New York City subway opens

On October 27, 1858, future President Theodore Roosevelt is born in New York City to a wealthy family. Roosevelt was home-schooled and then attended Harvard University, graduating in 1880. He served in the New York state legislature from 1881 to 1884. In 1880, Roosevelt married Alice Hathaway Lee. The couple had a daughter, Alice, on […]

On October 27, 1932, poet Sylvia Plath is born in Boston. Her father, a German immigrant, was a professor of biology and a leading expert on bumblebees. An autocrat at home, he insisted his wife give up teaching to raise their two children. He died at home after a lingering illness that consumed the energy […]

On October 27, 1961, a U.S. appeals court affirms rock ‘n’ roller Chuck Berry’s second conviction for transporting a minor across state lines for immoral purposes in violation of the Mann Act. After an earlier conviction in the case had been thrown out a year earlier, Berry was retried—and this time, the charges stuck. He […]

The U.S. Justice Department announces that the U.S. prison population has topped one million for the first time in American history. The figure—1,012,851 men and women were in state and federal prisons—did not include local prisons, where an estimated 500,000 prisoners were held, usually for short periods. The increase, due to tougher sentencing laws, made […]

On October 27, 2006, the last Ford Taurus rolls off the assembly line in Hapeville, Georgia. The keys to the silver car went to 85-year-old Truett Cathy, the founder of the Chick-fil-A fast-food franchise, who took it straight to his company’s headquarters in Atlanta and added it to an elaborate display that included 19 other […]