Post by farmgal on Oct 30, 2012 5:48:58 GMT -5
October 30 is the 304th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar.
There are 62 days remaining until the end of the year.
Days left until November 06, 2012: 8
Countdown until Obama leaves Office
www.obamaclock.org/
U.S. Debt Clock: www.usdebtclock.org/
1536 Lutheranism was made the official religion in Denmark by edict of Christian III (1503–1559).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_III_of_Denmark#Religious_Views
1768 The Wesley Chapel on John Street in New York City was dedicated. It was the first Methodist church building to be erected in the American colonies, and was restored in 1817, and again in 1840.
www.nycago.org/Organs/NYC/html/JohnStMeth.html
1775 Naval committee established by Congress On this day in 1775, the Continental Congress appoints seven members to serve on an administrative naval committee tasked with the acquisition, outfitting and manning of a naval fleet to be used in defense against the British. Almost two weeks earlier, on October 13, 1775, Congress had authorized the construction and arming of vessels for the country's first navy.
Members of the first naval committee included some of the most influential members of the Continental Congress and several "founding fathers," including John Adams, Joseph Hewes, John Langdon, Richard Henry Lee, Silas Deane and Stephen Hopkins, the committee's chairman.
On December 22, Esek Hopkins, Stephen's brother, was appointed the first commander in chief of the Continental Navy. Congress also named four captains to the new service: Dudley Saltonstall, Abraham Whipple, Nicholas Biddle and John Burrows Hopkins. Their respective vessels, the 24-gun frigates Alfred and Columbus, and the14-gun brigs Andrew Doria and Cabot, as well as three schooners, the Hornet, the Wasp and the Fly, became the first ships of the Navy's fleet. Five first lieutenants, including future American hero John Paul Jones, five second lieutenants and three third lieutenants also received their commissions.
With help from the committee, America's first navy went from a fleet of two vessels on the day Congress established the naval committee to a fleet of more than 40 armed ships and vessels at the height of the War for Independence. The Continental Navy successfully preyed upon British merchant shipping and won several victories over British warships. This first naval force was disbanded after the war. What is now known as the United States Navy was formally established with the creation of the federal Department of the Navy in April 1798.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_Congress#First_Continental_Congress
1794 The first commercial installation in the U.S. of ball bearings was made on the weather vane on top of the steeple of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Holy Trinity, Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The brick portion of the tower rises 86 feet and includes the bell chamber, above which rises the spire from an octagonal base to a height of 195 feet, upon which was mounted the weather vane. The bearings were of an antifriction roller type, with a pin through them.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_bearing
1831 In Southampton County, Virginia, escaped slave Nat Turner is captured and arrested for leading the bloodiest slave rebellion in United States history.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nat_Turner%27s_slave_rebellion
1862 Ormsby MacKnight Mitchell dies. Union General Ormsby MacKnight Mitchell, commander of the Department of the South, dies at Beaufort, South Carolina.
Born in Kentucky in 1809, Mitchell grew up in Lebanon, Ohio. He attended West Point and graduated in 1829 along with future Confederate leaders Joseph Johnston and Robert E. Lee. He excelled at mathematics and graduated 15th out of a class of 56 cadets. Mitchell taught at West Point before becoming a surveyor on the Pennsylvania and Ohio Railroad. He served another stint in the military when he went to St. Augustine, Florida, but he found his true calling when he accepted a professorship at Cincinnati College in 1836. He soon gained wide acclaim as a lecturer on astronomy. His lecture tours in the United States and Europe helped fund the Cincinnati Observatory, which he directed when it opened in 1845.
When the war erupted in 1861, Mitchell used his West Point education as a brigadier general in the Army of the Ohio under General Don Carlos Buell and participated in operations in Kentucky and Tennessee in 1862. Mitchell also directed raids into northern Alabama, capturing Huntsville in April 1862. Mitchell was a critic of the "soft war," or limited approach, of many northern generals, and his actions made him a target of conservative northern newspapers. Advocating a tougher stance against Southern civilians and the institution of slavery, he confiscated the property of prominent Confederates and protected slaves who escaped to his lines well before the practice was mandated by Federal policy.
In July 1862 he was named commander of the Department of the South. He moved to headquarters on the Sea Islands of South Carolina, where he oversaw the building of schools and homes for slaves in the captured territory. This movement, begun by his predecessor, General David Hunter, is considered the first experiment in the reconstruction of the South. However, Mitchell's death from yellow fever cut short his participation in the experiment.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ormsby_M._Mitchel
1864 The city of Helena, Montana, is founded after miners discover gold. On this day in 1864, the town of Helena, Montana, is founded by four gold miners who struck it rich at the appropriately named "Last Chance Gulch."
The first major Anglo settlement of Montana had begun just two years before in the summer of 1862, when prospectors found a sizeable deposit of placer gold at Grasshopper Creek to the west. When other even richer deposits were soon discovered nearby, a major rush began as tens of thousands of miners scoured the territory in search of gold. In 1864, four prospectors spotted signs of gold in the Helena area while on their way to the Kootenai country, but they were eager to reach the reportedly rich gold regions farther to the north and did not to stop. But after striking out on the Kootenai, they decided to take "one last chance" on finding gold and returned. When the signs turned out to mark a rich deposit of placer gold, they staked their claims and named the new mining district Last Chance Gulch.
Eventually, Last Chance Gulch would prove to be the second biggest placer gold deposit in Montana, producing some $19 million worth of gold in just four years. Overnight, thousands of miners began to flood into the region, and the four original discoverers added to their fortunes by establishing the town of Helena to provide them with food, lodging, and supplies. But unlike many of the early Montana mining towns, Helena did not disappear once the gold gave out, which it inevitably did. Located on several major transportation routes, well supplied with agricultural products from an adjacent valley, and near to several other important mining towns, Helena was able to survive and grow by serving the wider Montana mining industry. In 1875, the city became the capital of Montana Territory, and in 1894, the capital of the new state of Montana.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helena,_Montana
1888 The first U.S. patent for a ballpoint pen was issued to John J. Loud of Weymouth, Mass. (No. 392,046). This patent described a pen having a spheroidal marking point capable of revolving in all directions which was held down by three smaller anti-friction balls, themselves held down by a flaired spring-loaded rod. A threaded cap at the end of the pen could be removed to recharge the pen with ink. The patent described the invention as being especially useful for the marking of rough surfaces such as wooden or paper boxes, coarse wrapping paper and other surfaces where the ordinary nib of a fountain pen could not be used because it would split, spatter or catch.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballpoint_pen
1893 The World's Columbian Exposition closes in Chicago. October 30, 1893 is the last day of Chicago's World's Columbian Exposition, a great fair that celebrated the 400th anniversary of Columbus's arrival in the New World and offered fairgoers a chance to see the first gas-powered motorcar in the United States: the Daimler quadricycle. The exposition introduced Americans to all kinds of technological wonders--for instance, an alternating-current power plant, a 46-foot-long cannon, a 1,500-pound Venus de Milo made of chocolate, and Juicy Fruit gum--along with replicas of exotic places and carnival-style rides and games.
Four years earlier, the Universal Exposition in Paris had featured an elaborate display of steam-and gas-powered vehicles, including the Serpollet-Peugeot steam tricar, named for its three wheels and powered by a coke-burning boiler and a lightweight, petrol-fueled four-wheeled car built by the German engineer Gottlieb Daimler. The Chicago fair promised an even more impressive spectacle. Its Transportation Building, designed by Louis Sullivan, was crammed full: Pack mules and horse-drawn carts crowded next to bicycles and boats. Most exciting of all were the rows of massive American-built steam locomotives that towered over everything else in the hall. Trains, the Exposition's organizers seemed to say, were the transportation of the future.
Only one internal-combustion vehicle was on display at the fair, tucked away in the corner of the Transportation Building: another of the wire-wheeled, tiller-steered, one-cylinder platform quadricycles that Daimler had introduced to Parisian fairgoers in 1889. It was like nothing most Americans had ever seen and yet almost no one paid any attention to it. Reporters barely mentioned the Daimler car and it didn't even appear in the exhibition catalog.
