Post by farmgal on Oct 24, 2012 23:25:17 GMT -5
October 26 is the 300th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar.
There are 67 days remaining until the end of the year.
Days left until November 06, 2012 12
Countdown until Obama leaves Office
www.obamaclock.org/
U.S. Debt Clock: www.usdebtclock.org/
1774 First Continental Congress adjourns in Philadelphia. Henry Middleton filled in as President when the first Continental Congress adjourned. He served from October 22, 1774 until Congress adjourned four days later on October 26th. During Middleton's short tenure as President he signed the unanimously approved a Petition of Congress to King George III that had been drafted by John Jay of New York.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petition_to_the_King
1775 King George III goes before Parliament to declare the American colonies in rebellion, and authorized a military response to quell the American Revolution.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_George_III
Franklin, in his fur hat, charmed the French with what they saw as rustic new world genius.
1776 Benjamin Franklin departs from America for France on a mission to seek French support for the American Revolution.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin#Ambassador_to_France:_1776.E2.80.931785
1825 The Erie Canal opened as the first major major man-made waterway in America. In those early days, it was often sarcastically referred to as "Clinton's Big Ditch". When finally completed on October 26, 1825, it was the engineering marvel of its day. It included 18 aqueducts to carry the canal over ravines and rivers, and 83 locks, with a rise of 568 feet from the Hudson River to Lake Erie. It was 4 feet deep and 40 feet wide, and floated boats carrying 30 tons of freight. A ten foot wide towpath was built along the bank of the canal for horses, mules, and oxen led by a boy boat driver or "hoggee".
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erie_Canal
1853 Dr. Raphall, a New York Rabbi, delivered an address about Russia at a meeting of the Young Men’s Literary Association. Following Dr. Raphall’s address to the Hebrew Young Men’s Literary Association, Mr. Mosely Lyon delivered an address describing the purpose of the organizations.
www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/15124-young-men-s-hebrew-association
1858 A U.S. patent was issued for cycling reheated water in a washing machine, to Hamilton E. Smith of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (No. 21,909). His invention was an improvement for washing machines in which a reciprocating plunger acts on clothes in a tub. His invention placed two horizontal diaphragms in the tub. Both moved vertically with the action of the plunger. The upper one was perforated, and the lower one had a valve. Below the lower diaphragm springs pushed it up as the plunger was lifted. Their motion acted to pump water into the tub from a circuit of pipe that included coils in a heating tank and drained cooler water from the top of the tub. Smith improved his machine and obtained a second patent in 1863.
[a href="[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washing_machine"][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washing_machine[/a]
wiki.answers.com/Q/What_did_Hamilton_Smith_invent
1859 New York City had their earliest substantial snow of record as four inches blanketed the city. (David Ludlum)
1861 During the American Civil War, the 9th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry Regiment was mustered into service as part of the United States under the command of Colonel Frederick C. Salomon. When Salomon was appointed Brigadier General, he brother Charles became the Colonel commanding the regiment.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_C._Salomon
1861 Telegraph service inaugurated in US (end of Pony Express). Despite this successful business, the last link of the Overland Telegraph, which had begun on July 4, 1858, when the first pole was erected east of Placerville, was completed. On October 26, 1861, the first news dispatch by telegraph was sent all the way to San Francisco, bringing instantaneous communication with every important city in the East. Thereafter, businessmen crowded into the telegraph offices to send business dispatches via telegraph. Before the telegraph was completed, they paid upwards of $150 for sending a dispatch by Pony Express. That rate was dropped to approximately $50 for the privilege of communicating with the East by telegraph.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overland_Telegraph_Company
1863 Worldwide Red Cross organized in Geneva.An international conference met in Geneva on October 26, 1863. Thanks in large part to Dunant's preparatory work, it was attended by delegates favorably disposed toward the proposal of the committee. In all, 36 people attended, including representatives from 14 European countries. At the end of this conference, on October 29, 1863, the International Committee for the Relief of the Wounded was founded (now the International Committee of the Red Cross), composed of the five Swiss members that had convened in February. A red cross on a field of white was adopted as the emblem of the organisation, and national Red Cross societies were to be set up in each of the countries represented at the conference.
In 2005, in response to growing pressure to accommodate Magen David Adom as a full member of the Red Cross and Red Crescent movement, a new emblem (officially the Third Protocol Emblem, but more commonly known as the Red Crystal) was adopted by an amendment of the Geneva Conventions known as Protocol III.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Red_Cross_and_Red_Crescent_Movement#The_Red_Crystal
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Red_Cross_and_Red_Crescent_Movement
1864 Myer Isaacs sent a strongly worded letter to President Lincoln warning him against a deal that he allegedly made with a group of New York Jews who, presenting themselves as leaders of the community, had promised to deliver the “Jewish vote” for him. This letter is one of the germinal documents of early Jewish participation in the American political process.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_M._Isaacs
1881 Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. In October 1880, Virgil Earp became city marshal of Tombstone. Soon afterwards he recruited Wyatt Earp and Morgan Earp. The Earp family came into conflict with two families, the Clantons and the McLaurys who sold livestock to Tombstone. Virgil Earp believed that some of these animals had been stolen from farmers in Mexico. On October 25, Ike Clanton and Tom McLaury arrived in Tombstone. Later that day Doc Holliday got into a fight with Ike Clanton in the Alhambra Saloon. Holliday wanted a gunfight with Clanton, but he declined the offer and walked off. The following day Ike Clanton and Tom McLaury were arrested by Virgil Earp and charged with carrying firearms within the city limits. After they were disarmed and released, the two men joined Billy Clanton and Frank McLaury, who had just arrived in town. Wyatt Earp, two of his brothers and "Doc" Holliday gunned down two Clantons and two others.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunfight_at_the_O.K._Corral
1898 A Zionist Delegation led by Theodor Herzl arrives in the port of Yaffo (Jaffa). They visit Mikveh Israel and Rishon LeZion.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodor_Herzl
1917 World War I: Battle of Caporetto; Italy suffers a catastrophic defeat at the forces of Austria-Hungary and Germany. The young unknown Oberleutnant Erwin Rommel captures Mount Matajur with only 100 Germans against a force of over 7000 Italians.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Caporetto
The Isonzo river, location of the initial attacks at Kobarid (Caporetto).
1917 World War I: Brazil declared in state of war with Central Powers.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Caporetto
1918 Erich Ludendorff, quartermaster-general of the Imperial German Army, is dismissed by Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany for refusing to cooperate in peace negotiations.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Ludendorff
1919 The temperature at Bismarck, ND, plunged to ten degrees below zero, the earliest subzero reading of record for the city, and a record for the month of October. (The Weather Channel)
1921 The Chicago Theatre opens. Originally known as the Balaban and Katz Chicago Theatre, is a landmark theater located on North State Street in the Loop area of Chicago, Illinois. Built in 1921, the Chicago Theatre was the flagship for the Balaban and Katz (B&K) group of theaters. Along with the other B&K theaters, from 1925 to 1945 the Chicago Theatre was a dominant movie theater enterprise. Now the Chicago Theatre is a performing arts venue for stage plays, magic shows, comedy, speeches, and popular music concerts. It is owned by Madison Square Garden, Inc.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Theatre
1926 - Barrow, AK, received a record fifteen inches of snow, and also established a 24 hour precipitation record of 1.00 inch which lasted until the 21st of July in 1987. (The Weather Channel)
1934 Cole Porter recorded his own composition titled, "You’re the Top" Throughout the 1930s Porter maintained a steady stream of Broadway successes, including The Gay Divorce (1932), Anything Goes (1934), Jubilee (1935), and Red, Hot and Blue (1936). Many of the songs for which Porter is best known were written for these productions, such as "Night and Day," "Begin the Beguine," "You're the Top," and "I Get a Kick Out of You."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cole_Porter
1935 12-year-old Judy Garland performed on Wallace Berry's radio show on NBC Radio Network. At an audition for MGM, she electrified the small group of executives (including staunch studio head Louis B. Mayer) and was signed to a contract without a screen test (supposedly the only MGM star to do so). The contract began on October 1, 1935 and would be paid $100 per week. Judy's first assignment was on the studio's radio program "The Shell Chateau Hour" with MGM star Wallace Beery. Judy sang "Broadway Rhythm" and was a hit. She came back two weeks later to sing.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judy_Garland
1936 The first electric generator at Hoover Dam goes into full operation.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoover_Dam
1940 The P-51 Mustang makes its maiden flight.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-51_Mustang
1942 World War II: In the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands during the Guadalcanal Campaign, one U.S. aircraft carrier, Hornet, is sunk and another aircraft carrier, Enterprise, is heavily damaged.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Hornet_(CV-8)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Enterprise_(CVN-65)
