Also on this day
Lead Story
1967
On this day in 1967, socialist revolutionary and guerilla leader Che Guevara, age 39, is killed by the Bolivian army. The U.S.-military-backed Bolivian forces captured Guevara on October 8 while battling his band of guerillas in Bolivia and assassinated him the following day. His hands were cut off as proof...
American Revolution
1775
On this day in 1775, just a few short months after commanding British soldiers during the Battle of Bunker Hill, General Sir William Howe writes to the British-appointed secretary of state for the American colonies, Lord Dartmouth, to inform him of his belief that the British army should be evacuated...
Automotive
1992
On this day in 1992, 18-year-old Michelle Knapp is watching television in her parents’ living room in Peekskill, New York when she hears a thunderous crash in the driveway. Alarmed, Knapp ran outside to investigate. What she found was startling, to say the least: a sizeable hole in the rear...
Civil War
1864
Union cavalry in the Shenandoah Valley deal a humiliating defeat to their Confederate counterparts at Tom’s Brook, Virginia. Confederate General Jubal Early’s force had been operating in and around the Shenandoah area for four months. Early’s summer campaign caught the attention of Union General-in-Chief Ulysses S. Grant, who was laying...
Cold War
1967
Ernesto Guevara de la Serna, better known to the world as “Che” Guevara, is executed by Bolivian armed forces on this day in 1967.
Born in Argentina, Guevara was a professional revolutionary who became involved in the Guatemalan revolution of the 1950s. It was during this time that he discovered...
Crime
1942
Chicago bootlegger Roger “The Terrible” Touhy escapes from Illinois’ Stateville Prison by climbing the guard’s tower. Touhy, who had been framed for kidnapping by his bootlegging rivals with the help of corrupt Chicago officials, was serving a 99-year sentence for a kidnapping he did not commit. He was recaptured a...
Disaster
1963
On this day in 1963, a landslide in Italy leads to the deaths of more than 2,000 people when it causes a sudden and massive wave of water to overwhelm a dam.
The Diga del Vajont dam was built in the Vaiont Gorge to supply hydroelectric power to Northern Italy. Located...
General Interest
1635
Religious dissident Roger Williams is banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony by the General Court of Massachusetts. Williams had spoken out against the right of civil authorities to punish religious dissension and to confiscate Indian land.After leaving Massachusetts, Williams, with the assistance of the Narragansett tribe, established a settlement at...
1940
During the Battle of Britain, the German Luftwaffe launches a heavy nighttime air raid on London. The dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral was 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...
1974
German businessman Oskar Schindler, credited with saving 1,200 Jews from the Holocaust, dies at the age of 66.
A member of the Nazi Party, he ran an enamel-works factory in Krakow during the German occupation of Poland, employing workers from the nearby Jewish ghetto. When the ghetto was liquidated, he persuaded...
1975
Andrei Dmitriyevich Sakharov, the Soviet physicist who helped build the USSR’s first hydrogen bomb, is awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in recognition of his struggle against “the abuse of power and violations of human dignity in all its forms.” Sakharov was forbidden by the Soviet government from personally traveling...
Hollywood
2001
On this day in 2001, Herbert Ross, a Broadway choreographer turned movie director whose credits include The Goodbye Girl, The Turning Point, Footloose and Steel Magnolias, dies at the age of 74 in New York City.
Ross was born on May 13, 1927, in Brooklyn, New York. As a young man,...
Music
1976
The first academically trained multi-instrumentalist ever to set the nation's disco dance floors on fire, Walter Murphy turned his knowledge of the classical repertoire and his commercial ambitions into a smash-hit record called "A Fifth Of Beethoven," which reached the top of the Billboard pop chart on this day in...
Old West
1936
On this day in 1936, harnessing the power of the mighty Colorado River, Hoover Dam begins sending electricity over transmission lines spanning 266 miles of mountains and deserts to run the lights, radios, and stoves of Los Angeles.
Initially named Boulder Dam, work on the dam was begun under President Herbert...
Presidential
1869
On this day in 1869, President Ulysses S. Grant announces the death of former President Franklin Pierce. Pierce, whose presidency was remembered mostly for his failure to end the debate over slavery, had died the day before at his home in Concord, New Hamsphire.
Pierce was, and remains, the only president...
Sports
1934
On October 9, 1934, the St. Louis Cardinals defeat the Detroit Tigers in the seventh game of the World Series. No one seems to know exactly who was the first to call that year’s Cards the “Gashouse Gang,” but everyone agrees that the nickname had to do with the team’s...
Vietnam War
1969
In the United States, the National Guard is called in as demonstrations continue in Chicago protesting the trial of the “Chicago Eight.”
The trial had begun on September 24 and involved charges against David Dellinger, Rennie Davis, Thomas Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Lee Weiner, John Froines, and Bobby Seale for...
1970
The Khmer Republic is proclaimed in Cambodia. In March, a coup led by Cambodian General Lon Nol had overthrown the government of Prince Norodom Sihanouk in Phnom Penh. Between 1970 and 1975, Lon Nol and his army, the Forces Armees Nationale Khmer (FANK), with U.S. support and military...
World War I
1915
On October 9, 1915, Austro-Hungarian forces capture the Serbian capital of Belgrade, assisted in their defeat of Serbian forces by German troops under the command of General August von Mackensen.
It was not the first time during World War I that Austrian troops had occupied Belgrade. They had captured the city...
World War II
1944
On this day in 1944, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin begin a nine-day conference in Moscow, during which the war with Germany and the future of Europe are discussed.
Germany’s defeat now seemed inevitable, and Stalin was prepared to commit the USSR to intervening in the...