But a few very important people did notice it and studied it closely. One was the bicycle mechanic Charles Duryea, who used the Daimler car as the inspiration for the four-wheeled, one-cylinder Motor Wagon that he built with his brother Frank. In 1896, the Duryea Motor Wagon Company became the first company to mass-produce gas-powered vehicles in the United States.
Another admirer of the Daimler car was Henry Ford, who returned to Dearborn after the fair and built an internal-combustion quadricycle of his own. (He called it his "gasoline buggy.") Ford drove his little car for the first time on July 4, 1896 and sold it later that year for $200. Just a few years later, he incorporated the Ford Motor Company and the automobile age had begun.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_Columbian_Exposition
1894 Daniel M. Cooper of Rochester, N.Y. received the first U.S. patent for a time clock (No. 528,223). Timecards were inserted into the machine, and when a lever was pressed, the time was recorded on specially printed cards divided by horizontal lines into seven equal spaces for days of the week. The time clock was used to record the time employees started and ended work. Known as the Rochester, the machine was manufactured by the Willard and Frick Manufacturing Company.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_clock
1895 The Luther League of America was organized.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luther_League
1902 Pope Leo XIII (1810–1903) established the Pontifical Biblical Commission to safeguard the correct interpretation of Scripture, to state positions that had to be held by Catholics on biblical questions, to set up standards for biblical studies and to grant degrees in sacred Scripture.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Leo_XIII
1908 Queen of American high society dies. Caroline Schermerhorn Astor, wife of William Waldorf Astor, the wealthy newspaper proprietor, dies at the age of 78.
Even before her union with William Astor—the grandson of the American fur magnate John Jacob Astor—Caroline Schermerhorn was prime American aristocracy: She was the daughter of a wealthy merchant and descended from Dutch nobles. In 1890, William and Caroline immigrated to Britain, where they bought their way into British royalty. But their British citizenship, and William's title of viscount, were only means of advancing their already formidable position in New York society. Caroline's death marked the end of old-style high society in New York City. She had ruled over the upper crust as an un-crowned American queen, and an invitation to one of Mrs. Astor's famous balls was the ultimate symbol of one's social rank.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caroline_Webster_Schermerhorn_Astor
1918 Ottoman Empire signs treaty with Allies. On October 30, 1918, aboard the British battleship Agamemnon, anchored in the port of Mudros on the Aegean island of Lemnos, representatives of Great Britain and the Ottoman Empire sign an armistice treaty marking the end of Ottoman participation in the First World War.
Though the Ottoman Empire—in a period of relative decline since the late 16th century—had initially aimed to stay neutral in World War I, it soon concluded an alliance with Germany and entered the war on the side of the Central Powers in October 1914. The Turks fought fiercely and successfully defended the Gallipoli Peninsula against a massive Allied invasion in 1915-1916, but by 1918 defeat by invading British and Russian forces and an Arab revolt had combined to destroy the Ottoman economy and devastate its land, leaving some six million people dead and millions more starving.
As early as the first week of October 1918, both the Ottoman government and several individual Turkish leaders contacted the Allies to feel out peace possibilities. Britain, whose forces then occupied much of the Ottoman territories, was loath to step aside for its allies, particularly France, which according to an agreement concluded in 1916 would take control of the Syrian coast and much of modern-day Lebanon. In a move that enraged his French counterpart, Georges Clemenceau, Prime Minister David Lloyd George and his cabinet authorized Admiral Arthur Calthorpe, Britain’s naval commander in the Aegean Sea, to negotiate an immediate armistice with Turkey without consulting France. Though Britain alone would engineer the Ottoman exit from the war, the two powerful Allies would continue to grapple over control in the region at the Paris Peace Conference, and for years beyond.
Negotiations between Calthorpe’s team and the delegation from Constantinople, led by the Ottoman Minister of Marine Affairs Rauf Bey, began at 9:30 on the morning of October 30, 1918, aboard the Agamemnon. The Treaty of Mudros, signed that evening, stated that hostilities would end at noon the following day. By its terms, Turkey had to open the Dardanelle and Bosporus straits to Allied warships and its forts to military occupation; it was also to demobilize its army, release all prisoners of war and evacuate its Arab provinces, the majority of which were already under Allied control. Bey and his fellow delegates refused to paint the treaty as an act of surrender for Turkey—later causing disillusionment and anger in Constantinople—but in fact that is what it was. The Treaty of Mudros ended Ottoman participation in World War I and effectively—if not legally—marked the dissolution of a once mighty empire. From its ruins, the victors of the First World War attempted to use the post-war peace negotiations to create a new, more unpredictable entity: the modern Middle East.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Empire#World_War_I
1919 Baseball league presidents call for abolishment of the spitball
1925 Nashville, TN, was blanketed with an inch of snow, their earliest measurable snow of record. (The Weather Channel)
1929 John D. Rockefeller tries to help stem the massive sell-off at the NYSE. Wednesday, October 30, found the market in a strong all-day rally, with 10.7 million shares traded. The NYSE announced that it would close Friday and Saturday, purportedly to give hard-pressed personnel a chance to catch up with clerical work. U.S. Steel and American Can announced $1 extra dividends, and Rockefeller let it be known that the family was buying stock at current "bargain" prices. The whole business, financial, governmental and academic community teamed up to issue "confidence game" pronouncements and restore confidence.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Rockefeller
1938 Welles scares nation. Orson Welles causes a nationwide panic with his broadcast of "War of the Worlds"—a realistic radio dramatization of a Martian invasion of Earth.
Orson Welles was only 23 years old when his Mercury Theater company decided to update H.G. Wells' 19th-century science fiction novel War of the Worlds for national radio. Despite his age, Welles had been in radio for several years, most notably as the voice of "The Shadow" in the hit mystery program of the same name. "War of the Worlds" was not planned as a radio hoax, and Welles had little idea of the havoc it would cause.
The show began on Sunday, October 30, at 8 p.m. A voice announced: "The Columbia Broadcasting System and its affiliated stations present Orson Welles and the Mercury Theater on the air in 'War of the Worlds' by H.G. Wells."
Sunday evening in 1938 was prime-time in the golden age of radio, and millions of Americans had their radios turned on. But most of these Americans were listening to ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his dummy "Charlie McCarthy" on NBC and only turned to CBS at 8:12 p.m. after the comedy sketch ended and a little-known singer went on. By then, the story of the Martian invasion was well underway.
Welles introduced his radio play with a spoken introduction, followed by an announcer reading a weather report. Then, seemingly abandoning the storyline, the announcer took listeners to "the Meridian Room in the Hotel Park Plaza in downtown New York, where you will be entertained by the music of Ramon Raquello and his orchestra." Putrid dance music played for some time, and then the scare began. An announcer broke in to report that "Professor Farrell of the Mount Jenning Observatory" had detected explosions on the planet Mars. Then the dance music came back on, followed by another interruption in which listeners were informed that a large meteor had crashed into a farmer's field in Grovers Mills, New Jersey.
Soon, an announcer was at the crash site describing a Martian emerging from a large metallic cylinder. "Good heavens," he declared, "something's wriggling out of the shadow like a gray snake. Now here's another and another one and another one. They look like tentacles to me ... I can see the thing's body now. It's large, large as a bear. It glistens like wet leather. But that face, it... it ... ladies and gentlemen, it's indescribable. I can hardly force myself to keep looking at it, it's so awful. The eyes are black and gleam like a serpent. The mouth is kind of V-shaped with saliva dripping from its rimless lips that seem to quiver and pulsate."
The Martians mounted walking war machines and fired "heat-ray" weapons at the puny humans gathered around the crash site. They annihilated a force of 7,000 National Guardsman, and after being attacked by artillery and bombers the Martians released a poisonous gas into the air. Soon "Martian cylinders" landed in Chicago and St. Louis. The radio play was extremely realistic, with Welles employing sophisticated sound effects and his actors doing an excellent job portraying terrified announcers and other characters. An announcer reported that widespread panic had broken out in the vicinity of the landing sites, with thousands desperately trying to flee. In fact, that was not far from the truth.