1943 World War II: First flight of the Dornier Do 335 "Pfeil".
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dornier_Do_335_Pfeil
U.S. convoy nearing Leyte
1944 World War II: The Battle of Leyte Gulf ends with an overwhelming American victory.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battle_of_Leyte_Gulf
1948 The Pentecostal Fellowship of North America was organized at Des Moines, Iowa. The association is comprised of 24 Pentecostal groups and meets annually to promote unity among Pentecostal Christians.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentecostal_Fellowship_of_North_America
1948 A killing smog blanketed the small town of Donora, near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. The people of that working class community went to bed not knowing that a suffocating cloud of industrial gases would descend upon them during the night. The cloud, a poisonous mix of sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide and metal dust, came from the smokestacks of the local zinc smelter where most of the town worked. Over the next five days, twenty residents died and half the town's population - 7000 people - were hospitalized over the next with difficulty breathing. The Donora tragedy shocked the nation and marked a turning point about industrial pollution and its effect on health.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donora_Smog_of_1948
1949 President Truman signed a measure raising the minimum wage from 40 cents to 75 cents an hour
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage_in_the_United_States
1951 Rocky Marciano defeats Joe Louis at Madison Square Garden. By the time he announced his retirement from the ring in 1949, Louis, often called the "Brown Bomber" by his admirers, had won 60 bouts, 51 by knockouts, and defended his title a record 25 times, scoring 21 knockouts. Louis came out of retirement in 1950, lost a decision to Ezzard Charles, and was knocked out (1951) by Rocky Marciano, after which he retired. In 71 professional bouts Louis was defeated only three times.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Louis
1952 NBC-TV premiered "Victory at Sea". "Victory at Sea" was conceived and produced by Henry Salomon who had worked as a research assistant for Samuel Eliot Morison who was in the process of writing a 15-volume history of the Navy in World War II. Morison helped Salomon get Navy approval for the documentary, and that persuaded NBC chairman David Sarnoff, father of Salomon's Harvard classmate Robert Sarnoff, to finance the $500,000 cost of production. The Broadway musical composer Richard Rodgers created the score.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_at_Sea
1955 "The Village Voice" was first published. The Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper in New York City featuring investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts reviews and events listings for New York City. The Voice was launched by Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher and Norman Mailer on October 26, 1955, from a two-bedroom apartment in Greenwich Village, its initial coverage area, expanding to other parts of the city by the 1960s.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Village_Voice
1955 After the last Allied troops have left the country and following the provisions of the Austrian Independence Treaty, Austria declares permanent neutrality.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_Independence_Treaty
1955 Ngô Đình Diệm declares himself Premier of South Vietnam.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ng%C3%B4_%C4%90%C3%ACnh_Di%E1%BB%87m
1957 "Jailhouse Rock" by Elvis Presley topped the charts. "Jailhouse Rock" was featured in the Elvis movie of the same name. It is considered one of the best of his 31 movies. Elvis joined the army shortly after this was released. It was #1 on the US pop charts for 7 weeks. It also reached #1 on the Country and R&B charts.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jailhouse_Rock_(song)
1958 Pan American Airways makes the first commercial flight of the Boeing 707 from New York City to Paris, France.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_707
1959 The world sees the far side of the Moon for the first time.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far_side_of_the_Moon
1958 PanAm flies the first transatlantic jet trip-NY to London. In October 1955, Juan Trippe signed contracts with both companies to buy 45 of these jets (20 707s and 25 DC-8s). Exactly two years later, Boeing rolled out the first operational 707, a Boeing 707-120, and on October 26, 1958, amid much fanfare, Pan American inaugurated its New York-London route, ushering in a new era in the history of passenger aviation. On the very first flight, which made a stopover in Newfoundland, there were 111 passengers, the largest number ever to board a single regularly scheduled flight. Coach fares were $272, about the same as one would expect to pay for a piston-engine flight across the Atlantic.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_American_World_Airways
1959 Dr. Arthur Kornberg is awarded the Nobel Prize Physiology or Medicine 1959 for his discovery of "the mechanisms in the biological synthesis of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA)" together with Dr. Severo Ochoa of New York University
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Kornberg
1962 - A storm brought five to six inches of snow to Vermont and New Hampshire, with up to ten inches reported in the mountains. (The Weather Channel)
1962 Beatles tape "Please Please Me" & "Ask Me Why"
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Please_Please_Me_(song)
1966 Fire breaks out on U.S. aircraft carrier. A fire breaks out on board the 42,000-ton U.S. aircraft carrier Oriskany in the Gulf of Tonkin. The accident occurred when a locker filled with night illumination magnesium flares burst into flame. The fire spread quickly through most of the ship, resulting in 35 officers and eight enlisted men killed and a further 16 injured. The loss of life would have been much higher except for the valor of crewmen who pushed 300 500-pound, 1,000-pound, and 2,000-pound bombs that lay within reach of the flames on the hangar deck overboard. The fire destroyed four fighter-bombers and two helicopters, but it was brought under control after three hours. The fallen were returned to the United States for burial.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Oriskany_(CV-34)
1966 President Lyndon Johnson [/b]flies to South Vietnam after attending a meeting in Manila for a surprise two-and-a-half-hour visit with U.S. troops at Cam Ranh.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cam_Ranh_Bay
1968 Big battle begins in Tay Ninh Province. The 1st Infantry Division troops are attacked in Binh Long Province (III Corps), 60 miles north of Saigon near the Cambodian border. Communist forces launched a mortar, rocket, and ground attack against Fire Support Base (FSB) Julie, eight miles west of An Loc. Soldiers from 1st Battalion, 2nd Infantry, manned the FSB. U.S. B-52s conducted 22 strikes over the area in an effort to disperse a reported massing of North Vietnamese forces. The defenders were successful in fending off the Communist attack but eight soldiers were killed and 33 were wounded.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_Ninh_province
1967 Mohammad Reza Pahlavi crowns himself Emperor of Iran and then crowns his wife Farah Empress of Iran.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Reza_Pahlavi
1970 "Doonesbury" comic strip debuts in 28 newspapers. As Doonesbury, the strip debuted as a daily strip in about two dozen newspapers on October 26, 1970, the first strip from Universal Press Syndicate. A Sunday strip began on March 21, 1971. Many of the early strips were reprintings of the Bull Tales cartoons, with some changes to the drawings and plots.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doonesbury
1971 Memphis minister Al Green earns a gold record for "Tired of Being Alone." "Tired of Being Alone" came to Green when he woke up before dawn the day after a show in Detroit at a motel in rural Michigan with a song forming in his mind. Half an hour later, he had it written, but his producer Willie Mitchell wasn't much interested in Green performing his own material.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tired_of_Being_Alone
1972 Guided tours of Alcatraz (by Park Service) begin
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcatraz_Island
1972 Dutifully playing his part to ensure the re-election of Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger declares "Peace is at hand" in Vietnam. The November elections would come and go and the war would drag on.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Kissinger
1974 "Then Came You" by Dionne Warwick & the Spinners topped the charts. Warwick released "Then Came You," a song she recorded with the Spinners, which topped the pop and R&B charts and reached the Top Five of the easy listening charts in October 1974, going gold in the process. It proved to be a one-off success, but Warwick (now without the "e") signed to Arista Records in 1979 and returned to the Top Five of the pop adult contemporary charts with "I'll Never Love This Way Again," produced by labelmate Barry Manilow and featured on her first platinum-selling album, another LP simply titled Dionne. The Spinners would hit the Top 10 twice in the next two years with "(They Just Can't Stop It) Games People Play" and "The Rubberband Man."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dionne_Warwick
1977 The last natural case of smallpox is discovered in Merca district, Somalia. The WHO and the CDC consider this date the anniversary of the eradication of smallpox, the most spectacular success of vaccination.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox
1982 Steve Carlton became first pitcher to win 4 Cy Young awards. Steve Carlton wins the National League Cy Young Award for the 4th time, a record unmatched by any pitcher. The Phils 37-year-old lefthander, who led the NL in wins (23), innings (2952/3), strikeouts (286), and shutouts (6), was a previous winner in 1972, 1977, and 1980. He joins Walter Johnson and Willie Mays as the only players to be voted MVP or Cy Young winner 10 or more years apart.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Carlton
1984 Baby Fae became the first new-born recipient of a cross-species heart transplant. Dr. Leonard L. Bailey, a heart surgeon at Loma Linda University Medical Center, California, transplanted a walnut-sized young baboon heart. She had been born prematurely 12 days earlier with hypoplastic left-heart syndrome, a lethal underdevelopment of the left side of the heart. Bailey suggested the experimental xenotransplant to the mother. By 1977, three such animal-heart transplants into adults had provided less than four days of life at best. Bailey believed the infant's underdeveloped immune system would be less likely to reject alien tissue, and a new drug cyclosporine would help. Baby Fae lived 20 days before complications caused her death.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_Fae
1983 A heat wave was in progress over the Northern Rockies, with record highs of 81 degrees at Sheridan WY and Billings MT.(Sandra and TI Richard Sanders - 1987)
1985 "Saving All My Love for You" by Whitney Houston topped the charts. "Saving All My Love for You" was originally recorded by Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr in 1978. The lyrics were written by Gerry Goffin and the music by Michael Masser, who also produced it. It won the 1985 Grammy award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saving_All_My_Love_for_You
1986 Buckner lets ground ball roll through his legs. In the wee hours of the morning on October 26, 1986, Red Sox first baseman Bill Buckner lets an easy ground ball dribble between his legs and roll down the right-field line. It was just a routine fielding error, but it was a disaster for the Boston Red Sox: It was the 10th inning of the sixth game of the World Series; the game was tied; and, thanks to Buckner’s mistake, the runner on third had time to score, winning the game for the Mets and forcing a tiebreaking seventh—which, in the final innings, the Mets also won. Even though Game 6 was tied because Boston’s pitchers couldn’t hold a two-run, two-out lead, and even though the Sox managed to fritter away a three-run lead in Game 7, people still blame Buckner for losing the championship. "I can’t remember the last time I missed a ball like that," he said, "but I’ll remember this one."
Ever since team owner and Broadway producer Harry Frazee sold the great Babe Ruth to the Yankees in 1920, the Sox had been tragically unable to win the World Series. People said that the team was cursed. Before 1920, the Sox had won five championships; after the Babe left, Boston’s well ran dry. Over and over, the hapless Sox almost won—and over and over, they didn’t. In 1946, they were winning Game 7 with two outs in the eighth—until shortstop Johnny Pesky held onto a relay throw just long enough for Enos Slaughter to score the winning run (from first base). They lost in 1967 and 1975. Three years after that, in a one-game playoff for the AL championship, they lost when Yankee shortstop Bucky Dent, not exactly a reliable slugger, cranked one over the Green Monster with two men on base. The Bombers won the game and went on to win their 22nd World Series.
And then, just one out away from the championship in the sixth game of the 1986 series against the Mets, the Sox defense managed to bungle a series of easy plays so badly that they lost the game. At the bottom of the 10th, Boston had a 5-3 lead. Pitcher Calvin Schiraldi retired the first two Mets who came to the plate. But then Gary Carter hit a single; so did Kevin Mitchell; and then Ray Knight did, too. The score was 5-4. Bob Stanley came in from the Red Sox bullpen and immediately fired off a wild pitch. Mitchell scored, and the game was tied. Then outfielder Mookie Wilson stepped to the plate. On the 10th pitch of the at-bat, after he’d knocked six pitches foul, Wilson poked a ground ball right to Buckner at first. Buckner bent to field the ball, but it bounced right over his glove and kept rolling down the right-field line. Knight headed gleefully for home. The Mets had won.
Two nights later, the Sox weren’t any luckier: They were winning 3-0 until the sixth, when the Mets tied the game. In the seventh, New York scored three more runs. With that, the Mets were the champs. The Curse of the Bambino, it seemed, would never die.
