U.S. Naval Academy opens

On October 10, 1877, the U.S. Army holds a West Point funeral with full military honors for Lieutenant-Colonel George Armstrong Custer. Killed the previous year in Montana by Sioux and Cheyenne Indians at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, Custer’s body had been returned to the East for burial on the grounds of the […]

During the Battle of Britain, the German Luftwaffe launches a heavy nighttime air raid on London. The dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral is pierced by a Nazi bomb, leaving the high altar in ruin. It was one of the few occasions that the 17th-century cathedral suffered significant damage during Germany’s nearly ceaseless bombing raids on […]

In the conclusion to an extremely embarrassing situation, President Dwight D. Eisenhower offers his apologies to Ghanian Finance Minister, Komla Agbeli Gbedemah, who had been refused service at a restaurant in Dover, Delaware. It was one of the first of many such incidents in which African diplomats were confronted with racial segregation in the United […]

Terrorists from the Palestine Liberation Front are intercepted by U.S. Navy fighter jets after they attempted to escape the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro, which they had hijacked three days earlier.

Former U.S. postal worker Joseph Harris shoots two former co-workers to death at the post office in Ridgewood, New Jersey. The night before, Harris had killed his former supervisor, Carol Ott, with a three-foot samurai sword, and shot her fiance, Cornelius Kasten, in their home. After a four-hour standoff with police at the post office, […]

On October 10, 2014, activist Malala Yousafzai, age 17, wins the Nobel Peace Prize. A fierce advocate for girls’ education, in her native Pakistan and around the world, she is the youngest-ever Nobel laureate. Malala Yousafzai was in chemistry class when she learned she had won the Nobel Peace Prize. After hearing the news, she […]