Perhaps as many as a million radio listeners believed that a real Martian invasion was underway. Panic broke out across the country. In New Jersey, terrified civilians jammed highways seeking to escape the alien marauders. People begged police for gas masks to save them from the toxic gas and asked electric companies to turn off the power so that the Martians wouldn't see their lights. One woman ran into an Indianapolis church where evening services were being held and yelled, "New York has been destroyed! It's the end of the world! Go home and prepare to die!"
When news of the real-life panic leaked into the CBS studio, Welles went on the air as himself to remind listeners that it was just fiction. There were rumors that the show caused suicides, but none were ever confirmed.
The Federal Communications Commission investigated the program but found no law was broken. Networks did agree to be more cautious in their programming in the future. Orson Welles feared that the controversy generated by "War of the Worlds" would ruin his career. In fact, the publicity helped land him a contract with a Hollywood studio, and in 1941 he directed, wrote, produced, and starred in Citizen Kane—a movie that many have called the greatest American film ever made.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Worlds_(radio)
1937 The closest approach to the earth by an asteroid, Hermes, was measured to be 485,000 miles, which, to an astronomer, is a mere hair's width (asteroid now lost).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/69230_Hermes
Pidhaitsi Jewish cemetery - panorama (summer 2004)
1941 1,500 Jews from Pidhaytsi (in western Ukraine) are sent by Nazis to Belzec extermination camp.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidhaitsi#Jewish_community
1941 FDR approves Lend-Lease aid to the USSR. On this day in 1941, President Roosevelt, determined to keep the United States out of the war while helping those allies already mired in it, approves $1 billion in Lend-Lease loans to the Soviet Union. The terms: no interest and repayment did not have to start until five years after the war was over.
The Lend-Lease program was devised by President Roosevelt and passed by Congress on March 11, 1941. Originally, it was meant to aid Great Britain in its war effort against the Germans by giving the chief executive the power to "sell, transfer title to, exchange, lease, lend, or otherwise dispose of" any military resources the president deemed ultimately in the interest of the defense of the United States. The reasoning was: If a neighbor was successful in defending his home, the security of your home was enhanced.
Although the Soviet Union had already been the recipient of American military weapons, and now had been promised $1 billion in financial aid, formal approval to extend the Lend-Lease program to the USSR had to be given by Congress. Anticommunist feeling meant much heated debate, but Congress finally gave its approval to the extension on November 7.
By the end of the war, more than $50 billion in funds, weapons, aircraft, and ships had been distributed to 44 countries. After the war, the Lend-Lease program morphed into the Marshall Plan, which allocated funds for the revitalization of "friendly" democratic nations—even if they were former enemies.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease
1941 "Blossoms" recorded by bandleader Tony Pastor. Pastor was an important part of Artie Shaw's first two big bands, the short-lived string combo and the clarinetist's very successful 1938-39 orchestra; in the latter group Pastor (as tenor-sax soloist and the male vocalist where his singing showed off the influence of Louis Armstrong) was one of the stars. When Shaw fled to Mexico in late 1939, Pastor (who had gained a bit of a name) soon formed his own successful orchestra, a big band that continued until 1959.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Pastor_(bandleader)
1944 Aaron Copland's Appalachian Spring premieres at the Library of Congress. Born and raised in the same urban, early-20th-century milieu that produced Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern and George and Ira Gershwin, the great and quintessentially American composer Aaron Copland was trained in the classics but steeped in the jazz and popular Jewish music that surrounded him in childhood. As a young composer, his stated aim was to write music that would "make you feel like you were alive on the streets of Brooklyn." Ironically, it was music that brilliantly evoked the rural American heartland that made Copland famous. One such work—arguably his greatest—was the score for the ballet Appalachian Spring, which became one of the most recognizable and beloved pieces of American music ever written almost immediately following its world premiere on this day in 1944.
The score for Appalachian Spring was commissioned in 1942 to accompany a ballet being choreographed by a young Martha Graham. Copland would know the work only as "Ballet for Martha" throughout its composition, having no guidance other than that the ballet would have some sort of a "frontier" theme. In fact, the name Appalachian Spring and the setting of western Pennsylvania would be decided on only after Copland had completed his score. Yet somehow, without having had any idea of doing so, Copland had composed a work that audiences and critics alike found brilliantly evocative of the specific time and place referenced in the title.
The most recognizable passage of Appalachian Spring is the portion Aaron Copland adapted from the Shaker song "Simple Gifts"—"'This a gift to be simple, 'tis a gift to be free"—which was largely unfamiliar to Americans prior to Copland's adaptation. Copland's artful incorporation of the folk tradition with his distinctly modern sensibility is what made Appalachian Spring the transcendent work that it is. In its review of the October 30, 1944, premiere, the New York Times praised all elements of the "shining and joyous" work: the choreography by Martha Graham; the set design by the Isamu Noguchi; and the score by Aaron Copland, which it called "the fullest, loveliest and most deeply poetical of all his theater scores....It is, as the saying goes, a natural."
Though written expressly for the ballet and for only 13 instrumentalists—a limitation dictated by the size of the orchestra pit at the Library of Congress—Appalachian Spring was soon adapted into an orchestral suite, which is the form in which it became widely popular. Appalachian Spring was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1945.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appalachian_Spring
1944 Anne Frank and sister Margot Frank are deported from Auschwitz to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Frank
1945 Jackie Robinson of the Kansas City Monarchs signs a contract for the Brooklyn Dodgers to break the baseball color barrier.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackie_Robinson
1945 US government announces end of shoe rationing. On September 15, much of the rationing finally came to an end -- first, rationing of gasoline and fuel oil ended, and so did those 35 m.p.h. speed limits; then on October 30, came the end of shoe rationing.
1947 The Donora, PA, smog disaster finally came to an end. For five days an inversion trapped impurities in the lower atmosphere over the Monongahela Valley killing 20 persons, and leaving more than 2000 others sick. (26th-30th) (David Ludlum) (The Weather Channel)
1947 The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which is the foundation of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), is founded.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Agreement_on_Tariffs_and_Trade
1952 Dr. Albert Schweitzer recieves a Nobel Peace Prize. Dr. Albert Schweitzer, missionary surgeon and founder of Lambarini Leper Hospital in Republique du Gabon, won the Nobel Peace Prize for his humanitarian work.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Schweitzer
1953 Gen. George C. Marshall wins a Nobel Prize. General George C. Marshall won the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of his contributions to the economic rehabilitation of Europe after WWII, the so-called "Marshall Plan". The Marshall Plan was the primary plan of the United States for rebuilding the allied countries of Europe and repelling communism after World War II.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_C._Marshall
1953 Cold War: U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower formally approves the top secret document National Security Council Paper No. 162/2, which states that the United States' arsenal of nuclear weapons must be maintained and expanded to counter the communist threat.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nsc_162/2
1958 "Concentration" suddendly replaces "Twenty-One" Most of us remember the quiz show, "Concentration", as being on the daytime TV lineup. But on this night it appeared on our TV screens at 8:30 p.m. "Concentration" was a temporary replacement for "Twenty-One", which had been canceled suddenly because of the quiz show scandals of the time. Jack Barry was brought over from the "Twenty-One" set to host "Concentration" for its four-week nighttime run.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_(game_show)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiz_show_scandals
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty_One_(game_show)
1961 Nuclear testing: The Soviet Union detonates the hydrogen bomb Tsar Bomba over Novaya Zemlya; at 58 megatons of yield, it is still the largest explosive device ever detonated, nuclear or otherwise.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba
1965 Marines repel attack near Da Nang.
Just miles from Da Nang, U.S. Marines repel an intense attack by successive waves of Viet Cong troops and kill 56 guerrillas.