Buckner tried to stay in Boston, but fans heaped so much abuse on him and his family that he decided to move to Idaho. The Sox, meanwhile, won the World Series in 2004 and again in 2007.
[a href="en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Buckner"]en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Buckner[/a][/url]
1986 Donald Duck was shown for the first time in the People’s Republic of China.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Duck
1987 Five cities in south central Texas reported record high temperatures for the date, including Corpus Christi and Del Rio with readings of 93 degrees. Laredo TX was the hot spot in the nation with a high of 98 degrees. Thunderstorms moving over the Lower Mississsippi Valley deluged Lake Charles LA with 2.70 inches of rain in one hour resulting in severe local flooding. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data)
1988 - Thunderstorms moving out of northern Texas spawned five tornadoes in Louisiana during the morning hours. The thunderstorms also produced wind gusts to 75 mph at Jennings LA, and the driver of a vehicle was killed by a falling tree near Coushatta LA. Snow squalls in the Lower Great Lakes Region produced heavy snow in western New York State, with 12 inches reported at Colden. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data)
1989 Unseasonably warm weather continued in the north central U.S. Afternoon highs of 78 degrees at Alpena MI, 75 degrees at Duluth MN, 79 degrees at Fargo ND, 77 degrees at International Falls MN, 76 degrees at Marquette MI, 75 degrees at Sault Ste Marie MI, and 80 degrees at Saint Cloud MN, were all the warmest of record for so late in the season. Morning lows of 63 degrees at Concordia KS and Omaha NE were the warmest of record for the date. (The National Weather Summary)
1992 The London Ambulance Service is thrown into chaos after the implementation of a new CAD, or Computer Aided Despatch, system which failed.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Ambulance_Service
1992: The Times quoted financier George Soros as saying: "Our total position by Black Wednesday had to be worth almost $10 billion. We planned to sell more than that. In fact, when Norman Lamont said just before the devaluation that he would borrow nearly $15 billion to defend sterling, we were amused because that was about how much we wanted to sell."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Wednesday
1994 Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel and Prime Minister Abdel Salam Majali of Jordan signed a peace treaty in a ceremony attended by President Clinton.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdelsalam_al-Majali
2001 The USA PATRIOT Act (commonly known as the "Patriot Act") is an Act of the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President George W. Bush on October 26, 2001. The title of the Act is a contrived acronym, which stands for Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001. On this day in 2001, President George W. Bush signs the Patriot Act, an anti-terrorism law drawn up in response to the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.
The law was intended, in Bush’s words, to "enhance the penalties that will fall on terrorists or anyone who helps them." The act increased intelligence agencies’ ability to share information and lifted restrictions on communications surveillance. Law enforcement officials were given broader mandates to fight financial counterfeiting, smuggling and money laundering schemes that funded terrorists. The Patriot Act’s expanded definition of terrorism also gave the FBI increased powers to access personal information such as medical and financial records. The Patriot Act superseded all state laws.
While Congress voted in favor of the bill, and some in America felt the bill actually did not go far enough to combat terrorism, the law faced a torrent of criticism. Civil rights activists worried that the Patriot Act would curtail domestic civil liberties and would give the executive branch too much power to investigate Americans under a veil of secrecy—a fear not felt since the protest era of the 1960s and 1970s when the FBI bugged and infiltrated anti-war and civil rights groups.
The Patriot Act has faced ongoing legal challenges by the American Civil Liberties Union, and in recent years, some members of Congress who had originally supported the bill have come to mistrust the Bush administration’s interpretation of the law. Nevertheless, a Republican-controlled Congress passed and Bush signed a renewal of the controversial Patriot Act in March 2006. Bush exacerbated the controversy over the renewal of the act by issuing a so-called "signing statement"—an executive exemption from enforcing or abiding by certain clauses within the law—immediately afterward.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_PATRIOT_Act
2002 Moscow Theatre Siege: Approximately 50 Chechen terrorists and 150 hostages die when Russian Spetsnaz storm a theater building in Moscow, which had been occupied by the terrorists during a musical performance three days before.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_theater_hostage_crisis
Smoke from the fires drift toward Arizona and Nevada after the wind shifted on October 29
2003 The Cedar Fire, the second-largest fire in California history, kills 15 people, consumes 250,000 acres (1,000 km²), and destroys 2,200 homes around San Diego.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cedar_Fire
2010: The annual trade show of the kosher food industry opened today at the Meadowlands Exposition Center in Secaucus, N.J. The winners in 18 categories of new kosher food products reflect growing trends in kosher food, including general health and wellness, reduced fat, soy replacements, natural, gluten-free, spelt and organic.
Births
1609 William Sprague (d 1675) left England on the ship Lyon's Whelp for Plymouth/Salem Massachusetts, co-founder of Charlestown, Massachusetts, originally from Upwey, near Weymouth, Dorset, England.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlestown,_Massachusetts
1818 Elizabeth Payson Prentiss, school teacher and poet, many of whose poems have become hymns. After some years of school teaching, she married a Congregational minister in 1845. One of her poems has become the hymn "More Love to Thee," which was written out of a broken heart upon losing a child. The original poem was not finished (the last line was pencilled in) and it was originally printed as a leaflet. William H. Doane composed the music. (d 1878)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Payson_Prentiss
1846 Lewis Boss (d 1912) American astronomer best known for his compilation of two catalogues of stars (1910, 1937). In 1882 he led an expedition to Chile to observe a transit of Venus. About 1895 Boss began to plan a general catalog of stars, giving their positions and motions. After 1906, the project had support from the Carnegie Institution, Washington, D.C. With an enlarged staff he observed the northern stars from Albany and the southern stars from Argentina. With the new data, he corrected catalogs that had been compiled in the past, and in 1910 he published the Preliminary General Catalogue of 6,188 Stars for the Epoch 1900. The work unfinished upon his death was completed by his son Benjamin in 1937 (General Catalogue of 33,342 Stars for the Epoch 1950, 5 vol.).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Boss
1854 Charles William Post (d 1914) American industrialist who founded Post Cereal Company [with the Grape-Nuts cereal he created. In 1890, a nervous breakdown had led Post to the sanitorium of Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, where he was fed on Kellogg's grain-intensive vegetarian diet. Early in 1895, Post began the manufacture of Postum, a grain product intended as a coffee substitute, similar to one of Kellogg's concoctions. The manufacture of Grape-Nuts, based on another Kellogg item, began the following year. Post's new company, Postum Ltd., achieved wide-scale distribution of its products through massive spending on advertising appealing to the health concerns of the American public. In 1929, Postum became General Foods Corporation.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_William_Post
1865 Benjamin Guggenheim (d 1912) American businessman. He died aboard RMS Titanic when the ship sank near Cape Race, Newfoundland.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Guggenheim
1874 Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, d 1948), socialite and philanthropist and the second-generation matriarch of the renowned Rockefeller family. Referred to as the "woman in the family", she was especially noteworthy for being the driving force behind the establishment of the Museum of Modern Art, on 53rd Street in New York, in November, 1929.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abby_Aldrich_Rockefeller
1877 Max Mason (d 1961) American mathematical physicist, educator, and science administrator. During World War I he invented several devices for submarine detection - several generations of the Navy's "M," or multiple-tube, passive submarine sensors. This apparatus focused sound to ascertain its source. To determine the direction from which the sound came, the operator needed only to seek the maximum output on his earphones by turning a dial. The final device had a range of 3 miles. Mason's special interest and contributions lay in mathematics (differential equations, calculus of variations), physics (electromagnetic theory), invention (acoustical compensators, submarine-detection devices), and the administration of universities and foundations.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Max_Mason
1883 Napoleon Hill (d 1970) American author who was one of the earliest producers of the modern genre of personal-success literature. He is widely considered to be one of the great writers on success. His most famous work, Think and Grow Rich, is one of the best-selling books of all time. Hill's works examined the power of personal beliefs, and the role they play in personal success. He became the advisor to President Franklin D. Roosevelt from 1933-36. "What the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve" is one of Hill's hallmark expressions. How achievement actually occurs, and a formula for it that puts success in reach for the average person, were the focal points of Hill's books.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon_Hill
1883 Paul Henry Pilgrim (d 1958) American athlete who won three gold medals at the 1904 and 1906 Summer Olympics.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Pilgrim
1887 Charles Eugene Bedaux(d 1944) French-born American efficiency engineer who developed the Bedaux plan for measuring and compensating industrial labour. Bedaux was born in Paris in 1886 and migrated to the U.S. early in the 20th century. He became one of the pioneering contributors to the field of scientific management. Bedaux worked out various ideas about measuring human energy: these provided the basis for the innovative work study programs that lead to startling improvements in productivity. Bedaux introduced the concept of rating assessment in timing work. He adhered to Gilbreth's introduction of a rest allowance to allow recovery from fatigue. He is also known for extending the range of techniques employed in work study, including value analysis.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Bedaux
1889 Millar Burrows, Cincinnati, Ohio. Becoming an archaeologist, he taught at several colleges and directed the American School of Oriental Research at Jerusalem. He is remembered for the book What Mean these Stones? (d 1980)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millar_Burrows
1898 William Lloyd Warner (d 1970) American sociologist and anthropologist who is remembered for authoring studies of social class structure. He pioneered in applying anthropology research methods in the field of the contemporary urban social community. In his Yankee City (5 vols.), he merged an ethnographic perspective gained from fieldwork among Australian aborigines with information gathered from formal interviews for his social study of a New England city, Yankee City. He was the first sociologist to use a six-fold classification. In studying the old town, Warner recognised three distinct groups - upper, middle and lower classes - each sub-divided into upper and lower sections. The topmost, or upper-upper class, was composed of the wealthy old families; the lower-lower class represented the poorest.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lloyd_Warner
1910 John Joseph Krol (d 1996) American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He was Archbishop of Philadelphia from 1961 to 1988, having previously served as an auxiliary bishop of the Diocese of Cleveland (1953–61).[1] He was created a cardinal in 1967.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Joseph_Krol
1911 Shiing-shen Chern (d 2004) Chinese-American mathematician and educator whose researches in differential geometry include the development of the Chern characteristic classes in fibre spaces, which play a major role in mathematics and in mathematical physics. "When Chern was working on differential geometry in the 1940s, this area of mathematics was at a low point. Global differential geometry was only beginning, even Morse theory was understood and used by a very small number of people. Today, differential geometry is a major subject in mathematics and a large share of the credit for this transformation goes to Professor Chern."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiing-Shen_Chern
1911 Mahalia Jackson (d 1972) African-American gospel singer. With her powerful contralto voice, Mahalia Jackson became one of the most influential gospel singers in the world and is the first Queen of Gospel Music. She recorded about 30 albums (mostly for Columbia Records) during her career, and her 45 rpm records included a dozen "golds"—million-sellers.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahalia_Jackson
1912 Donald Siegel (d 1991) American film director and producer. His name appeared in the credits of his films as both Don Siegel and Donald Siegel.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Siegel
1913 Charles Daly Barnet (d 4 Sep 1991) American jazz saxophonist, composer, and bandleader, his major recordings were "Skyliner", "Cherokee", "The Wrong Idea", "Scotch and Soda", ]and "Southland Shuffle".
