandleader, appeared in the movies and dominated popular music until the 1950s, with well over 100 hit songs, including "Let's Dance," "Blue Moon," "One O'Clock Jump" and "Six Appeal."
1939 Nylon stockings went on sale in the U.S. for the first time to employees at DuPont's Wilmington, Delaware nylon factory. The modern materials revolution began in 1938 with DuPont's commercialization of their nylon product, which was the first man-made fibre to be made exclusively from mineral sources. The company specifically intended to compete with silk in the women's hosiery market. The fibre was strong, elastic, moth-proof and did not absorb moisture. Years of research led to enormous success. "Nylons," as they were soon called, eventually replaced silk stockings. Covering only about two-thirds of a woman's leg, from the feet to mid-thigh, stockings were fastened with garters and a belt. Nationwide sales began on 15 May 1940.
1940 Japan eliminates US terms (strike, play ball) from baseball
1940 The 40 hour workweek went into effect under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. The Fair Labor Standards Act was passed by Congress on 25th June, 1938. The main objective of the act was to eliminate "labor conditions detrimental to the maintenance of the minimum standards of living necessary for health, efficiency and well-being of workers." The act established maximum working hours of 44 a week for the first year, 42 for the second, and 40 thereafter. Minimum wages of 25 cents an hour were established for the first year, 30 cents for the second, and 40 cents over a period of the next six years.
1944 World War II: The Japanese aircraft carrier Zuikaku, and the battleship Musashi are sunk in the Battle of Leyte Gulf.
1945 United Nations Charter becomes effective. The Charter was signed on June 26, 1945 by the representatives of the 50 countries. Poland, which was not represented at the Conference, signed it later and became one of the original 51 Member States. The United Nations officially came into existence on October 24, 1945, when the Charter had been ratified by China, France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, the United States and by a majority of other signatories.
1946 A camera on board the V-2 No. 13 rocket takes the first photograph of earth from outer space.
1947 The Bar Harbor holocaust occurred in Maine when forest fires consumed homes and a medical research institute. The fires claimed 17 lives, and caused thirty million dollars damage. (David Ludlum)
1947 Walt Disney testifies to the House Un-American Activities Committee, naming Disney employees he believes to be communists.
1951 Truman declares war with Germany officially over. On this day in 1951, President Harry Truman finally proclaims that the nation's war with Germany, begun in 1941, is officially over. Fighting had ended in the spring of 1945.
Most Americans assumed that the war with Germany had ended with the cessation of hostilities six years earlier. In fact, a treaty with Germany had not been signed. Complicating the treaty process was the status of territory within what was formerly the German state. Following the Second World War, the major Western powers (U.S., Britain and France) and the Soviets agreed to divide the country, including the capital city of Berlin, into democratic and communist-controlled sectors. Both East and West Berlin ended up within the Soviet-controlled territory of East Germany and the capital became the epicenter of increasing tensions between the West and Soviet Russia. Each side claimed the other had violated post-war treaties regarding their respective spheres of influence in post-war Europe. The conflict over Berlin came to a head in June 1948 when Stalin ordered a blockade of the city. Truman did not want to abandon Berlin to the Soviets and ordered an airlift to supply the western sectors with food and fuel. The treaty process was put on hold until the Western powers could agree on what to do about Berlin. A Soviet atomic weapons test on October 3, 1951, increased the tension.
In his proclamation on this day, Truman stated that it had always been America's hope to create a treaty of peace with the government of a united and free Germany, but that Soviet policy had "made it impossible." The official end to the war came 10 years and two months after Congress had declared open war with Nazi Germany on December 11, 1941.
1951 Sacramento, CA, reported a barometric pressure of 29.42 inches, to establish a record for October. (The Weather Channel)
1951 United Nations publishes its first postage stamps.
1954 U.S. president pledges support to South Vietnam. President Eisenhower pledges support to Diem's government and military forces.
Eisenhower wrote to South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem and promised direct assistance to his government. Eisenhower made it clear to Diem that U.S. aid to his government during Vietnam's "hour of trial" was contingent upon his assurances of the "standards of performance [he] would be able to maintain in the event such aid were supplied." Eisenhower called for land reform and a reduction of government corruption. Diem agreed to the "needed reforms" stipulated as a precondition for receiving aid, but he never actually followed through on his promises. Ultimately his refusal to make any substantial changes to meet the needs of the people led to extreme civil unrest and eventually a coup by dissident South Vietnamese generals in which Diem and his brother were murdered.