A search of the dead uncovered a sketch of Marine positions written on the body of a 13-year-old Vietnamese boy who had been selling drinks to the Marines the previous day. This incident was indicative of the nature of a war in which even the most seemingly innocent child could be the enemy. There were many other instances where South Vietnamese civilians that worked on or near U.S. bases provided information to and participated in attacks alongside the enemy.
Also on this day: Two U.S. planes accidentally bomb a friendly South Vietnamese village, killing 48 civilians and wounding 55 others. An American civic action team was immediately dispatched to the scene, and a later investigation disclosed that a map-reading error by South Vietnamese officers was responsible.
Also on this day: In New York City, military veterans lead a parade in support of government policy in Vietnam. Led by five recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor, 25,000 people march in support of America's action in Vietnam.
[a href="en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Da_Nang#Vietnam_War"]en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Da_Nang#Vietnam_War[/a][/url]
1970 In Vietnam, the worst monsoon to hit the area in six years causes large floods, kills 293, leaves 200,000 homeless and virtually halts the Vietnam War.
1972 A command performance was given for the Queen of England by Elton John.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elton_John
1972 A collision between two commuter trains in Chicago, Illinois kills 45 and injures 332.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_Chicago_commuter_rail_crash
1975 John Bucyk, Boston, became 7th NHLer to score 500 goals
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bucyk
1975 NY Daily News runs headline "Ford to City: Drop Dead"
editdesk.wordpress.com/2009/04/06/ford-drop-dead-headline/
1976 Dr. Joseph H. Evans was elected president of the United Church of Christ. It made him the first African-American leader of this predominantly white denomination.
www.ctconfucc.org/news/20080414_evansmemoriam.html
1987 Severe thunderstorms in Oklahoma produced golf ball size hail and wind gusts to 74 mph near the town of Gould. Unseasonably warm weather prevailed across the central U.S. Temperatures warmed into the 80s form Texas to the Lower Missouri Valley. (Storm Data) (The National Weather Summary)
1974 Muhammad Ali wins the Rumble in the Jungle. On October 30, 1974, 32-year-old Muhammad Ali becomes the heavyweight champion of the world for the second time when he knocks out 25-year-old champ George Foreman in the eighth round of the "Rumble in the Jungle," a match in Kinshasa, Zaire. Seven years before, Ali had lost his title when the government accused him of draft-dodging and the boxing commission took away his license. His victory in Zaire made him only the second dethroned champ in history to regain his belt.
The "Rumble in the Jungle" (named by promoter Don King, who’d initially tagged the bout "From the Slave Ship to the Championship!" until Zaire’s president caught wind of the idea and ordered all the posters burned) was Africa’s first heavyweight championship match. The government of the West African republic staged the event—its president, Mobutu Sese Seko, personally paid each of the fighters $5 million simply for showing up—in hopes that it would draw the world’s attention to the country’s enormous beauty and vast reserves of natural resources. Ali agreed. "I wanted to establish a relationship between American blacks and Africans," he wrote later. "The fight was about racial problems, Vietnam. All of that." He added: "The Rumble in the Jungle was a fight that made the whole country more conscious."
At 4:30 a.m. on October 30, 60,000 spectators gathered in the moonlight (organizers had timed the fight to overlap with prime time in the U.S.) at the outdoor Stade du 20 Mai to watch the fight. They were chanting "Ali, bomaye" ("Ali, kill him"). The ex-champ had been taunting Foreman for weeks, and the young boxer was eager to get going. When the bell rang, he began to pound Ali with his signature sledgehammer blows, but the older man simply backed himself up against the ropes and used his arms to block as many hits as he could. He was confident that he could wait Foreman out. (Ali’s trainer later called this strategy the "rope-a-dope," because he was "a dope" for using it.)
By the fifth round, the youngster began to tire. His powerful punches became glances and taps. And in the eighth, like "a bee harassing a bear," as one Times reporter wrote, Ali peeled himself off the ropes and unleashed a barrage of quick punches that seemed to bewilder the exhausted Foreman. A hard left and chopping right caused the champ’s weary legs to buckle, and he plopped down on the mat. The referee counted him out with just two seconds to go in the round.
Ali lost his title and regained it once more before retiring for good in 1981. Foreman, meanwhile, retired in 1977 but kept training, and in 1987 he became the oldest heavyweight champ in the history of boxing. Today, the affable Foreman is a minister and rancher in Texas and the father of five daughters and five sons, all named George. He’s also the spokesman for the incredibly popular line of George Foreman indoor grills.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumble_in_the_Jungle
1976 Jane Pauley becomes news co-anchor of the Today Show
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Pauley
1978 Laura Nickel & Curt Noll find 25th Mersenne prime, 2 ^ 21701-1. Ariel Glenn, at that time known by the name Laura Nickel, was a high school student when she (with Curt Noll) made the international news by finding the 25th Mersenne prime in 1978 (using a local university's mainframe computer. As a result of this discovery, 221700*(221701-1) was shown to be a perfect number.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mersenne_prime#List_of_known_Mersenne_primes
1985 Space Shuttle Challenger lifts off for mission STS-61-A, its final successful mission.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger
1986 "Discover" magazine reported that almost 43 million tons of dust settle on the United States each year
1988 Ten cities in the Upper Midwest reported record low temperatures for the date. The morning low of 20 degrees at South Bend IN was a record for October, and lows of 18 degrees at Grand Rapids MI and 20 degrees at Fort Wayne ID equalled records for October. The low of 2 degrees at International Falls MN smashed their previous record for the date by 11 degrees. Syracuse NY received 2.9 inches of snow to establish a record for October with 5.7 inches for the month. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data)
1989 Temperatures soared into the 70s in the northeastern U.S. The record high of 73 degrees at Alpena MI marked their sixth straight day of record warmth. In the western U.S., Klamath Falls OR reported a record low of 19 degrees. (The National Weather Summary)
1990 Britain connected to the continent, via a new rail tunnel under the Channel. Engineers have been digging beneath the earth to build a tunnel underneath the English Channel which would connect England to France. On October 30, 1990, these engineers dug their way to each other on this underground link between Folkestone, England, and Calais, France. This tunnel under the English Channel is called the "Chunnel" and it is almost 40 kilometers long. The "Chunnel" took several years to complete and officially opened in May of 1994.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_Tunnel
1991 Perfect storm hits North Atlantic On this day in 1991, the so-called "perfect storm" hits the North Atlantic producing remarkably large waves along the New England and Canadian coasts. Over the next several days, the storm spread its fury over the ocean off the coast of Canada. The fishing boat Andrea Gail and its six-member crew were lost in the storm. The disaster spawned the best-selling book The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger and a blockbuster Hollywood movie of the same name.
On October 27, Hurricane Grace formed near Bermuda and moved north toward the coast of the southeastern United States. Two days later, Grace continued to move north, where it encountered a massive low pressure system moving south from Canada. The clash of systems over the Atlantic Ocean caused 40-to-80-foot waves on October 30—unconfirmed reports put the waves at more than 100 feet in some locations. This massive surf caused extensive coastal flooding, particularly in Massachusetts; damage was also sustained as far south as Jamaica and as far north as Newfoundland.
The storm continued to churn in the Atlantic on October 31; it was nicknamed the "Halloween storm." It came ashore on November 2 along the Nova Scotia coast, then, as it moved northeast over the Gulf Stream waters, it made a highly unusual transition into a hurricane. The National Hurricane Center made the decision not to name the storm for fear it would alarm and confuse local residents. It was only the eighth hurricane not given a name since the naming of hurricanes began in 1950.
Meanwhile, as the storm developed, the crew of the 70-foot fishing boat Andrea Gail was fishing for swordfish in the Grand Banks of the North Atlantic. The Andrea Gail was last heard from on October 28. When the boat did not return to port on November 1 as scheduled, rescue teams were sent out.
The week-long search for the Andrea Gail and a possible cause of its demise were documented in Junger’s book, which became a national bestseller. Neither the Andrea Gail nor its crew—David Sullivan and Robert Shatford of Gloucester, Mass.; William Tyne, Dale Murphy and Michael Moran of Bradenton Beach, Fla.; and Alfred Pierre of New York City—was ever found.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Grace_(1991)
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There are 62 days remaining until the end of the year.