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Daly_Barnet
1914 John Leslie "Jackie" Coogan, Jr. (d 1984) American actor who began his movie career as a child actor in silent films. Many years later, he became known as Uncle Fester on 1960s sitcom The Addams Family. In the interim, he sued his mother and stepfather over his squandered film earnings and provoked California to enact the first known legal protection for the earnings of child performers.
1916 Boyd Wagner, First USAAF fighter ace of WWII (d. 1942)
1919 Edward William Brooke, III American politician and was the first African American to be elected by popular vote to the United States Senate when he was elected as a Republican from Massachusetts in 1966, defeating his Democratic opponent, Endicott Peabody, 60.7%–38.7%. He was also the first African American elected to the Senate since the 19th century, and would remain the only person of African heritage sent to the Senate in the 20th century until Democrat Carol Moseley Braun in 1993, and was the last Republican Senator elected from Massachusetts until the 2010 election of Scott Brown.
1945 Pat Conroy Atlanta, Georgia USA, New York Times bestselling author who has written several acclaimed novels and memoirs. (The Great Santini)
1946 Patrick Leonard Sajdak, "Pat" Pat Sajak on October 26, 1946) is a television personality, former weatherman, actor and talk show host, best known as the host of the American television game show Wheel of Fortune.
1947 Jaclyn Ellen Smith American actress, best known for the role of Kelly Garrett in the television series Charlie's Angels, and was the only original female lead to remain with the series for its complete run (1976–81). She became a well known face on television starring in over thirty made for TV movies and more recently was the hostess of Bravo's weekly competitive reality television show Shear Genius for its first two seasons. Beginning in the 1980s, she began developing and marketing her own brands of clothing and perfume. She has often been voted one of the most beautiful women in the world.
1947 Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton, 67th United States Secretary of State, serving in the administration of President Barack Obama. She was a United States Senator for New York from 2001 to 2009. As the wife of the 42nd President of the United States, Bill Clinton, she was the First Lady of the United States from 1993 to 2001. In the 2008 election, Clinton was a leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Diane_Rodham_Clinton
1955 Sammy Swindell, star in the outlaw sport of sprint-car racing, is born in Germantown, Tennessee. In 1971, when he was just 15 years old, Swindell raced for the first time on a dirt track at the Riverside Speedway in Arkansas. Since he started dirt-track racing, Swidell has never finished a season outside the top 10.
When Swindell began his career, he was a member of a motley crew of drivers known as the Band of Outlaws. These men, according to the Los Angeles Times, were "a gypsy bunch of maverick sprint car drivers who made their mark racing… on seedy little tracks, running with virtually no rules, sometimes wearing only T-shirts and Levi's. They went where the money was and no questions asked." Their races were unsanctioned by the U.S. Auto Club, the organization that ran the Indianapolis 500 and other "respectable" paved-track races. Instead, the Band of Outlaws competed in catch-as-catch-can affairs put on at county fairgrounds and makeshift clay loops across the Midwest.
Outlaw-style racing, usually called sprint-car racing, was a throwback to the early, scrappy days of motorsports, when drivers like Barney Oldfield and A.J. Foyt careened around hard-packed dirt roads in big, open-topped cars. Sprint cars banged into one another as they screeched around the track; they churned giant grooves into the dirt and dared one another to clatter over them without flipping; they used oversized tires, called "humpers," on their right rear wheels to help them accelerate more flamboyantly; and they had wings, or huge canopies that held them down on the track and helped them go faster. And sprint-car racing was dangerous: in the 1970s and 1980s, at least one driver was killed almost every weekend. Today, sprint-car racing is a little safer but no less pugnacious.
In the 1980s, Sammy Swindell dabbled in more mainstream racing—he joined the Indy Car circuit first, then NASCAR—but his heart remained with the Outlaws. In 2009, he rejoined the sprint-car circuit full time. In all, he has won three Outlaw titles and 268 races.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sammy_Swindell
Deaths
1675 William Sprague, English co-founder of Charlestown, Massachusetts (b. 1609)
1864 William T. "Bloody Bill" Anderson (b. circa 1839 – October 26, 1864) was a pro-Confederate guerrilla leader in the American Civil War. Anderson was known for his brutality towards Union soldiers, who were called Jayhawkers, and pro-Union civilians in Missouri and Kansas. Anderson participated in Quantrill's raid on Lawrence, Kansas on August 21, 1863. An estimated 200 civilian men and boys were reported to have been killed and many homes and buildings in Lawrence were burned to the ground. On October 26, 1864 Anderson was killed after he and his men were lured into an ambush near the hamlet of Albany, which is now part of Orrick, in Ray County, Missouri. The ambush was carried out by a group of militiamen lead by Colonel Samuel P. Cox.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_T._Anderson
1902 Elizabeth Cady Stanton (b 1815) American social activist, abolitionist, and leading figure of the early woman's movement. Her Declaration of Sentiments, presented at the first women's rights convention held in 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York, is often credited with initiating the first organized woman's rights and woman's suffrage movements in the United States.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Cady_Stanton
1923 Charles P. Steinmetz (b 1865) German-born American inventor and electrical engineer whose theories and mathematical analysis of alternating current systems helped establish them as the preferred form of electrical energy in the United States, and throughout the world. In 1893, Steinmetz joined the newly organized General Electric Company where he was an engineer then consultant until his death. His early research on hysteresis (loss of power due to magnetic resistance) led him to study alternating current, which could eliminate hysteresis loss in motors. He did extensive new work on the theory of a.c. for electrical engineers to use. His last research was on lightning, and its threat to the new AC power lines. He was responsible for the expansion of the electric power industry in the U.S.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Proteus_Steinmetz
1930 Harry Payne Whitney (b 1872) American businessman, thoroughbred horsebreeder, and member of the prominent Whitney family.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Payne_Whitney
1931 Charles Albert "The Old Roman" Comiskey (b 1859) Major League Baseball player, manager and team owner. He was a key person in the formation of the American League and later owned the Chicago White Sox. Comiskey Park, Chicago's storied baseball stadium, was built under his guidance and named for him.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Comiskey
1952 Hattie McDaniel (b 1895) American actress and the first African-American to win an Academy Award. She won the award for Best Supporting Actress for her role of Mammy in Gone with the Wind (1939). McDaniel was also a professional singer-songwriter, comedian, stage actress, radio performer, and television star. Hattie McDaniel was in fact the first black woman to sing on the radio in America. Over the course of her career, McDaniel appeared in over 300 films, although she received screen credits for only about 80. She gained the respect of the African American show business community with her generosity, elegance, and charm.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hattie_McDaniel
1957 Gerty Theresa Cori née Radnitz, (b 1896) American biochemist who became the third woman—and first American woman—to win a Nobel Prize in science, and the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1947 for the discovery of the mechanism by which glycogen—a derivative of glucose—is broken down in muscle tissue into lactic acid and then resynthesized in the body and stored as source of energy (known as the Cori cycle).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerty_Theresa_Cori
1972 Igor Ivan Sikorsky (b 1889) Russian-born U.S. pioneer in aircraft design who is best known for his successful development of the helicopter. His earliest successes were with fixed-wing aircraft, including his prize-winning S-6-A (1912) which led to a position as head of the aviation subsidiary of the Russian Baltic Railroad Car Works. In this position, as a result of a mosquito-clogged carburetor and subsequent engine failure, he had the radical idea of an aircraft having more than one engine. Thus he produced the first multi-engine airplane, the four-engined "The Grand." This revolutionary aircraft featured such things as an enclosed cabin. a lavatory, upholstered chairs and an exterior catwalk atop the fuselage so passengers could take a turn about in the air.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igor_Ivan_Sikorsky
1983 Alfred Tarski (b 1902) Polish-born American mathematician and logician who made important studies of general algebra, measure theory, mathematical logic, set theory, and metamathematics. Formal scientific languages can be subjected to more thorough study by the semantic method that he developed. He worked on model theory, mathematical decision problems and with universal algebra. He produced axioms for "logical consequence", worked on deductive systems, the algebra of logic and the theory of definability. Group theorists study 'Tarski monsters', infinite groups whose existence seems intuitively impossible.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Tarski
1989 Charles John Pedersen (b 1904) American organic chemist best known for describing methods of synthesizing crown ethers. He shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1987 with Donald J. Cram and Jean-Marie Lehn.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_John_Pedersen
1990 William Samuel Paley (b 1901) chief executive who built Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) from a small radio network into one of the foremost radio and television network operations in the United States.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_S._Paley
1999 Hoyt Wayne Axton (b 1938) American country music singer-songwriter, and a film and television actor. He became prominent in the early 1960s, establishing himself on the West Coast as a folk singer with an earthy style and powerful voice. As he matured, some of his songwriting efforts became well known throughout the world. Among them are "Della and the Dealer", "Joy to the World" (which many know better by its opening lyric, "Jeremiah was a bullfrog!"), and "Greenback Dollar".
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoyt_Axton
Christian Feast Day
Alfred the Great
Cedd
Cuthbert of Canterbury
Demetrius of Thessaloniki
Fulk of Pavia (Roman Catholic Church)
Quadragesimus
Witta of Büraburg
October 26 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
Saints
Demetrius of Thessaloniki (306)
Other commemorations
Commemoration of the Great Earthquake at Constantinople in 740
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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_26_(Eastern_Orthodox_liturgics)
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There are 67 days remaining until the end of the year.