1956 In Syracuse, New York, Margaret Ellen Towner became the first woman ordained in the Presbyterian Church.
1957 The USAF starts the X-20 Dyna-Soar program.
1958 Raymond Chandler starts his last novel. On this day, mystery writer Raymond Chandler starts working on his last novel, The Poodle Springs Story, but he will die before completing it.
Chandler was born in 1888 in Chicago. He was raised in England, where he went to college and worked as a freelance journalist for several newspapers.
During World War I, Chandler served in the Royal Flying Corps. After the war, he moved to California, where he eventually became the director of several independent oil companies. He lost his job during the Depression and turned to writing to support himself at the age of 45. He published his first stories in the early 1930s in the pulp magazine Black Mask and published his first novel, The Big Sleep, in 1939. He published only seven novels, among them Farewell My Lovely (1946) and The Long Goodbye (1953), all featuring tough, cynical detective Philip Marlowe. William Faulkner wrote the screen version of The Big Sleep, which starred Humphrey Bogart as Philip Marlow.
Chandler also wrote Hollywood screenplays in the 1940s and early 50s, including Double Indemnity (1949) and Strangers on a Train (1951). He died in March 1959.
1959 Wilt ‘The Stilt’ Chamberlain launched a pro basketball record streak. Not only did he play in 799 consecutive games; he didn’t foul out in one of them.
1960 "I Want to Be Wanted" by Brenda Lee topped the charts. It wasn't until 1960 when Lee took "Sweet Nothin's" to No. 4 on the pop charts that she made a major impact as a recording artist. Over the next 13 years, she scored two No. 1's ("I'm Sorry" and "I Want to Be Wanted"), four Top 5s and five Top 10s. While its short seasonal nature kept it from ever topping the charts, her "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree," recorded in 1958, has become a holiday classic.
1960 Nedelin catastrophe: An R-16 ballistic missile explodes on the launch pad at the Soviet Union's Baikonur Cosmodrome space facility, killing over 100. Among the dead is Field Marshal Mitrofan Nedelin, whose death is reported to have occurred in a plane crash
1962 The U.S. blockade of Cuba began under a proclamation signed by President Kennedy. Acutely aware that miscalculation by either side could spark nuclear war, Kennedy settled upon a blockade of Cuba in tandem with an ultimatum to the Soviets to remove the missiles, both to be announced during a special national broadcast on television during the evening of October 22. In that broadcast, Kennedy declared that a naval quarantine of Cuba would go into effect on the morning of October 24 and would not be lifted until all offensive weapons had been removed. He also announced that he had ordered increased surveillance of Cuba and, ominously, that he had directed the armed forces "to prepare for any eventualities."
1962 James Brown records breakthrough Live at the Apollo album. James Brown began his professional career at a time when rock and roll was opening new opportunities for black artists to connect with white audiences. But the path he took to fame did not pass through Top 40 radio or through The Ed Sullivan Show and American Bandstand. James Brown would make his appearance in all of those places eventually, but only after a decade spent performing almost exclusively before black audiences and earning his reputation as the Hardest Working Man in Show Business. On this day in 1962, he took a major step toward his eventual crossover and conquest of the mainstream with an electrifying performance on black America's most famous stage—a performance recorded and later released as Live at the Apollo (1963), the first breakthrough album of James Brown's career.
By the time 1962 rolled around, James Brown was one of the most popular figures on the R&B scene, not so much on the strength of his recordings, but on the strength of his live act. As he would throughout his long career, Brown ran his band, the Famous Flames, like a military unit, demanding of his instrumentalists and backing vocalists the same perfection he demanded of himself. Even in the middle of a performance, Brown would turn around and dish out fines for missed or flubbed notes, all without missing or flubbing a dance step himself. At the midnight show at the Apollo on October 24, 1962, however, every member of Brown's band knew that the fines they faced would be far greater than normal. "You made a mistake that night," band member Bobby Byrd told Rolling Stone magazine, "the fine would move from five or ten dollars to fifty or a hundred dollars."
The reason was simple. Having failed to convince the head of his label, King Records, to record and release the performance as a live album, James Brown, a man who was famously wise to the value of a dollar, was financing the Apollo recording himself. In the end, the show went off not only without a hitch, but with such success that the famously tough Apollo crowd was in a state of rapture. Released in May 1963, Live at the Apollo ended up spending an astonishing 66 weeks on the Billboard album chart and selling upwards of a million copies, giving James Brown his first smash hit album and setting him on a course for his incredible crossover success in the mid-1960s and beyond.