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www.obamaclock.org/
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1536 Lutheranism was made the official religion in Denmark by edict of Christian III (1503–1559).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_III_of_Denmark#Religious_Views
1768 The Wesley Chapel on John Street in New York City was dedicated. It was the first Methodist church building to be erected in the American colonies, and was restored in 1817, and again in 1840.
www.nycago.org/Organs/NYC/html/JohnStMeth.html
1775 Naval committee established by Congress On this day in 1775, the Continental Congress appoints seven members to serve on an administrative naval committee tasked with the acquisition, outfitting and manning of a naval fleet to be used in defense against the British. Almost two weeks earlier, on October 13, 1775, Congress had authorized the construction and arming of vessels for the country's first navy.
Members of the first naval committee included some of the most influential members of the Continental Congress and several "founding fathers," including John Adams, Joseph Hewes, John Langdon, Richard Henry Lee, Silas Deane and Stephen Hopkins, the committee's chairman.
On December 22, Esek Hopkins, Stephen's brother, was appointed the first commander in chief of the Continental Navy. Congress also named four captains to the new service: Dudley Saltonstall, Abraham Whipple, Nicholas Biddle and John Burrows Hopkins. Their respective vessels, the 24-gun frigates Alfred and Columbus, and the14-gun brigs Andrew Doria and Cabot, as well as three schooners, the Hornet, the Wasp and the Fly, became the first ships of the Navy's fleet. Five first lieutenants, including future American hero John Paul Jones, five second lieutenants and three third lieutenants also received their commissions.
With help from the committee, America's first navy went from a fleet of two vessels on the day Congress established the naval committee to a fleet of more than 40 armed ships and vessels at the height of the War for Independence. The Continental Navy successfully preyed upon British merchant shipping and won several victories over British warships. This first naval force was disbanded after the war. What is now known as the United States Navy was formally established with the creation of the federal Department of the Navy in April 1798.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_Congress#First_Continental_Congress
1794 The first commercial installation in the U.S. of ball bearings was made on the weather vane on top of the steeple of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Holy Trinity, Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The brick portion of the tower rises 86 feet and includes the bell chamber, above which rises the spire from an octagonal base to a height of 195 feet, upon which was mounted the weather vane. The bearings were of an antifriction roller type, with a pin through them.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_bearing
1831 In Southampton County, Virginia, escaped slave Nat Turner is captured and arrested for leading the bloodiest slave rebellion in United States history.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nat_Turner%27s_slave_rebellion
1862 Ormsby MacKnight Mitchell dies. Union General Ormsby MacKnight Mitchell, commander of the Department of the South, dies at Beaufort, South Carolina.
Born in Kentucky in 1809, Mitchell grew up in Lebanon, Ohio. He attended West Point and graduated in 1829 along with future Confederate leaders Joseph Johnston and Robert E. Lee. He excelled at mathematics and graduated 15th out of a class of 56 cadets. Mitchell taught at West Point before becoming a surveyor on the Pennsylvania and Ohio Railroad. He served another stint in the military when he went to St. Augustine, Florida, but he found his true calling when he accepted a professorship at Cincinnati College in 1836. He soon gained wide acclaim as a lecturer on astronomy. His lecture tours in the United States and Europe helped fund the Cincinnati Observatory, which he directed when it opened in 1845.
When the war erupted in 1861, Mitchell used his West Point education as a brigadier general in the Army of the Ohio under General Don Carlos Buell and participated in operations in Kentucky and Tennessee in 1862. Mitchell also directed raids into northern Alabama, capturing Huntsville in April 1862. Mitchell was a critic of the "soft war," or limited approach, of many northern generals, and his actions made him a target of conservative northern newspapers. Advocating a tougher stance against Southern civilians and the institution of slavery, he confiscated the property of prominent Confederates and protected slaves who escaped to his lines well before the practice was mandated by Federal policy.
In July 1862 he was named commander of the Department of the South. He moved to headquarters on the Sea Islands of South Carolina, where he oversaw the building of schools and homes for slaves in the captured territory. This movement, begun by his predecessor, General David Hunter, is considered the first experiment in the reconstruction of the South. However, Mitchell's death from yellow fever cut short his participation in the experiment.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ormsby_M._Mitchel
1864 The city of Helena, Montana, is founded after miners discover gold. On this day in 1864, the town of Helena, Montana, is founded by four gold miners who struck it rich at the appropriately named "Last Chance Gulch."
The first major Anglo settlement of Montana had begun just two years before in the summer of 1862, when prospectors found a sizeable deposit of placer gold at Grasshopper Creek to the west. When other even richer deposits were soon discovered nearby, a major rush began as tens of thousands of miners scoured the territory in search of gold. In 1864, four prospectors spotted signs of gold in the Helena area while on their way to the Kootenai country, but they were eager to reach the reportedly rich gold regions farther to the north and did not to stop. But after striking out on the Kootenai, they decided to take "one last chance" on finding gold and returned. When the signs turned out to mark a rich deposit of placer gold, they staked their claims and named the new mining district Last Chance Gulch.
Eventually, Last Chance Gulch would prove to be the second biggest placer gold deposit in Montana, producing some $19 million worth of gold in just four years. Overnight, thousands of miners began to flood into the region, and the four original discoverers added to their fortunes by establishing the town of Helena to provide them with food, lodging, and supplies. But unlike many of the early Montana mining towns, Helena did not disappear once the gold gave out, which it inevitably did. Located on several major transportation routes, well supplied with agricultural products from an adjacent valley, and near to several other important mining towns, Helena was able to survive and grow by serving the wider Montana mining industry. In 1875, the city became the capital of Montana Territory, and in 1894, the capital of the new state of Montana.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helena,_Montana
1888 The first U.S. patent for a ballpoint pen was issued to John J. Loud of Weymouth, Mass. (No. 392,046). This patent described a pen having a spheroidal marking point capable of revolving in all directions which was held down by three smaller anti-friction balls, themselves held down by a flaired spring-loaded rod. A threaded cap at the end of the pen could be removed to recharge the pen with ink. The patent described the invention as being especially useful for the marking of rough surfaces such as wooden or paper boxes, coarse wrapping paper and other surfaces where the ordinary nib of a fountain pen could not be used because it would split, spatter or catch.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballpoint_pen
1893 The World's Columbian Exposition closes in Chicago. October 30, 1893 is the last day of Chicago's World's Columbian Exposition, a great fair that celebrated the 400th anniversary of Columbus's arrival in the New World and offered fairgoers a chance to see the first gas-powered motorcar in the United States: the Daimler quadricycle. The exposition introduced Americans to all kinds of technological wonders--for instance, an alternating-current power plant, a 46-foot-long cannon, a 1,500-pound Venus de Milo made of chocolate, and Juicy Fruit gum--along with replicas of exotic places and carnival-style rides and games.
Four years earlier, the Universal Exposition in Paris had featured an elaborate display of steam-and gas-powered vehicles, including the Serpollet-Peugeot steam tricar, named for its three wheels and powered by a coke-burning boiler and a lightweight, petrol-fueled four-wheeled car built by the German engineer Gottlieb Daimler. The Chicago fair promised an even more impressive spectacle. Its Transportation Building, designed by Louis Sullivan, was crammed full: Pack mules and horse-drawn carts crowded next to bicycles and boats. Most exciting of all were the rows of massive American-built steam locomotives that towered over everything else in the hall. Trains, the Exposition's organizers seemed to say, were the transportation of the future.
Only one internal-combustion vehicle was on display at the fair, tucked away in the corner of the Transportation Building: another of the wire-wheeled, tiller-steered, one-cylinder platform quadricycles that Daimler had introduced to Parisian fairgoers in 1889. It was like nothing most Americans had ever seen and yet almost no one paid any attention to it. Reporters barely mentioned the Daimler car and it didn't even appear in the exhibition catalog.