Days left until November 06, 2012 12
Countdown until Obama leaves Office
www.obamaclock.org/
U.S. Debt Clock: www.usdebtclock.org/
1774 First Continental Congress adjourns in Philadelphia. Henry Middleton filled in as President when the first Continental Congress adjourned. He served from October 22, 1774 until Congress adjourned four days later on October 26th. During Middleton's short tenure as President he signed the unanimously approved a Petition of Congress to King George III that had been drafted by John Jay of New York.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petition_to_the_King
1775 King George III goes before Parliament to declare the American colonies in rebellion, and authorized a military response to quell the American Revolution.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_George_III
Franklin, in his fur hat, charmed the French with what they saw as rustic new world genius.
1776 Benjamin Franklin departs from America for France on a mission to seek French support for the American Revolution.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin#Ambassador_to_France:_1776.E2.80.931785
1825 The Erie Canal opened as the first major major man-made waterway in America. In those early days, it was often sarcastically referred to as "Clinton's Big Ditch". When finally completed on October 26, 1825, it was the engineering marvel of its day. It included 18 aqueducts to carry the canal over ravines and rivers, and 83 locks, with a rise of 568 feet from the Hudson River to Lake Erie. It was 4 feet deep and 40 feet wide, and floated boats carrying 30 tons of freight. A ten foot wide towpath was built along the bank of the canal for horses, mules, and oxen led by a boy boat driver or "hoggee".
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erie_Canal
1853 Dr. Raphall, a New York Rabbi, delivered an address about Russia at a meeting of the Young Men’s Literary Association. Following Dr. Raphall’s address to the Hebrew Young Men’s Literary Association, Mr. Mosely Lyon delivered an address describing the purpose of the organizations.
www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/15124-young-men-s-hebrew-association
1858 A U.S. patent was issued for cycling reheated water in a washing machine, to Hamilton E. Smith of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (No. 21,909). His invention was an improvement for washing machines in which a reciprocating plunger acts on clothes in a tub. His invention placed two horizontal diaphragms in the tub. Both moved vertically with the action of the plunger. The upper one was perforated, and the lower one had a valve. Below the lower diaphragm springs pushed it up as the plunger was lifted. Their motion acted to pump water into the tub from a circuit of pipe that included coils in a heating tank and drained cooler water from the top of the tub. Smith improved his machine and obtained a second patent in 1863.
[a href="[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washing_machine"][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washing_machine[/a]
wiki.answers.com/Q/What_did_Hamilton_Smith_invent
1859 New York City had their earliest substantial snow of record as four inches blanketed the city. (David Ludlum)
1861 During the American Civil War, the 9th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry Regiment was mustered into service as part of the United States under the command of Colonel Frederick C. Salomon. When Salomon was appointed Brigadier General, he brother Charles became the Colonel commanding the regiment.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_C._Salomon
1861 Telegraph service inaugurated in US (end of Pony Express). Despite this successful business, the last link of the Overland Telegraph, which had begun on July 4, 1858, when the first pole was erected east of Placerville, was completed. On October 26, 1861, the first news dispatch by telegraph was sent all the way to San Francisco, bringing instantaneous communication with every important city in the East. Thereafter, businessmen crowded into the telegraph offices to send business dispatches via telegraph. Before the telegraph was completed, they paid upwards of $150 for sending a dispatch by Pony Express. That rate was dropped to approximately $50 for the privilege of communicating with the East by telegraph.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overland_Telegraph_Company
1863 Worldwide Red Cross organized in Geneva.An international conference met in Geneva on October 26, 1863. Thanks in large part to Dunant's preparatory work, it was attended by delegates favorably disposed toward the proposal of the committee. In all, 36 people attended, including representatives from 14 European countries. At the end of this conference, on October 29, 1863, the International Committee for the Relief of the Wounded was founded (now the International Committee of the Red Cross), composed of the five Swiss members that had convened in February. A red cross on a field of white was adopted as the emblem of the organisation, and national Red Cross societies were to be set up in each of the countries represented at the conference.
In 2005, in response to growing pressure to accommodate Magen David Adom as a full member of the Red Cross and Red Crescent movement, a new emblem (officially the Third Protocol Emblem, but more commonly known as the Red Crystal) was adopted by an amendment of the Geneva Conventions known as Protocol III.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Red_Cross_and_Red_Crescent_Movement#The_Red_Crystal
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Red_Cross_and_Red_Crescent_Movement
1864 Myer Isaacs sent a strongly worded letter to President Lincoln warning him against a deal that he allegedly made with a group of New York Jews who, presenting themselves as leaders of the community, had promised to deliver the “Jewish vote” for him. This letter is one of the germinal documents of early Jewish participation in the American political process.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_M._Isaacs
1881 Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. In October 1880, Virgil Earp became city marshal of Tombstone. Soon afterwards he recruited Wyatt Earp and Morgan Earp. The Earp family came into conflict with two families, the Clantons and the McLaurys who sold livestock to Tombstone. Virgil Earp believed that some of these animals had been stolen from farmers in Mexico. On October 25, Ike Clanton and Tom McLaury arrived in Tombstone. Later that day Doc Holliday got into a fight with Ike Clanton in the Alhambra Saloon. Holliday wanted a gunfight with Clanton, but he declined the offer and walked off. The following day Ike Clanton and Tom McLaury were arrested by Virgil Earp and charged with carrying firearms within the city limits. After they were disarmed and released, the two men joined Billy Clanton and Frank McLaury, who had just arrived in town. Wyatt Earp, two of his brothers and "Doc" Holliday gunned down two Clantons and two others.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunfight_at_the_O.K._Corral
1898 A Zionist Delegation led by Theodor Herzl arrives in the port of Yaffo (Jaffa). They visit Mikveh Israel and Rishon LeZion.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodor_Herzl
1917 World War I: Battle of Caporetto; Italy suffers a catastrophic defeat at the forces of Austria-Hungary and Germany. The young unknown Oberleutnant Erwin Rommel captures Mount Matajur with only 100 Germans against a force of over 7000 Italians.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Caporetto
The Isonzo river, location of the initial attacks at Kobarid (Caporetto).
1917 World War I: Brazil declared in state of war with Central Powers.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Caporetto
1918 Erich Ludendorff, quartermaster-general of the Imperial German Army, is dismissed by Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany for refusing to cooperate in peace negotiations.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Ludendorff
1919 The temperature at Bismarck, ND, plunged to ten degrees below zero, the earliest subzero reading of record for the city, and a record for the month of October. (The Weather Channel)
1921 The Chicago Theatre opens. Originally known as the Balaban and Katz Chicago Theatre, is a landmark theater located on North State Street in the Loop area of Chicago, Illinois. Built in 1921, the Chicago Theatre was the flagship for the Balaban and Katz (B&K) group of theaters. Along with the other B&K theaters, from 1925 to 1945 the Chicago Theatre was a dominant movie theater enterprise. Now the Chicago Theatre is a performing arts venue for stage plays, magic shows, comedy, speeches, and popular music concerts. It is owned by Madison Square Garden, Inc.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Theatre
1926 - Barrow, AK, received a record fifteen inches of snow, and also established a 24 hour precipitation record of 1.00 inch which lasted until the 21st of July in 1987. (The Weather Channel)
1934 Cole Porter recorded his own composition titled, "You’re the Top" Throughout the 1930s Porter maintained a steady stream of Broadway successes, including The Gay Divorce (1932), Anything Goes (1934), Jubilee (1935), and Red, Hot and Blue (1936). Many of the songs for which Porter is best known were written for these productions, such as "Night and Day," "Begin the Beguine," "You're the Top," and "I Get a Kick Out of You."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cole_Porter
1935 12-year-old Judy Garland performed on Wallace Berry's radio show on NBC Radio Network. At an audition for MGM, she electrified the small group of executives (including staunch studio head Louis B. Mayer) and was signed to a contract without a screen test (supposedly the only MGM star to do so). The contract began on October 1, 1935 and would be paid $100 per week. Judy's first assignment was on the studio's radio program "The Shell Chateau Hour" with MGM star Wallace Beery. Judy sang "Broadway Rhythm" and was a hit. She came back two weeks later to sing.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judy_Garland
1936 The first electric generator at Hoover Dam goes into full operation.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoover_Dam
1940 The P-51 Mustang makes its maiden flight.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-51_Mustang
1942 World War II: In the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands during the Guadalcanal Campaign, one U.S. aircraft carrier, Hornet, is sunk and another aircraft carrier, Enterprise, is heavily damaged.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Hornet_(CV-8)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Enterprise_(CVN-65)