1964 "Do Wah Diddy Diddy" by Manfred Mann topped the charts. "Do Wah Diddy Diddy" was written by the songwriting team of Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich. It was originally recorded by The Exciters as the follow-up to their hit "Tell Him." However, the British invasion had begun and once Manfred Mann recorded it, the Exciters were out of luck.
1969 - Unseasonably cold air gripped the northeastern U.S. Lows of 10 degrees at Concord, NH, and 6 degrees at Albany NY established October records. (The Weather Channel)
1969 Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid opens. On this day in 1969, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford as a team of bank robbers in the Old West, opens in theaters around the United States. The film was a commercial and critical success, receiving seven Oscar nominations (including Best Picture and Best Director) and winning in the categories of Best Screenplay (William Goldman), Best Song (Burt Bacharach’s “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head”), Best Score and Best Cinematography.
Prior to Butch Cassidy, Paul Newman, who was born on January 26, 1925, appeared in such films as Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), The Hustler (1961), Hud (1963) and Cool Hand Luke (1967), each of which earned him a Best Actor Academy Award nomination. He teamed up with Redford again in 1973’s The Sting, which collected seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture. The famously blue-eyed Newman went on to star in such movies as Absence of Malice (1981) and The Verdict (1982), both of which earned him Best Actor Oscar nominations, and The Color of Money (1986), for which he took home his first Best Actor Oscar. He received Oscar nominations again for his performances in Nobody’s Fool (1994) and Road to Perdition (2002). The screen legend died at the age of 83 on September 26, 2008, after battling cancer.
Redford, born on August 18, 1936, made his breakthrough performance on Broadway with Barefoot in the Park in 1963. Following the success of Butch Cassidy, he starred in such movies as The Candidate (1972), The Great Gatsby (1974), All the President’s Men (1976) and The Natural (1984). Redford made his directorial debut with 1980’s Ordinary People, which won four Oscars, including Best Director and Best Picture. Redford went on to helm The Milagro Beanfield War (1988), A River Runs Through It (1992) and Quiz Show (1994), which received four Oscar nominations, including Best Director and Best Picture. Later features included The Horse Whisperer (1998), in which he also starred; The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000) and Lions for Lambs (2007), in which he co-starred with Tom Cruise and Meryl Streep.
1969 Burton buys Liz a diamond. Movie star Richard Burton dazzles wife Elizabeth Taylor—and their legions of fans—when he buys her a 69-carat Cartier diamond ring costing $1.5 million. It was just another chapter in a tempestuous marriage that began on the Ides of March and continued thereafter in the public eye.
Taylor and Burton met and fell in the love during the filming of Cleopatra (1963). She was a 30-year-old London-born American starlet who was already on her fourth marriage, and he was a former British stage actor, also married but known to fool around and drink on the set. Cleopatra made them both superstars, and on March 15, 1964, they were married at the Ritz in Montreal. As one of the most famous married couples in the world, they commanded high salaries to appear in nearly a dozen movies together. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) and The Taming of the Shrew (1967) were the only two to receive critical acclaim.
The couple's stormy private life often drew more attention than their movie roles, and their extravagance was legendary. During the 1960s, they earned a combined $88 million and spent more than $65 million. They bought a fleet of Rolls Royces, whole floors of luxury hotels, a private jet, a helicopter, and a multimillion-dollar yacht. They were American royalty, and the world watched as their lives began to fall apart. Taylor appropriated Burton's alcohol-abuse problem and also mixed drugs into the stew. By 1969, their marriage was a constant cycle of verbal and physical battles that was only interrupted by the mutual presentation of expensive gifts. The famous Cartier diamond was the product of a fight they had in a restaurant one night. Burton called Taylor's hands large and ugly, and she responded that in that case, he'd better buy her the 69-carat ring she wanted so that her hands looked smaller and more attractive.
The flawless, pear-shaped diamond had 58 facets and was unearthed from the Premier mine of South Africa in 1966. It went up for auction in October 1969 and was bought by the Cartier jewelry firm for $1.05 million. The very next day, on October 24, Burton bought the diamond for an estimated $1.5 million; although the exact sum was undisclosed. The diamond—christened the "Taylor-Burton"—remained at Cartier for several days before Burton took it home and presented it to Taylor. Thousands of people lined the street outside Cartier every day to view it.