But a few very important people did notice it and studied it closely. One was the bicycle mechanic Charles Duryea, who used the Daimler car as the inspiration for the four-wheeled, one-cylinder Motor Wagon that he built with his brother Frank. In 1896, the Duryea Motor Wagon Company became the first company to mass-produce gas-powered vehicles in the United States.
Another admirer of the Daimler car was Henry Ford, who returned to Dearborn after the fair and built an internal-combustion quadricycle of his own. (He called it his "gasoline buggy.") Ford drove his little car for the first time on July 4, 1896 and sold it later that year for $200. Just a few years later, he incorporated the Ford Motor Company and the automobile age had begun.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_Columbian_Exposition
1894 Daniel M. Cooper of Rochester, N.Y. received the first U.S. patent for a time clock (No. 528,223). Timecards were inserted into the machine, and when a lever was pressed, the time was recorded on specially printed cards divided by horizontal lines into seven equal spaces for days of the week. The time clock was used to record the time employees started and ended work. Known as the Rochester, the machine was manufactured by the Willard and Frick Manufacturing Company.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_clock
1895 The Luther League of America was organized.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luther_League
1902 Pope Leo XIII (1810–1903) established the Pontifical Biblical Commission to safeguard the correct interpretation of Scripture, to state positions that had to be held by Catholics on biblical questions, to set up standards for biblical studies and to grant degrees in sacred Scripture.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Leo_XIII
1908 Queen of American high society dies. Caroline Schermerhorn Astor, wife of William Waldorf Astor, the wealthy newspaper proprietor, dies at the age of 78.
Even before her union with William Astor—the grandson of the American fur magnate John Jacob Astor—Caroline Schermerhorn was prime American aristocracy: She was the daughter of a wealthy merchant and descended from Dutch nobles. In 1890, William and Caroline immigrated to Britain, where they bought their way into British royalty. But their British citizenship, and William's title of viscount, were only means of advancing their already formidable position in New York society. Caroline's death marked the end of old-style high society in New York City. She had ruled over the upper crust as an un-crowned American queen, and an invitation to one of Mrs. Astor's famous balls was the ultimate symbol of one's social rank.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caroline_Webster_Schermerhorn_Astor
1918 Ottoman Empire signs treaty with Allies. On October 30, 1918, aboard the British battleship Agamemnon, anchored in the port of Mudros on the Aegean island of Lemnos, representatives of Great Britain and the Ottoman Empire sign an armistice treaty marking the end of Ottoman participation in the First World War.
Though the Ottoman Empire—in a period of relative decline since the late 16th century—had initially aimed to stay neutral in World War I, it soon concluded an alliance with Germany and entered the war on the side of the Central Powers in October 1914. The Turks fought fiercely and successfully defended the Gallipoli Peninsula against a massive Allied invasion in 1915-1916, but by 1918 defeat by invading British and Russian forces and an Arab revolt had combined to destroy the Ottoman economy and devastate its land, leaving some six million people dead and millions more starving.
As early as the first week of October 1918, both the Ottoman government and several individual Turkish leaders contacted the Allies to feel out peace possibilities. Britain, whose forces then occupied much of the Ottoman territories, was loath to step aside for its allies, particularly France, which according to an agreement concluded in 1916 would take control of the Syrian coast and much of modern-day Lebanon. In a move that enraged his French counterpart, Georges Clemenceau, Prime Minister David Lloyd George and his cabinet authorized Admiral Arthur Calthorpe, Britain’s naval commander in the Aegean Sea, to negotiate an immediate armistice with Turkey without consulting France. Though Britain alone would engineer the Ottoman exit from the war, the two powerful Allies would continue to grapple over control in the region at the Paris Peace Conference, and for years beyond.
Negotiations between Calthorpe’s team and the delegation from Constantinople, led by the Ottoman Minister of Marine Affairs Rauf Bey, began at 9:30 on the morning of October 30, 1918, aboard the Agamemnon. The Treaty of Mudros, signed that evening, stated that hostilities would end at noon the following day. By its terms, Turkey had to open the Dardanelle and Bosporus straits to Allied warships and its forts to military occupation; it was also to demobilize its army, release all prisoners of war and evacuate its Arab provinces, the majority of which were already under Allied control. Bey and his fellow delegates refused to paint the treaty as an act of surrender for Turkey—later causing disillusionment and anger in Constantinople—but in fact that is what it was. The Treaty of Mudros ended Ottoman participation in World War I and effectively—if not legally—marked the dissolution of a once mighty empire. From its ruins, the victors of the First World War attempted to use the post-war peace negotiations to create a new, more unpredictable entity: the modern Middle East.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Empire#World_War_I
1919 Baseball league presidents call for abolishment of the spitball
1925 Nashville, TN, was blanketed with an inch of snow, their earliest measurable snow of record. (The Weather Channel)
1929 John D. Rockefeller tries to help stem the massive sell-off at the NYSE. Wednesday, October 30, found the market in a strong all-day rally, with 10.7 million shares traded. The NYSE announced that it would close Friday and Saturday, purportedly to give hard-pressed personnel a chance to catch up with clerical work. U.S. Steel and American Can announced $1 extra dividends, and Rockefeller let it be known that the family was buying stock at current "bargain" prices. The whole business, financial, governmental and academic community teamed up to issue "confidence game" pronouncements and restore confidence.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Rockefeller
1938 Welles scares nation. Orson Welles causes a nationwide panic with his broadcast of "War of the Worlds"—a realistic radio dramatization of a Martian invasion of Earth.
Orson Welles was only 23 years old when his Mercury Theater company decided to update H.G. Wells' 19th-century science fiction novel War of the Worlds for national radio. Despite his age, Welles had been in radio for several years, most notably as the voice of "The Shadow" in the hit mystery program of the same name. "War of the Worlds" was not planned as a radio hoax, and Welles had little idea of the havoc it would cause.
The show began on Sunday, October 30, at 8 p.m. A voice announced: "The Columbia Broadcasting System and its affiliated stations present Orson Welles and the Mercury Theater on the air in 'War of the Worlds' by H.G. Wells."
Sunday evening in 1938 was prime-time in the golden age of radio, and millions of Americans had their radios turned on. But most of these Americans were listening to ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his dummy "Charlie McCarthy" on NBC and only turned to CBS at 8:12 p.m. after the comedy sketch ended and a little-known singer went on. By then, the story of the Martian invasion was well underway.
Welles introduced his radio play with a spoken introduction, followed by an announcer reading a weather report. Then, seemingly abandoning the storyline, the announcer took listeners to "the Meridian Room in the Hotel Park Plaza in downtown New York, where you will be entertained by the music of Ramon Raquello and his orchestra." Putrid dance music played for some time, and then the scare began. An announcer broke in to report that "Professor Farrell of the Mount Jenning Observatory" had detected explosions on the planet Mars. Then the dance music came back on, followed by another interruption in which listeners were informed that a large meteor had crashed into a farmer's field in Grovers Mills, New Jersey.
Soon, an announcer was at the crash site describing a Martian emerging from a large metallic cylinder. "Good heavens," he declared, "something's wriggling out of the shadow like a gray snake. Now here's another and another one and another one. They look like tentacles to me ... I can see the thing's body now. It's large, large as a bear. It glistens like wet leather. But that face, it... it ... ladies and gentlemen, it's indescribable. I can hardly force myself to keep looking at it, it's so awful. The eyes are black and gleam like a serpent. The mouth is kind of V-shaped with saliva dripping from its rimless lips that seem to quiver and pulsate."
The Martians mounted walking war machines and fired "heat-ray" weapons at the puny humans gathered around the crash site. They annihilated a force of 7,000 National Guardsman, and after being attacked by artillery and bombers the Martians released a poisonous gas into the air. Soon "Martian cylinders" landed in Chicago and St. Louis. The radio play was extremely realistic, with Welles employing sophisticated sound effects and his actors doing an excellent job portraying terrified announcers and other characters. An announcer reported that widespread panic had broken out in the vicinity of the landing sites, with thousands desperately trying to flee. In fact, that was not far from the truth.