1943 World War II: First flight of the Dornier Do 335 "Pfeil".
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dornier_Do_335_Pfeil
U.S. convoy nearing Leyte
1944 World War II: The Battle of Leyte Gulf ends with an overwhelming American victory.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battle_of_Leyte_Gulf
1948 The Pentecostal Fellowship of North America was organized at Des Moines, Iowa. The association is comprised of 24 Pentecostal groups and meets annually to promote unity among Pentecostal Christians.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentecostal_Fellowship_of_North_America
1948 A killing smog blanketed the small town of Donora, near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. The people of that working class community went to bed not knowing that a suffocating cloud of industrial gases would descend upon them during the night. The cloud, a poisonous mix of sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide and metal dust, came from the smokestacks of the local zinc smelter where most of the town worked. Over the next five days, twenty residents died and half the town's population - 7000 people - were hospitalized over the next with difficulty breathing. The Donora tragedy shocked the nation and marked a turning point about industrial pollution and its effect on health.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donora_Smog_of_1948
1949 President Truman signed a measure raising the minimum wage from 40 cents to 75 cents an hour
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage_in_the_United_States
1951 Rocky Marciano defeats Joe Louis at Madison Square Garden. By the time he announced his retirement from the ring in 1949, Louis, often called the "Brown Bomber" by his admirers, had won 60 bouts, 51 by knockouts, and defended his title a record 25 times, scoring 21 knockouts. Louis came out of retirement in 1950, lost a decision to Ezzard Charles, and was knocked out (1951) by Rocky Marciano, after which he retired. In 71 professional bouts Louis was defeated only three times.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Louis
1952 NBC-TV premiered "Victory at Sea". "Victory at Sea" was conceived and produced by Henry Salomon who had worked as a research assistant for Samuel Eliot Morison who was in the process of writing a 15-volume history of the Navy in World War II. Morison helped Salomon get Navy approval for the documentary, and that persuaded NBC chairman David Sarnoff, father of Salomon's Harvard classmate Robert Sarnoff, to finance the $500,000 cost of production. The Broadway musical composer Richard Rodgers created the score.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_at_Sea
1955 "The Village Voice" was first published. The Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper in New York City featuring investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts reviews and events listings for New York City. The Voice was launched by Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher and Norman Mailer on October 26, 1955, from a two-bedroom apartment in Greenwich Village, its initial coverage area, expanding to other parts of the city by the 1960s.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Village_Voice
1955 After the last Allied troops have left the country and following the provisions of the Austrian Independence Treaty, Austria declares permanent neutrality.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_Independence_Treaty
1955 Ngô Đình Diệm declares himself Premier of South Vietnam.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ng%C3%B4_%C4%90%C3%ACnh_Di%E1%BB%87m
1957 "Jailhouse Rock" by Elvis Presley topped the charts. "Jailhouse Rock" was featured in the Elvis movie of the same name. It is considered one of the best of his 31 movies. Elvis joined the army shortly after this was released. It was #1 on the US pop charts for 7 weeks. It also reached #1 on the Country and R&B charts.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jailhouse_Rock_(song)
1958 Pan American Airways makes the first commercial flight of the Boeing 707 from New York City to Paris, France.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_707
1959 The world sees the far side of the Moon for the first time.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far_side_of_the_Moon
1958 PanAm flies the first transatlantic jet trip-NY to London. In October 1955, Juan Trippe signed contracts with both companies to buy 45 of these jets (20 707s and 25 DC-8s). Exactly two years later, Boeing rolled out the first operational 707, a Boeing 707-120, and on October 26, 1958, amid much fanfare, Pan American inaugurated its New York-London route, ushering in a new era in the history of passenger aviation. On the very first flight, which made a stopover in Newfoundland, there were 111 passengers, the largest number ever to board a single regularly scheduled flight. Coach fares were $272, about the same as one would expect to pay for a piston-engine flight across the Atlantic.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_American_World_Airways
1959 Dr. Arthur Kornberg is awarded the Nobel Prize Physiology or Medicine 1959 for his discovery of "the mechanisms in the biological synthesis of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA)" together with Dr. Severo Ochoa of New York University
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Kornberg
1962 - A storm brought five to six inches of snow to Vermont and New Hampshire, with up to ten inches reported in the mountains. (The Weather Channel)
1962 Beatles tape "Please Please Me" & "Ask Me Why"
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Please_Please_Me_(song)
1966 Fire breaks out on U.S. aircraft carrier. A fire breaks out on board the 42,000-ton U.S. aircraft carrier Oriskany in the Gulf of Tonkin. The accident occurred when a locker filled with night illumination magnesium flares burst into flame. The fire spread quickly through most of the ship, resulting in 35 officers and eight enlisted men killed and a further 16 injured. The loss of life would have been much higher except for the valor of crewmen who pushed 300 500-pound, 1,000-pound, and 2,000-pound bombs that lay within reach of the flames on the hangar deck overboard. The fire destroyed four fighter-bombers and two helicopters, but it was brought under control after three hours. The fallen were returned to the United States for burial.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Oriskany_(CV-34)
1966 President Lyndon Johnson [/b]flies to South Vietnam after attending a meeting in Manila for a surprise two-and-a-half-hour visit with U.S. troops at Cam Ranh.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cam_Ranh_Bay
1968 Big battle begins in Tay Ninh Province. The 1st Infantry Division troops are attacked in Binh Long Province (III Corps), 60 miles north of Saigon near the Cambodian border. Communist forces launched a mortar, rocket, and ground attack against Fire Support Base (FSB) Julie, eight miles west of An Loc. Soldiers from 1st Battalion, 2nd Infantry, manned the FSB. U.S. B-52s conducted 22 strikes over the area in an effort to disperse a reported massing of North Vietnamese forces. The defenders were successful in fending off the Communist attack but eight soldiers were killed and 33 were wounded.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_Ninh_province
1967 Mohammad Reza Pahlavi crowns himself Emperor of Iran and then crowns his wife Farah Empress of Iran.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Reza_Pahlavi
1970 "Doonesbury" comic strip debuts in 28 newspapers. As Doonesbury, the strip debuted as a daily strip in about two dozen newspapers on October 26, 1970, the first strip from Universal Press Syndicate. A Sunday strip began on March 21, 1971. Many of the early strips were reprintings of the Bull Tales cartoons, with some changes to the drawings and plots.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doonesbury
1971 Memphis minister Al Green earns a gold record for "Tired of Being Alone." "Tired of Being Alone" came to Green when he woke up before dawn the day after a show in Detroit at a motel in rural Michigan with a song forming in his mind. Half an hour later, he had it written, but his producer Willie Mitchell wasn't much interested in Green performing his own material.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tired_of_Being_Alone
1972 Guided tours of Alcatraz (by Park Service) begin
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcatraz_Island
1972 Dutifully playing his part to ensure the re-election of Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger declares "Peace is at hand" in Vietnam. The November elections would come and go and the war would drag on.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Kissinger
1974 "Then Came You" by Dionne Warwick & the Spinners topped the charts. Warwick released "Then Came You," a song she recorded with the Spinners, which topped the pop and R&B charts and reached the Top Five of the easy listening charts in October 1974, going gold in the process. It proved to be a one-off success, but Warwick (now without the "e") signed to Arista Records in 1979 and returned to the Top Five of the pop adult contemporary charts with "I'll Never Love This Way Again," produced by labelmate Barry Manilow and featured on her first platinum-selling album, another LP simply titled Dionne. The Spinners would hit the Top 10 twice in the next two years with "(They Just Can't Stop It) Games People Play" and "The Rubberband Man."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dionne_Warwick
1977 The last natural case of smallpox is discovered in Merca district, Somalia. The WHO and the CDC consider this date the anniversary of the eradication of smallpox, the most spectacular success of vaccination.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox
1982 Steve Carlton became first pitcher to win 4 Cy Young awards. Steve Carlton wins the National League Cy Young Award for the 4th time, a record unmatched by any pitcher. The Phils 37-year-old lefthander, who led the NL in wins (23), innings (2952/3), strikeouts (286), and shutouts (6), was a previous winner in 1972, 1977, and 1980. He joins Walter Johnson and Willie Mays as the only players to be voted MVP or Cy Young winner 10 or more years apart.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Carlton
1984 Baby Fae became the first new-born recipient of a cross-species heart transplant. Dr. Leonard L. Bailey, a heart surgeon at Loma Linda University Medical Center, California, transplanted a walnut-sized young baboon heart. She had been born prematurely 12 days earlier with hypoplastic left-heart syndrome, a lethal underdevelopment of the left side of the heart. Bailey suggested the experimental xenotransplant to the mother. By 1977, three such animal-heart transplants into adults had provided less than four days of life at best. Bailey believed the infant's underdeveloped immune system would be less likely to reject alien tissue, and a new drug cyclosporine would help. Baby Fae lived 20 days before complications caused her death.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_Fae
1983 A heat wave was in progress over the Northern Rockies, with record highs of 81 degrees at Sheridan WY and Billings MT.(Sandra and TI Richard Sanders - 1987)
1985 "Saving All My Love for You" by Whitney Houston topped the charts. "Saving All My Love for You" was originally recorded by Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr in 1978. The lyrics were written by Gerry Goffin and the music by Michael Masser, who also produced it. It won the 1985 Grammy award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saving_All_My_Love_for_You
1986 Buckner lets ground ball roll through his legs. In the wee hours of the morning on October 26, 1986, Red Sox first baseman Bill Buckner lets an easy ground ball dribble between his legs and roll down the right-field line. It was just a routine fielding error, but it was a disaster for the Boston Red Sox: It was the 10th inning of the sixth game of the World Series; the game was tied; and, thanks to Buckner’s mistake, the runner on third had time to score, winning the game for the Mets and forcing a tiebreaking seventh—which, in the final innings, the Mets also won. Even though Game 6 was tied because Boston’s pitchers couldn’t hold a two-run, two-out lead, and even though the Sox managed to fritter away a three-run lead in Game 7, people still blame Buckner for losing the championship. "I can’t remember the last time I missed a ball like that," he said, "but I’ll remember this one."
Ever since team owner and Broadway producer Harry Frazee sold the great Babe Ruth to the Yankees in 1920, the Sox had been tragically unable to win the World Series. People said that the team was cursed. Before 1920, the Sox had won five championships; after the Babe left, Boston’s well ran dry. Over and over, the hapless Sox almost won—and over and over, they didn’t. In 1946, they were winning Game 7 with two outs in the eighth—until shortstop Johnny Pesky held onto a relay throw just long enough for Enos Slaughter to score the winning run (from first base). They lost in 1967 and 1975. Three years after that, in a one-game playoff for the AL championship, they lost when Yankee shortstop Bucky Dent, not exactly a reliable slugger, cranked one over the Green Monster with two men on base. The Bombers won the game and went on to win their 22nd World Series.
And then, just one out away from the championship in the sixth game of the 1986 series against the Mets, the Sox defense managed to bungle a series of easy plays so badly that they lost the game. At the bottom of the 10th, Boston had a 5-3 lead. Pitcher Calvin Schiraldi retired the first two Mets who came to the plate. But then Gary Carter hit a single; so did Kevin Mitchell; and then Ray Knight did, too. The score was 5-4. Bob Stanley came in from the Red Sox bullpen and immediately fired off a wild pitch. Mitchell scored, and the game was tied. Then outfielder Mookie Wilson stepped to the plate. On the 10th pitch of the at-bat, after he’d knocked six pitches foul, Wilson poked a ground ball right to Buckner at first. Buckner bent to field the ball, but it bounced right over his glove and kept rolling down the right-field line. Knight headed gleefully for home. The Mets had won.
Two nights later, the Sox weren’t any luckier: They were winning 3-0 until the sixth, when the Mets tied the game. In the seventh, New York scored three more runs. With that, the Mets were the champs. The Curse of the Bambino, it seemed, would never die.
Buckner tried to stay in Boston, but fans heaped so much abuse on him and his family that he decided to move to Idaho. The Sox, meanwhile, won the World Series in 2004 and again in 2007.