Taylor and Burton became estranged in 1970, in 1973 they formally separated, and in 1974 they divorced. They remarried in 1975 but stayed together just a few months. The next year, they divorced for the second and last time. Three years later, Taylor put the Taylor-Burton diamond up for auction. The jeweler Henry Lambert bought it for $3 million and then sold it to an anonymous buyer in Saudi Arabia. Elizabeth Taylor went on to have two more husbands, both of whom she divorced. She is currently single. Richard Burton died of a brain aneurysm in 1984.
1970 President Richard Nixon asked radio broadcasters to screen songs containing lyrics that promoted drug use
1970 Nancy Walker creates Ida Morgenstein role on Mary Tyler Moore Show
1970 "I'll Be There" by the Jackson 5 topped the charts
1971 Harry Drake sets longest arrow flight by a footbow (1 mile 268 yds)
1977 Veterans Day is observed on the fourth Monday in October for the seventh and last time. (The holiday is once again observed on November 11 beginning the following year.)
1979 Guinness Book of Records presents Paul McCartney with a rhodium disc for selling over 200 million albums
1980 Government of Poland legalizes Solidarity trade union
1987 Snow fell across northeast Minnesota and northwest Wisconsin overnight, with five inches reported at Poplar Lake MN and Gunflint Trail MN. Thunderstorm rains caused flash flooding in south central Arizona, with street flooding reported around Las Vegas NV. Strong northwesterly winds gusting to 50 mph downed some trees and power lines in western Pennsylvania and the northern panhandle of West Virginia. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data)
1987 "Bad" by Michael Jackson topped the charts
1988 Strong winds circulating around a deep low pressure centered produced snow squalls in the Great Lakes Region, with six inches reported at Ironwood MI. Wind gusts to 80 mph were reported at State College PA. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data)
1989 A storm in the western U.S. produced up to three feet of snow in the mountains around Lake Tahoe, with 21 inches reported at Donner Summit. Thunderstorms in northern California produced 3.36 inches of rain at Redding to establish a 24 hour record for October, and bring their rainfall total for the month to a record 5.11 inches. Chiefly "Indian Summer" type weather prevailed across the rest of the nation. Fifteen cities in the north central U.S. reported record high temperatures for the date as readings soared into the 70s and 80s. Record highs included 74 degrees at International Falls MN, and 86 degrees at Yankton SD. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data)
1992 Toronto Blue Jays finally win a World Series for Canada. On October 24, 1992, the Toronto Blue Jays beat the Atlanta Braves in the sixth game of the World Series to win the championship. It was the first time a Canadian team had ever won the trophy, and it was a truly international victory—the Blue Jays’ 25-man roster included several players of Puerto Rican descent, a Jamaican, three Dominicans and no actual Canadians.
The series itself was a bit of a nail-biter: Four of the six games were decided by a single run, and three were won in the last at-bat. The Braves won the first game relatively handily (that is, by two runs). The Jays won the second 5-4 (they were trailing 4-3 when they came to bat in the ninth), the third 3-2 (thanks to a bases-loaded single at the bottom of the last inning) and the fourth 2-1. The Braves won Game 5 easily, as John Smoltz and Mike Stanton pitched to a 7-2 victory.
In Game 6, the Braves were losing by one run at the beginning of the ninth inning. They put runners on first and second, and then pinch-hitter Francisco Cabrera scorched a line drive to left that, if Candy Maldonado hadn’t made an impossible catch at the last minute, would have scored at least two runs. As it happened, the next batter singled to tie the game and force it into extra innings.
At the top of the 11th, with two out and two on, 41-year-old Blue Jay Dave Winfield cranked a 3-2 pitch low down the left-field line, sending two of his teammates home. At the bottom of the inning, the Braves managed to score once and even got the tying run to third, but it wasn’t enough. Toronto reliever Mike Timlin got Otis Nixon to bunt, then charged the blooper and tossed the ball to first in plenty of time. It was a rather anti-climactic ending to a highly climactic series, but it did the job: The Blue Jays were the champions. "No one can say we choke anymore," Toronto’s Roberto Alomar told reporters in the locker room after the game. "This is a great club. We won like champions."
1998 Launch of Deep Space 1 comet/asteroid mission.
2002 Police arrest spree killers John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, ending the Beltway sniper attacks in the area around Washington, DC.
2005 Hurricane Wilma reached the U.S. coastline near Everglades City in Florida with maximum sustained winds near 120 mph. The hurricane accelerated across south Florida and the Miami/Fort Lauderdale area, exiting the coast later the same day. There were 10 fatalities in Florida, and nearly 6 million people lost power, the most widespread power outage in Florida history. Preliminary estimates of insured losses in Florida were over $6 billion, while uninsured losses were over $12 billion.