Perhaps as many as a million radio listeners believed that a real Martian invasion was underway. Panic broke out across the country. In New Jersey, terrified civilians jammed highways seeking to escape the alien marauders. People begged police for gas masks to save them from the toxic gas and asked electric companies to turn off the power so that the Martians wouldn't see their lights. One woman ran into an Indianapolis church where evening services were being held and yelled, "New York has been destroyed! It's the end of the world! Go home and prepare to die!"
When news of the real-life panic leaked into the CBS studio, Welles went on the air as himself to remind listeners that it was just fiction. There were rumors that the show caused suicides, but none were ever confirmed.
The Federal Communications Commission investigated the program but found no law was broken. Networks did agree to be more cautious in their programming in the future. Orson Welles feared that the controversy generated by "War of the Worlds" would ruin his career. In fact, the publicity helped land him a contract with a Hollywood studio, and in 1941 he directed, wrote, produced, and starred in Citizen Kane—a movie that many have called the greatest American film ever made.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Worlds_(radio)
1937 The closest approach to the earth by an asteroid, Hermes, was measured to be 485,000 miles, which, to an astronomer, is a mere hair's width (asteroid now lost).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/69230_Hermes
Pidhaitsi Jewish cemetery - panorama (summer 2004)
1941 1,500 Jews from Pidhaytsi (in western Ukraine) are sent by Nazis to Belzec extermination camp.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidhaitsi#Jewish_community
1941 FDR approves Lend-Lease aid to the USSR. On this day in 1941, President Roosevelt, determined to keep the United States out of the war while helping those allies already mired in it, approves $1 billion in Lend-Lease loans to the Soviet Union. The terms: no interest and repayment did not have to start until five years after the war was over.
The Lend-Lease program was devised by President Roosevelt and passed by Congress on March 11, 1941. Originally, it was meant to aid Great Britain in its war effort against the Germans by giving the chief executive the power to "sell, transfer title to, exchange, lease, lend, or otherwise dispose of" any military resources the president deemed ultimately in the interest of the defense of the United States. The reasoning was: If a neighbor was successful in defending his home, the security of your home was enhanced.
Although the Soviet Union had already been the recipient of American military weapons, and now had been promised $1 billion in financial aid, formal approval to extend the Lend-Lease program to the USSR had to be given by Congress. Anticommunist feeling meant much heated debate, but Congress finally gave its approval to the extension on November 7.
By the end of the war, more than $50 billion in funds, weapons, aircraft, and ships had been distributed to 44 countries. After the war, the Lend-Lease program morphed into the Marshall Plan, which allocated funds for the revitalization of "friendly" democratic nations—even if they were former enemies.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease
1941 "Blossoms" recorded by bandleader Tony Pastor. Pastor was an important part of Artie Shaw's first two big bands, the short-lived string combo and the clarinetist's very successful 1938-39 orchestra; in the latter group Pastor (as tenor-sax soloist and the male vocalist where his singing showed off the influence of Louis Armstrong) was one of the stars. When Shaw fled to Mexico in late 1939, Pastor (who had gained a bit of a name) soon formed his own successful orchestra, a big band that continued until 1959.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Pastor_(bandleader)
1944 Aaron Copland's Appalachian Spring premieres at the Library of Congress. Born and raised in the same urban, early-20th-century milieu that produced Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern and George and Ira Gershwin, the great and quintessentially American composer Aaron Copland was trained in the classics but steeped in the jazz and popular Jewish music that surrounded him in childhood. As a young composer, his stated aim was to write music that would "make you feel like you were alive on the streets of Brooklyn." Ironically, it was music that brilliantly evoked the rural American heartland that made Copland famous. One such work—arguably his greatest—was the score for the ballet Appalachian Spring, which became one of the most recognizable and beloved pieces of American music ever written almost immediately following its world premiere on this day in 1944.
The score for Appalachian Spring was commissioned in 1942 to accompany a ballet being choreographed by a young Martha Graham. Copland would know the work only as "Ballet for Martha" throughout its composition, having no guidance other than that the ballet would have some sort of a "frontier" theme. In fact, the name Appalachian Spring and the setting of western Pennsylvania would be decided on only after Copland had completed his score. Yet somehow, without having had any idea of doing so, Copland had composed a work that audiences and critics alike found brilliantly evocative of the specific time and place referenced in the title.
The most recognizable passage of Appalachian Spring is the portion Aaron Copland adapted from the Shaker song "Simple Gifts"—"'This a gift to be simple, 'tis a gift to be free"—which was largely unfamiliar to Americans prior to Copland's adaptation. Copland's artful incorporation of the folk tradition with his distinctly modern sensibility is what made Appalachian Spring the transcendent work that it is. In its review of the October 30, 1944, premiere, the New York Times praised all elements of the "shining and joyous" work: the choreography by Martha Graham; the set design by the Isamu Noguchi; and the score by Aaron Copland, which it called "the fullest, loveliest and most deeply poetical of all his theater scores....It is, as the saying goes, a natural."
Though written expressly for the ballet and for only 13 instrumentalists—a limitation dictated by the size of the orchestra pit at the Library of Congress—Appalachian Spring was soon adapted into an orchestral suite, which is the form in which it became widely popular. Appalachian Spring was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1945.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appalachian_Spring
1944 Anne Frank and sister Margot Frank are deported from Auschwitz to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Frank
1945 Jackie Robinson of the Kansas City Monarchs signs a contract for the Brooklyn Dodgers to break the baseball color barrier.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackie_Robinson
1945 US government announces end of shoe rationing. On September 15, much of the rationing finally came to an end -- first, rationing of gasoline and fuel oil ended, and so did those 35 m.p.h. speed limits; then on October 30, came the end of shoe rationing.
1947 The Donora, PA, smog disaster finally came to an end. For five days an inversion trapped impurities in the lower atmosphere over the Monongahela Valley killing 20 persons, and leaving more than 2000 others sick. (26th-30th) (David Ludlum) (The Weather Channel)
1947 The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which is the foundation of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), is founded.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Agreement_on_Tariffs_and_Trade
1952 Dr. Albert Schweitzer recieves a Nobel Peace Prize. Dr. Albert Schweitzer, missionary surgeon and founder of Lambarini Leper Hospital in Republique du Gabon, won the Nobel Peace Prize for his humanitarian work.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Schweitzer
1953 Gen. George C. Marshall wins a Nobel Prize. General George C. Marshall won the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of his contributions to the economic rehabilitation of Europe after WWII, the so-called "Marshall Plan". The Marshall Plan was the primary plan of the United States for rebuilding the allied countries of Europe and repelling communism after World War II.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_C._Marshall
1953 Cold War: U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower formally approves the top secret document National Security Council Paper No. 162/2, which states that the United States' arsenal of nuclear weapons must be maintained and expanded to counter the communist threat.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nsc_162/2
1958 "Concentration" suddendly replaces "Twenty-One" Most of us remember the quiz show, "Concentration", as being on the daytime TV lineup. But on this night it appeared on our TV screens at 8:30 p.m. "Concentration" was a temporary replacement for "Twenty-One", which had been canceled suddenly because of the quiz show scandals of the time. Jack Barry was brought over from the "Twenty-One" set to host "Concentration" for its four-week nighttime run.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_(game_show)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiz_show_scandals
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty_One_(game_show)
1961 Nuclear testing: The Soviet Union detonates the hydrogen bomb Tsar Bomba over Novaya Zemlya; at 58 megatons of yield, it is still the largest explosive device ever detonated, nuclear or otherwise.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba
1965 Marines repel attack near Da Nang.
Just miles from Da Nang, U.S. Marines repel an intense attack by successive waves of Viet Cong troops and kill 56 guerrillas.
A search of the dead uncovered a sketch of Marine positions written on the body of a 13-year-old Vietnamese boy who had been selling drinks to the Marines the previous day. This incident was indicative of the nature of a war in which even the most seemingly innocent child could be the enemy. There were many other instances where South Vietnamese civilians that worked on or near U.S. bases provided information to and participated in attacks alongside the enemy.