[a href="en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Buckner"]en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Buckner[/a][/url]
1986 Donald Duck was shown for the first time in the People’s Republic of China.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Duck
1987 Five cities in south central Texas reported record high temperatures for the date, including Corpus Christi and Del Rio with readings of 93 degrees. Laredo TX was the hot spot in the nation with a high of 98 degrees. Thunderstorms moving over the Lower Mississsippi Valley deluged Lake Charles LA with 2.70 inches of rain in one hour resulting in severe local flooding. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data)
1988 - Thunderstorms moving out of northern Texas spawned five tornadoes in Louisiana during the morning hours. The thunderstorms also produced wind gusts to 75 mph at Jennings LA, and the driver of a vehicle was killed by a falling tree near Coushatta LA. Snow squalls in the Lower Great Lakes Region produced heavy snow in western New York State, with 12 inches reported at Colden. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data)
1989 Unseasonably warm weather continued in the north central U.S. Afternoon highs of 78 degrees at Alpena MI, 75 degrees at Duluth MN, 79 degrees at Fargo ND, 77 degrees at International Falls MN, 76 degrees at Marquette MI, 75 degrees at Sault Ste Marie MI, and 80 degrees at Saint Cloud MN, were all the warmest of record for so late in the season. Morning lows of 63 degrees at Concordia KS and Omaha NE were the warmest of record for the date. (The National Weather Summary)
1992 The London Ambulance Service is thrown into chaos after the implementation of a new CAD, or Computer Aided Despatch, system which failed.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Ambulance_Service
1992: The Times quoted financier George Soros as saying: "Our total position by Black Wednesday had to be worth almost $10 billion. We planned to sell more than that. In fact, when Norman Lamont said just before the devaluation that he would borrow nearly $15 billion to defend sterling, we were amused because that was about how much we wanted to sell."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Wednesday
1994 Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel and Prime Minister Abdel Salam Majali of Jordan signed a peace treaty in a ceremony attended by President Clinton.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdelsalam_al-Majali
2001 The USA PATRIOT Act (commonly known as the "Patriot Act") is an Act of the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President George W. Bush on October 26, 2001. The title of the Act is a contrived acronym, which stands for Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001. On this day in 2001, President George W. Bush signs the Patriot Act, an anti-terrorism law drawn up in response to the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.
The law was intended, in Bush’s words, to "enhance the penalties that will fall on terrorists or anyone who helps them." The act increased intelligence agencies’ ability to share information and lifted restrictions on communications surveillance. Law enforcement officials were given broader mandates to fight financial counterfeiting, smuggling and money laundering schemes that funded terrorists. The Patriot Act’s expanded definition of terrorism also gave the FBI increased powers to access personal information such as medical and financial records. The Patriot Act superseded all state laws.
While Congress voted in favor of the bill, and some in America felt the bill actually did not go far enough to combat terrorism, the law faced a torrent of criticism. Civil rights activists worried that the Patriot Act would curtail domestic civil liberties and would give the executive branch too much power to investigate Americans under a veil of secrecy—a fear not felt since the protest era of the 1960s and 1970s when the FBI bugged and infiltrated anti-war and civil rights groups.
The Patriot Act has faced ongoing legal challenges by the American Civil Liberties Union, and in recent years, some members of Congress who had originally supported the bill have come to mistrust the Bush administration’s interpretation of the law. Nevertheless, a Republican-controlled Congress passed and Bush signed a renewal of the controversial Patriot Act in March 2006. Bush exacerbated the controversy over the renewal of the act by issuing a so-called "signing statement"—an executive exemption from enforcing or abiding by certain clauses within the law—immediately afterward.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_PATRIOT_Act
2002 Moscow Theatre Siege: Approximately 50 Chechen terrorists and 150 hostages die when Russian Spetsnaz storm a theater building in Moscow, which had been occupied by the terrorists during a musical performance three days before.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_theater_hostage_crisis
Smoke from the fires drift toward Arizona and Nevada after the wind shifted on October 29
2003 The Cedar Fire, the second-largest fire in California history, kills 15 people, consumes 250,000 acres (1,000 km²), and destroys 2,200 homes around San Diego.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cedar_Fire
2010: The annual trade show of the kosher food industry opened today at the Meadowlands Exposition Center in Secaucus, N.J. The winners in 18 categories of new kosher food products reflect growing trends in kosher food, including general health and wellness, reduced fat, soy replacements, natural, gluten-free, spelt and organic.
Births
1609 William Sprague (d 1675) left England on the ship Lyon's Whelp for Plymouth/Salem Massachusetts, co-founder of Charlestown, Massachusetts, originally from Upwey, near Weymouth, Dorset, England.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlestown,_Massachusetts
1818 Elizabeth Payson Prentiss, school teacher and poet, many of whose poems have become hymns. After some years of school teaching, she married a Congregational minister in 1845. One of her poems has become the hymn "More Love to Thee," which was written out of a broken heart upon losing a child. The original poem was not finished (the last line was pencilled in) and it was originally printed as a leaflet. William H. Doane composed the music. (d 1878)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Payson_Prentiss
1846 Lewis Boss (d 1912) American astronomer best known for his compilation of two catalogues of stars (1910, 1937). In 1882 he led an expedition to Chile to observe a transit of Venus. About 1895 Boss began to plan a general catalog of stars, giving their positions and motions. After 1906, the project had support from the Carnegie Institution, Washington, D.C. With an enlarged staff he observed the northern stars from Albany and the southern stars from Argentina. With the new data, he corrected catalogs that had been compiled in the past, and in 1910 he published the Preliminary General Catalogue of 6,188 Stars for the Epoch 1900. The work unfinished upon his death was completed by his son Benjamin in 1937 (General Catalogue of 33,342 Stars for the Epoch 1950, 5 vol.).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Boss
1854 Charles William Post (d 1914) American industrialist who founded Post Cereal Company [with the Grape-Nuts cereal he created. In 1890, a nervous breakdown had led Post to the sanitorium of Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, where he was fed on Kellogg's grain-intensive vegetarian diet. Early in 1895, Post began the manufacture of Postum, a grain product intended as a coffee substitute, similar to one of Kellogg's concoctions. The manufacture of Grape-Nuts, based on another Kellogg item, began the following year. Post's new company, Postum Ltd., achieved wide-scale distribution of its products through massive spending on advertising appealing to the health concerns of the American public. In 1929, Postum became General Foods Corporation.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_William_Post
1865 Benjamin Guggenheim (d 1912) American businessman. He died aboard RMS Titanic when the ship sank near Cape Race, Newfoundland.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Guggenheim
1874 Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, d 1948), socialite and philanthropist and the second-generation matriarch of the renowned Rockefeller family. Referred to as the "woman in the family", she was especially noteworthy for being the driving force behind the establishment of the Museum of Modern Art, on 53rd Street in New York, in November, 1929.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abby_Aldrich_Rockefeller
1877 Max Mason (d 1961) American mathematical physicist, educator, and science administrator. During World War I he invented several devices for submarine detection - several generations of the Navy's "M," or multiple-tube, passive submarine sensors. This apparatus focused sound to ascertain its source. To determine the direction from which the sound came, the operator needed only to seek the maximum output on his earphones by turning a dial. The final device had a range of 3 miles. Mason's special interest and contributions lay in mathematics (differential equations, calculus of variations), physics (electromagnetic theory), invention (acoustical compensators, submarine-detection devices), and the administration of universities and foundations.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Max_Mason
1883 Napoleon Hill (d 1970) American author who was one of the earliest producers of the modern genre of personal-success literature. He is widely considered to be one of the great writers on success. His most famous work, Think and Grow Rich, is one of the best-selling books of all time. Hill's works examined the power of personal beliefs, and the role they play in personal success. He became the advisor to President Franklin D. Roosevelt from 1933-36. "What the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve" is one of Hill's hallmark expressions. How achievement actually occurs, and a formula for it that puts success in reach for the average person, were the focal points of Hill's books.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon_Hill
1883 Paul Henry Pilgrim (d 1958) American athlete who won three gold medals at the 1904 and 1906 Summer Olympics.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Pilgrim
1887 Charles Eugene Bedaux(d 1944) French-born American efficiency engineer who developed the Bedaux plan for measuring and compensating industrial labour. Bedaux was born in Paris in 1886 and migrated to the U.S. early in the 20th century. He became one of the pioneering contributors to the field of scientific management. Bedaux worked out various ideas about measuring human energy: these provided the basis for the innovative work study programs that lead to startling improvements in productivity. Bedaux introduced the concept of rating assessment in timing work. He adhered to Gilbreth's introduction of a rest allowance to allow recovery from fatigue. He is also known for extending the range of techniques employed in work study, including value analysis.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Bedaux
1889 Millar Burrows, Cincinnati, Ohio. Becoming an archaeologist, he taught at several colleges and directed the American School of Oriental Research at Jerusalem. He is remembered for the book What Mean these Stones? (d 1980)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millar_Burrows
1898 William Lloyd Warner (d 1970) American sociologist and anthropologist who is remembered for authoring studies of social class structure. He pioneered in applying anthropology research methods in the field of the contemporary urban social community. In his Yankee City (5 vols.), he merged an ethnographic perspective gained from fieldwork among Australian aborigines with information gathered from formal interviews for his social study of a New England city, Yankee City. He was the first sociologist to use a six-fold classification. In studying the old town, Warner recognised three distinct groups - upper, middle and lower classes - each sub-divided into upper and lower sections. The topmost, or upper-upper class, was composed of the wealthy old families; the lower-lower class represented the poorest.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lloyd_Warner
1910 John Joseph Krol (d 1996) American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He was Archbishop of Philadelphia from 1961 to 1988, having previously served as an auxiliary bishop of the Diocese of Cleveland (1953–61).[1] He was created a cardinal in 1967.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Joseph_Krol
1911 Shiing-shen Chern (d 2004) Chinese-American mathematician and educator whose researches in differential geometry include the development of the Chern characteristic classes in fibre spaces, which play a major role in mathematics and in mathematical physics. "When Chern was working on differential geometry in the 1940s, this area of mathematics was at a low point. Global differential geometry was only beginning, even Morse theory was understood and used by a very small number of people. Today, differential geometry is a major subject in mathematics and a large share of the credit for this transformation goes to Professor Chern."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiing-Shen_Chern
1911 Mahalia Jackson (d 1972) African-American gospel singer. With her powerful contralto voice, Mahalia Jackson became one of the most influential gospel singers in the world and is the first Queen of Gospel Music. She recorded about 30 albums (mostly for Columbia Records) during her career, and her 45 rpm records included a dozen "golds"—million-sellers.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahalia_Jackson
1912 Donald Siegel (d 1991) American film director and producer. His name appeared in the credits of his films as both Don Siegel and Donald Siegel.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Siegel
1913 Charles Daly Barnet (d 4 Sep 1991) American jazz saxophonist, composer, and bandleader, his major recordings were "Skyliner", "Cherokee", "The Wrong Idea", "Scotch and Soda", ]and "Southland Shuffle".