2008 "Bloody Friday" saw many of the world's stock exchanges experience the worst declines in their history, with drops of around 10% in most indices.
Births
1632 Anton van Leeuwenhoek, microscope pioneer, was born on this day. He turned the microscope onto all sorts of life and objects, and was not believed when he first described what he saw, which included single-cell organisms. He was, by the way, a steady, church-going man who viewed what he was seeing as God's handiwork.
1788 Sarah Josepha Buell Hale (d 1879) American writer and an influential editor. She is the author of the nursery rhyme "Mary Had a Little Lamb" and editor of Ladies' Magazine. She famously campaigned for the creation of the American holiday known as Thanksgiving, and for the completion of the Bunker Hill Monument, .
1855 James Schoolcraft Sherman (d 1912) United States Representative from New York and the 27th Vice President of the United States. He was a member of the Baldwin, Hoar, and Sherman families.
1890 Main Rousseau Bocher (d 1976), also known as Mainbocher courtier, established in 1929, the house of Mainbocher successfully operated in Paris (1929-1939) and then in New York (1940-1971), uniform designer (Red Cross, Girl Scouts, Waves).
1903 Melvin Purvis, American FBI agent, led the manhunts that tracked such outlaws as Baby Face Nelson and Pretty Boy Floyd, and most famously John Dillinger, which ended in Chicago on July 22, 1934. (d. 1960)
1904 Moss Hart, American dramatist, (Once in a Lifetime, You Can't Take It With You, The Man Who Came to Dinner, Washington Slept Here) (d. 1961)
1908 J. Tuzo Wilson (d 1993) Canadian geologist and geophysicist who established global patterns of faulting and the structure of the continents. Wilson did much to establish the new discipline of plate tectonics during the early 1960s and was the first to use the term 'plate' to refer to the rigid portions (oceanic, continental, or a combination of both) into which the Earth's crust is divided. In 1963 he produced some of the earliest evidence in favour of the sea-floor spreading hypothesis of Harry H. Hess when he pointed out that the further away an island lay from the mid-ocean ridge the older it proved to be. In 1965, he introduced the new concept of a transform fault where plates slide past each other without any creation or destruction of material.
1911 Nathaniel Convers Wyeth (d 1990) American chemist and inventor of the PET plastic beverage bottle. His patent was asssigned to Du Pont for the "Biaxially Oriented Poly(Ethylene Terephthalate) Bottle" and described these bottles as "useful in bottling liquids under pressure such as ... carbonated beverages" which had "excellent strength properties, are impact resistant, and are capable of holding liquids under pressures as high as about 100 p.s.i.g." (U.S. No. 3,733,309, issued 15 May 1973). It was the first plastic suitable to hold carbonated beverages that was safe enough to satisfy the food safety requirements. His other career contributions include development of polymer processing equipment, synthetic textile fibres, and other plastic products. Andrew Wyeth, distinguished American painter, was his brother.
1911 Clarence M. Kelley (d 1997) public servant and former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
1915 Bob Kane, born Robert Kahn, (d 1998) American comic book artist and writer, credited as the creator of the DC Comics superhero Batman.
1919 Frank Piasecki, American engineer and helicopter aviation pioneer, pioneered tandem rotor helicopter designs and created the compound helicopter concept of vectored thrust using a ducted propeller. (d. 2008)
1926 Y. A. Tittle, American football player, quarterback in the National Football League and All-America Football Conference who played for the Baltimore Colts, San Francisco 49ers, and the New York Giants. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1971.
1929 George Crumb Charleston WV, composer (Pulitzer 1968-Echoes of Time)
1929 James Patrick Brosnan, Cincinnati, Ohio, Major League Baseball player from 1954 and 1956 through 1963. He was a pitcher for the Chicago Cubs, St. Louis Cardinals, Cincinnati Reds and Chicago White Sox, author The Long Season.
1930 J.P. Richardson, The Big Bopper, American singer, best known for his recording of "Chantilly Lace". On February 3, 1959, on what has become known as The Day the Music Died, Richardson was killed in a small-plane crash in Iowa, along with Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens. (d. 1959)
1935 Malcolm Bilson American pianist specializing in performance on the fortepiano, which is the 18th century version of the piano.
1935 David Oswald Nelson American actor, director, producer, and son of bandleader/TV actor Ozzie Nelson and singer Harriet Hilliard and the older brother of late singer Ricky Nelson.
