Also on this day
Lead Story
1947
U.S. Air Force Captain Chuck Yeager becomes the first person to fly faster than the speed of sound.
Yeager, born in Myra, West Virginia, in 1923, was a combat fighter during World War II and flew 64 missions over Europe. He shot down 13 German planes and was himself shot down...
American Revolution
1780
In the early morning hours of October 14, 1780, a contingent of approximately 350 Patriot troops from the North Carolina and Virginia militias engages a group of British Loyalists, numbering between 400 and 900, at the Shallow Ford crossing of the Yadkin River in North Carolina.
In the previous two weeks,...
Automotive
1857
On October 14, 1857, engineer and inventor Elwood Haynes is born in Portland, Indiana. Haynes designed one of the very first American automobiles, the Haynes “Pioneer.” He was also an accomplished metallurgist: He patented stainless steel, stellite and a cobalt-chromium alloy that was used to make sharp dental and surgical...
Civil War
1863
Confederate General Robert E. Lee attempts to drive the Union army out of Virginia but fails when an outnumbered Union force repels the attacking Rebels at the Battle of Bristoe Station.
In September 1863, two corps from the Union Army of the Potomac moved to Tennessee to reinforce the army of...
Cold War
1962
The Cuban Missile Crisis begins on October 14, 1962, bringing the United States and the Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear conflict. Photographs taken by a high-altitude U-2 spy plane offered incontrovertible evidence that Soviet-made medium-range missiles in Cuba—capable of carrying nuclear warheads—were now stationed 90 miles off...
Crime
1975
Ronald DeFeo Jr. goes on trial for the killings of his parents and four siblings in their Amityville, New York, home on October 14, 1975. The family’s house was later said to be haunted and served as the inspiration for the Amityville Horror book and movies.
On the evening of November...
Disaster
1913
On this day in 1913, 439 workers die in a massive coal-mine explosion in Wales. The incident was one of Britain’s worst-ever mining disasters.
The Sengenhydd colliery (coal mine) was located about eight miles from Cardiff in Wales. The mine consisted of two pits, side by side, which held nearly 1,000...
General Interest
1066
King Harold II of England is defeated by the Norman forces of William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings, fought on Senlac Hill, seven miles from Hastings, England. At the end of the bloody, all-day battle, Harold was killed–shot in the eye with an arrow, according to legend–and his...
1912
Before a campaign speech in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Theodore Roosevelt, the presidential candidate for the Progressive Party, is shot at close range by saloonkeeper John Schrank while greeting the public in front of the Gilpatrick Hotel. Schrank’s .32-caliber bullet, aimed directly at Roosevelt’s heart, failed to mortally wound the former president...
1964
African American civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his nonviolent resistance to racial prejudice in America. At 35 years of age, the Georgia-born minister was the youngest person ever to receive the award.Martin Luther King, Jr., was born in Atlanta in...
Hollywood
1994
On this day in 1994, the writer-director Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, a crime drama featuring multiple storylines and a large ensemble cast including John Travolta, Uma Thurman, Samuel L. Jackson, Bruce Willis and Harvey Keitel, opens in theaters. Made for less than $10 million, Pulp Fiction earned more than $100...
Literary
1822
On this day in 1822, Victor Hugo married Adele Foucher, his childhood sweetheart. The pair will have numerous children, and the marriage will survive notorious infidelities on both sides. The marriage got off to an ominous start, however, when Hugo’s brother suffered a nervous breakdown at the wedding breakfast.
Hugo, who...
Music
1957
Harmony singing was a part of rock and roll right from the beginning, but the three- and four-part harmonies of doo-wop, derived from black gospel and blues traditions, would never have given us Simon and Garfunkel, the Beatles or the Byrds. To get those groups, you first had to have...
Old West
1939
Ralph Lauren, the designer and purveyor of a line of popular clothes that sought to capture the “spirit of the West,” is born on this day in 1939, in New York.
The quintessential self-made man, Lauren was instrumental in creating a new national clothing style during the mid-1970s and 1980s with...
Presidential
1890
On this day in 1890, future President Dwight D. Eisenhower is born near Abilene, Texas.
After graduating from West Point in 1915, Eisenhower embarked on a stellar military career–he would eventually become the supreme commander of Allied forces in Europe during World War II and the leader of the invasion of...
Sports
2003
On October 14, 2003, a Chicago Cubs fan named Steve Bartman plucks a fly ball out of the air before outfielder Moises Alou can catch it—a catch that would have been a crucial out—in the sixth game of the league championship series against the Florida Marlins. As a result of...
Vietnam War
1964
Nikita Khrushchev is ousted as both premier of the Soviet Union and chief of the Communist Party after 10 years in power. He was succeeded as head of the Communist Party by his former protégé Leonid Brezhnev, who would eventually become the chief of state as well. The...
1968
U.S. Defense Department officials announce that the Army and Marines will be sending about 24,000 men back to Vietnam for involuntary second tours because of the length of the war, high turnover of personnel resulting from the one year of duty, and the tight supply of experienced soldiers. This...
World War I
1918
Among the German wounded in the Ypres Salient in Belgium on October 14, 1918, is Corporal Adolf Hitler, temporarily blinded by a British gas shell and evacuated to a German military hospital at Pasewalk, in Pomerania.
The young Hitler was drafted for Austrian military service but turned down due to lack...
World War II
1944
On this day in 1944, German Gen. Erwin Rommel, nicknamed “the Desert Fox,” is given the option of facing a public trial for treason, as a co-conspirator in the plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, or taking cyanide. He chooses the latter.
Rommel was born in 1891 in Wurttenberg, Germany, the son...