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Daly_Barnet
1914 John Leslie "Jackie" Coogan, Jr. (d 1984) American actor who began his movie career as a child actor in silent films. Many years later, he became known as Uncle Fester on 1960s sitcom The Addams Family. In the interim, he sued his mother and stepfather over his squandered film earnings and provoked California to enact the first known legal protection for the earnings of child performers.
1916 Boyd Wagner, First USAAF fighter ace of WWII (d. 1942)
1919 Edward William Brooke, III American politician and was the first African American to be elected by popular vote to the United States Senate when he was elected as a Republican from Massachusetts in 1966, defeating his Democratic opponent, Endicott Peabody, 60.7%–38.7%. He was also the first African American elected to the Senate since the 19th century, and would remain the only person of African heritage sent to the Senate in the 20th century until Democrat Carol Moseley Braun in 1993, and was the last Republican Senator elected from Massachusetts until the 2010 election of Scott Brown.
1945 Pat Conroy Atlanta, Georgia USA, New York Times bestselling author who has written several acclaimed novels and memoirs. (The Great Santini)
1946 Patrick Leonard Sajdak, "Pat" Pat Sajak on October 26, 1946) is a television personality, former weatherman, actor and talk show host, best known as the host of the American television game show Wheel of Fortune.
1947 Jaclyn Ellen Smith American actress, best known for the role of Kelly Garrett in the television series Charlie's Angels, and was the only original female lead to remain with the series for its complete run (1976–81). She became a well known face on television starring in over thirty made for TV movies and more recently was the hostess of Bravo's weekly competitive reality television show Shear Genius for its first two seasons. Beginning in the 1980s, she began developing and marketing her own brands of clothing and perfume. She has often been voted one of the most beautiful women in the world.
1947 Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton, 67th United States Secretary of State, serving in the administration of President Barack Obama. She was a United States Senator for New York from 2001 to 2009. As the wife of the 42nd President of the United States, Bill Clinton, she was the First Lady of the United States from 1993 to 2001. In the 2008 election, Clinton was a leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Diane_Rodham_Clinton
1955 Sammy Swindell, star in the outlaw sport of sprint-car racing, is born in Germantown, Tennessee. In 1971, when he was just 15 years old, Swindell raced for the first time on a dirt track at the Riverside Speedway in Arkansas. Since he started dirt-track racing, Swidell has never finished a season outside the top 10.
When Swindell began his career, he was a member of a motley crew of drivers known as the Band of Outlaws. These men, according to the Los Angeles Times, were "a gypsy bunch of maverick sprint car drivers who made their mark racing… on seedy little tracks, running with virtually no rules, sometimes wearing only T-shirts and Levi's. They went where the money was and no questions asked." Their races were unsanctioned by the U.S. Auto Club, the organization that ran the Indianapolis 500 and other "respectable" paved-track races. Instead, the Band of Outlaws competed in catch-as-catch-can affairs put on at county fairgrounds and makeshift clay loops across the Midwest.
Outlaw-style racing, usually called sprint-car racing, was a throwback to the early, scrappy days of motorsports, when drivers like Barney Oldfield and A.J. Foyt careened around hard-packed dirt roads in big, open-topped cars. Sprint cars banged into one another as they screeched around the track; they churned giant grooves into the dirt and dared one another to clatter over them without flipping; they used oversized tires, called "humpers," on their right rear wheels to help them accelerate more flamboyantly; and they had wings, or huge canopies that held them down on the track and helped them go faster. And sprint-car racing was dangerous: in the 1970s and 1980s, at least one driver was killed almost every weekend. Today, sprint-car racing is a little safer but no less pugnacious.
In the 1980s, Sammy Swindell dabbled in more mainstream racing—he joined the Indy Car circuit first, then NASCAR—but his heart remained with the Outlaws. In 2009, he rejoined the sprint-car circuit full time. In all, he has won three Outlaw titles and 268 races.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sammy_Swindell
Deaths
1675 William Sprague, English co-founder of Charlestown, Massachusetts (b. 1609)
1864 William T. "Bloody Bill" Anderson (b. circa 1839 – October 26, 1864) was a pro-Confederate guerrilla leader in the American Civil War. Anderson was known for his brutality towards Union soldiers, who were called Jayhawkers, and pro-Union civilians in Missouri and Kansas. Anderson participated in Quantrill's raid on Lawrence, Kansas on August 21, 1863. An estimated 200 civilian men and boys were reported to have been killed and many homes and buildings in Lawrence were burned to the ground. On October 26, 1864 Anderson was killed after he and his men were lured into an ambush near the hamlet of Albany, which is now part of Orrick, in Ray County, Missouri. The ambush was carried out by a group of militiamen lead by Colonel Samuel P. Cox.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_T._Anderson
1902 Elizabeth Cady Stanton (b 1815) American social activist, abolitionist, and leading figure of the early woman's movement. Her Declaration of Sentiments, presented at the first women's rights convention held in 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York, is often credited with initiating the first organized woman's rights and woman's suffrage movements in the United States.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Cady_Stanton
1923 Charles P. Steinmetz (b 1865) German-born American inventor and electrical engineer whose theories and mathematical analysis of alternating current systems helped establish them as the preferred form of electrical energy in the United States, and throughout the world. In 1893, Steinmetz joined the newly organized General Electric Company where he was an engineer then consultant until his death. His early research on hysteresis (loss of power due to magnetic resistance) led him to study alternating current, which could eliminate hysteresis loss in motors. He did extensive new work on the theory of a.c. for electrical engineers to use. His last research was on lightning, and its threat to the new AC power lines. He was responsible for the expansion of the electric power industry in the U.S.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Proteus_Steinmetz
1930 Harry Payne Whitney (b 1872) American businessman, thoroughbred horsebreeder, and member of the prominent Whitney family.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Payne_Whitney
1931 Charles Albert "The Old Roman" Comiskey (b 1859) Major League Baseball player, manager and team owner. He was a key person in the formation of the American League and later owned the Chicago White Sox. Comiskey Park, Chicago's storied baseball stadium, was built under his guidance and named for him.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Comiskey
1952 Hattie McDaniel (b 1895) American actress and the first African-American to win an Academy Award. She won the award for Best Supporting Actress for her role of Mammy in Gone with the Wind (1939). McDaniel was also a professional singer-songwriter, comedian, stage actress, radio performer, and television star. Hattie McDaniel was in fact the first black woman to sing on the radio in America. Over the course of her career, McDaniel appeared in over 300 films, although she received screen credits for only about 80. She gained the respect of the African American show business community with her generosity, elegance, and charm.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hattie_McDaniel
1957 Gerty Theresa Cori née Radnitz, (b 1896) American biochemist who became the third woman—and first American woman—to win a Nobel Prize in science, and the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1947 for the discovery of the mechanism by which glycogen—a derivative of glucose—is broken down in muscle tissue into lactic acid and then resynthesized in the body and stored as source of energy (known as the Cori cycle).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerty_Theresa_Cori
1972 Igor Ivan Sikorsky (b 1889) Russian-born U.S. pioneer in aircraft design who is best known for his successful development of the helicopter. His earliest successes were with fixed-wing aircraft, including his prize-winning S-6-A (1912) which led to a position as head of the aviation subsidiary of the Russian Baltic Railroad Car Works. In this position, as a result of a mosquito-clogged carburetor and subsequent engine failure, he had the radical idea of an aircraft having more than one engine. Thus he produced the first multi-engine airplane, the four-engined "The Grand." This revolutionary aircraft featured such things as an enclosed cabin. a lavatory, upholstered chairs and an exterior catwalk atop the fuselage so passengers could take a turn about in the air.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igor_Ivan_Sikorsky
1983 Alfred Tarski (b 1902) Polish-born American mathematician and logician who made important studies of general algebra, measure theory, mathematical logic, set theory, and metamathematics. Formal scientific languages can be subjected to more thorough study by the semantic method that he developed. He worked on model theory, mathematical decision problems and with universal algebra. He produced axioms for "logical consequence", worked on deductive systems, the algebra of logic and the theory of definability. Group theorists study 'Tarski monsters', infinite groups whose existence seems intuitively impossible.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Tarski
1989 Charles John Pedersen (b 1904) American organic chemist best known for describing methods of synthesizing crown ethers. He shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1987 with Donald J. Cram and Jean-Marie Lehn.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_John_Pedersen
1990 William Samuel Paley (b 1901) chief executive who built Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) from a small radio network into one of the foremost radio and television network operations in the United States.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_S._Paley
1999 Hoyt Wayne Axton (b 1938) American country music singer-songwriter, and a film and television actor. He became prominent in the early 1960s, establishing himself on the West Coast as a folk singer with an earthy style and powerful voice. As he matured, some of his songwriting efforts became well known throughout the world. Among them are "Della and the Dealer", "Joy to the World" (which many know better by its opening lyric, "Jeremiah was a bullfrog!"), and "Greenback Dollar".
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoyt_Axton
Christian Feast Day
Alfred the Great
Cedd
Cuthbert of Canterbury
Demetrius of Thessaloniki
Fulk of Pavia (Roman Catholic Church)
Quadragesimus
Witta of Büraburg
October 26 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
Saints
Demetrius of Thessaloniki (306)
Other commemorations
Commemoration of the Great Earthquake at Constantinople in 740
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www.todayinsci.com/10/10_26.htm
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daysuntil.com/Election-Day/index.html
www.christianhistorytimeline.com/lives_events/birthday/index.php
www.amug.org/~jpaul/oct26.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_26
www.scopesys.com/cgi-bin/today2.cgi
www.history.com/this-day-in-history
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_26_(Eastern_Orthodox_liturgics)
www.jewishencyclopedia.com/
thisdayinjewishhistory.blogspot.com/