1939 Fahrid Murray Abraham American actor, became known during the 1980s after winning the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Antonio Salieri in Amadeus. He appeared in many roles, both leading and supporting, in films such as All the President's Men and Scarface.
1941 William H. Dobelle (d 2004) biomedical researcher who developed experimental technologies that restored limited sight to blind patients. He is also credited as Dr. William Dobelle, Dr. William H. Dobelle, William Harvey Dobelle, Bill Dobelle and Dr. Bill Dobelle. He was nominated with Dr. Willem Johan Kolff for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2003.
1944 Ray Downs American author and musician
1948 Kweisi Mfume, American politician and activist, former President/CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), as well as a five-term Democratic Congressman from Maryland's 7th congressional district, serving in the 100th through 104th Congress. On September 12, 2006, he lost a primary campaign for the United States Senate seat that was being vacated by Maryland U.S. Senator Paul Sarbanes.
1957 Ronald Clyde "Gardy" Gardenhire in Butzbach, Hesse, West Germany, former Major League Baseball infielder and the current manager of the MLB's Minnesota Twins.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Gardenhire
1961 Mary Bono Mack, American politician and since 1998 has been a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives, representing California's 45th congressional district. The district, numbered as the 44th District for her first three terms, is based in Palm Springs and includes most of central and eastern Riverside County. Bono Mack is California's only Republican woman in Washington.
Deaths
1821 Elias Boudinot, lawyer and statesman from Elizabeth, New Jersey who was a delegate to the Continental Congress and a U.S. Congressman for New Jersey. He also served as President of the Continental Congress from 1782 to 1783 and Director of the United States Mint from 1795 until 1805. (b. 1740)
1826 Ann Hasseltine Judson, wife of Burma missionary Adoniram Judson, died (b. 22 Dec 1789).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Hasseltine_Judson
1852 Daniel Webster, leading American statesman during the nation's Antebellum Period. He first rose to regional prominence through his defense of New England shipping interests. His increasingly nationalistic views and the effectiveness with which he articulated them led Webster to become one of the most famous orators and influential Whig leaders of the Second Party System. As a leader of the Whig Party, he was one of the nation's most prominent conservatives, leading opposition to Democrat Andrew Jackson and the Democratic party. He was a spokesman for modernization, banking and industry. During his forty years in national politics Webster served in the House of Representatives for ten years (representing New Hampshire), the Senate for nineteen years (representing Massachusetts), and served as Secretary of State for three presidents. He aspired to the White House but was an elitist, not a "man of the people," and the people knew it. (b. 1782)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Webster
1932 Palmer Hartsough (b. 7 May 1844), American sacred music chorister,
www.cyberhymnal.org/bio/h/a/r/hartsough_p.htm
www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/i/a/iamresol.htm
1935 Dutch Schultz, born Arthur Flegenheimer, (b 1902) New York City-area Jewish-American gangster of the 1920s and 1930s who made his fortune in organized crime-related activities such as bootlegging alcohol and the numbers racket.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Schultz
1972 Jackie Robinson, American baseball player, and the first black player in Major League Baseball (b. 1919)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackie_Robinson
1991 Eugene Wesley "Gene" Roddenberry (b 1921) American television screenwriter, producer and futurist, best known for creating the American science fiction series Star Trek.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Roddenberry
2002 Winton M. Blount, United States Postmaster General (b. 1921)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winton_M._Blount
2005 Rosa Parks, American civil rights activist, the U.S. Congress later called her "the first lady of civil rights", and "the mother of the freedom movement" (b. 1913)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Parks
2006 Enolia McMillan, American civil rights activist, first woman to be national president of NAACP. (b. 1904)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enolia_McMillan
Christian Feast Day
Anthony Mary Claret
October 24 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
Saints
Saint Arethas (martyr) (523)
Blessed Elesbaan, king of Ethiopia (ca. 540)
www.amug.org/~jpaul/oct24.html
www.todayinsci.com/10/10_24.htm
daysuntil.com/Election-Day/index.html
www.weatherforyou.com/cgi-bin/weather_history/today2S.pl
www.history.com/this-day-in-history
www.christianhistorytimeline.com/lives_events/birthday/index.php
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_24
www.scopesys.com/cgi-bin/today2.cgi
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_24_(Eastern_Orthodox_liturgics)
www.cyberhymnal.org/index.htm#lk
www.lutheranhistory.org/history/tih1024.htm