Also on this day: Two U.S. planes accidentally bomb a friendly South Vietnamese village, killing 48 civilians and wounding 55 others. An American civic action team was immediately dispatched to the scene, and a later investigation disclosed that a map-reading error by South Vietnamese officers was responsible.
Also on this day: In New York City, military veterans lead a parade in support of government policy in Vietnam. Led by five recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor, 25,000 people march in support of America's action in Vietnam.
[a href="en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Da_Nang#Vietnam_War"]en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Da_Nang#Vietnam_War[/a][/url]
1970 In Vietnam, the worst monsoon to hit the area in six years causes large floods, kills 293, leaves 200,000 homeless and virtually halts the Vietnam War.
1972 A command performance was given for the Queen of England by Elton John.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elton_John
1972 A collision between two commuter trains in Chicago, Illinois kills 45 and injures 332.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_Chicago_commuter_rail_crash
1975 John Bucyk, Boston, became 7th NHLer to score 500 goals
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bucyk
1975 NY Daily News runs headline "Ford to City: Drop Dead"
editdesk.wordpress.com/2009/04/06/ford-drop-dead-headline/
1976 Dr. Joseph H. Evans was elected president of the United Church of Christ. It made him the first African-American leader of this predominantly white denomination.
www.ctconfucc.org/news/20080414_evansmemoriam.html
1987 Severe thunderstorms in Oklahoma produced golf ball size hail and wind gusts to 74 mph near the town of Gould. Unseasonably warm weather prevailed across the central U.S. Temperatures warmed into the 80s form Texas to the Lower Missouri Valley. (Storm Data) (The National Weather Summary)
1974 Muhammad Ali wins the Rumble in the Jungle. On October 30, 1974, 32-year-old Muhammad Ali becomes the heavyweight champion of the world for the second time when he knocks out 25-year-old champ George Foreman in the eighth round of the "Rumble in the Jungle," a match in Kinshasa, Zaire. Seven years before, Ali had lost his title when the government accused him of draft-dodging and the boxing commission took away his license. His victory in Zaire made him only the second dethroned champ in history to regain his belt.
The "Rumble in the Jungle" (named by promoter Don King, who’d initially tagged the bout "From the Slave Ship to the Championship!" until Zaire’s president caught wind of the idea and ordered all the posters burned) was Africa’s first heavyweight championship match. The government of the West African republic staged the event—its president, Mobutu Sese Seko, personally paid each of the fighters $5 million simply for showing up—in hopes that it would draw the world’s attention to the country’s enormous beauty and vast reserves of natural resources. Ali agreed. "I wanted to establish a relationship between American blacks and Africans," he wrote later. "The fight was about racial problems, Vietnam. All of that." He added: "The Rumble in the Jungle was a fight that made the whole country more conscious."
At 4:30 a.m. on October 30, 60,000 spectators gathered in the moonlight (organizers had timed the fight to overlap with prime time in the U.S.) at the outdoor Stade du 20 Mai to watch the fight. They were chanting "Ali, bomaye" ("Ali, kill him"). The ex-champ had been taunting Foreman for weeks, and the young boxer was eager to get going. When the bell rang, he began to pound Ali with his signature sledgehammer blows, but the older man simply backed himself up against the ropes and used his arms to block as many hits as he could. He was confident that he could wait Foreman out. (Ali’s trainer later called this strategy the "rope-a-dope," because he was "a dope" for using it.)
By the fifth round, the youngster began to tire. His powerful punches became glances and taps. And in the eighth, like "a bee harassing a bear," as one Times reporter wrote, Ali peeled himself off the ropes and unleashed a barrage of quick punches that seemed to bewilder the exhausted Foreman. A hard left and chopping right caused the champ’s weary legs to buckle, and he plopped down on the mat. The referee counted him out with just two seconds to go in the round.
Ali lost his title and regained it once more before retiring for good in 1981. Foreman, meanwhile, retired in 1977 but kept training, and in 1987 he became the oldest heavyweight champ in the history of boxing. Today, the affable Foreman is a minister and rancher in Texas and the father of five daughters and five sons, all named George. He’s also the spokesman for the incredibly popular line of George Foreman indoor grills.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumble_in_the_Jungle
1976 Jane Pauley becomes news co-anchor of the Today Show
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Pauley
1978 Laura Nickel & Curt Noll find 25th Mersenne prime, 2 ^ 21701-1. Ariel Glenn, at that time known by the name Laura Nickel, was a high school student when she (with Curt Noll) made the international news by finding the 25th Mersenne prime in 1978 (using a local university's mainframe computer. As a result of this discovery, 221700*(221701-1) was shown to be a perfect number.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mersenne_prime#List_of_known_Mersenne_primes
1985 Space Shuttle Challenger lifts off for mission STS-61-A, its final successful mission.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger
1986 "Discover" magazine reported that almost 43 million tons of dust settle on the United States each year
1988 Ten cities in the Upper Midwest reported record low temperatures for the date. The morning low of 20 degrees at South Bend IN was a record for October, and lows of 18 degrees at Grand Rapids MI and 20 degrees at Fort Wayne ID equalled records for October. The low of 2 degrees at International Falls MN smashed their previous record for the date by 11 degrees. Syracuse NY received 2.9 inches of snow to establish a record for October with 5.7 inches for the month. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data)
1989 Temperatures soared into the 70s in the northeastern U.S. The record high of 73 degrees at Alpena MI marked their sixth straight day of record warmth. In the western U.S., Klamath Falls OR reported a record low of 19 degrees. (The National Weather Summary)
1990 Britain connected to the continent, via a new rail tunnel under the Channel. Engineers have been digging beneath the earth to build a tunnel underneath the English Channel which would connect England to France. On October 30, 1990, these engineers dug their way to each other on this underground link between Folkestone, England, and Calais, France. This tunnel under the English Channel is called the "Chunnel" and it is almost 40 kilometers long. The "Chunnel" took several years to complete and officially opened in May of 1994.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_Tunnel
1991 Perfect storm hits North Atlantic On this day in 1991, the so-called "perfect storm" hits the North Atlantic producing remarkably large waves along the New England and Canadian coasts. Over the next several days, the storm spread its fury over the ocean off the coast of Canada. The fishing boat Andrea Gail and its six-member crew were lost in the storm. The disaster spawned the best-selling book The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger and a blockbuster Hollywood movie of the same name.
On October 27, Hurricane Grace formed near Bermuda and moved north toward the coast of the southeastern United States. Two days later, Grace continued to move north, where it encountered a massive low pressure system moving south from Canada. The clash of systems over the Atlantic Ocean caused 40-to-80-foot waves on October 30—unconfirmed reports put the waves at more than 100 feet in some locations. This massive surf caused extensive coastal flooding, particularly in Massachusetts; damage was also sustained as far south as Jamaica and as far north as Newfoundland.
The storm continued to churn in the Atlantic on October 31; it was nicknamed the "Halloween storm." It came ashore on November 2 along the Nova Scotia coast, then, as it moved northeast over the Gulf Stream waters, it made a highly unusual transition into a hurricane. The National Hurricane Center made the decision not to name the storm for fear it would alarm and confuse local residents. It was only the eighth hurricane not given a name since the naming of hurricanes began in 1950.
Meanwhile, as the storm developed, the crew of the 70-foot fishing boat Andrea Gail was fishing for swordfish in the Grand Banks of the North Atlantic. The Andrea Gail was last heard from on October 28. When the boat did not return to port on November 1 as scheduled, rescue teams were sent out.
The week-long search for the Andrea Gail and a possible cause of its demise were documented in Junger’s book, which became a national bestseller. Neither the Andrea Gail nor its crew—David Sullivan and Robert Shatford of Gloucester, Mass.; William Tyne, Dale Murphy and Michael Moran of Bradenton Beach, Fla.; and Alfred Pierre of New York City—was ever found.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Grace_(1991)
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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_30
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