- Physician Assistant Day
- German-American Day
- Ecological Debt Day
- Mad Hatter Day
- National Noodle Day
- Come And Take It Day
- Armed Forces Day-Egypt
- Dasara/Vijaya Dasami-India
- Ivy Day-Ireland
- Remembrance Day-Turkmenistan
- On This Day
- 1683 --- Encouraged by William Penn's offer of 5,000 acres of land in the colony of Pennsylvania and the freedom to practice their religion, the first Mennonites arrive in America aboard the Concord. They were among the first Germans to settle in the American colonies. The Mennonites, members of a Protestant sect founded by Menno Simons in the 16th century, were widely persecuted in Europe. Seeking religious freedom, Mennonite Francis Daniel Pastorious led a group from Krefeld, Germany, to Pennsylvania in 1683 and founded Germantown, the pioneer German settlement in America and now part of the city of Philadelphia. Numerous other German groups followed, and by the American Revolution there were 100,000 Germans in William Penn's former colony, more than a third of Pennsylvania's total population at the time.
- 1847 --- Jane Eyre is published by Smith, Elder and Co. Charlotte BrontË, the book's author, used the pseudonym Currer Bell. The book, about the struggles of an orphan girl who grows up to become a governess, was an immediate popular success.
- 1848 --- The steamboat SS California left New York Harbor for San Francisco via Cape Horn. The steamboat service arrived on February 28, 1849. The trip took 4 months and 21 days.
- 1857 --- The first major chess tournament was sponsored in New York by the New York Chess Club.
- 1866 --- John and Simeon Reno stage the first train robbery in American history, making off with $13,000 from an Ohio and Mississippi railroad train in Jackson County, Indiana. Of course, trains had been robbed before the Reno brothers' holdup. But these previous crimes had all been burglaries of stationary trains sitting in depots or freight yards. The Reno brothers' contribution to criminal history was to stop a moving train in a sparsely populated region where they could carry out their crime without risking interference from the law or curious bystanders. Though created in Indiana, the Reno brother's new method of robbing trains quickly became very popular in the West. Many bandits, who might otherwise have been robbing banks or stagecoaches, discovered that the newly constructed transcontinental and regional railroads in the West made attractive targets. With the western economy booming, trains often carried large amounts of cash and precious minerals. The wide-open spaces of the West also provided train robbers with plenty of isolated areas ideal for stopping trains, as well as plenty of wild spaces where they could hide from the law. Some criminal gangs, like Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch, found that robbing trains was so easy and lucrative that for a time they made it their criminal specialty.
- 1880 --- The National League kicked the Cincinnati Reds out for selling beer.
- 1884 --- The Naval War College was established in Newport, R.I.
- 1889 --- The famous cabaret, Moulin Rouge, opened in Paris, France.
- 1926 --- Yankee slugger Babe Ruth hits a record three homers against the St. Louis Cardinals in the fourth game of the World Series. The Yanks won the game 10-5, but despite Ruth’s unprecedented performance, they lost the championship in the seventh game. In 1928, in the fourth game of another Yanks-Cards World Series, Ruth tied his own record, knocking three more pitches out of the same park.
- 1927 --- The era of talking pictures arrived with the opening of "The Jazz Singer" starring Al Jolson. The film was based on the short story "The Day of Atonement" by Sampson Raphaelson. In reality, The Jazz Singer was not a true talkie. There were only 291 spoken words in the landmark film; however, it was the first to integrate sound and this small amount of dialogue into a story through the Vitaphone disk process; and the first to entertain a large audience. The talking part was mostly singing, and it was Al Jolson who made the flick a success, proving to the critics that an all-talking film could work. (Because he didn’t think the pioneer of talkies would be all the rage, George Jessel actually turned down the starring role; as did Eddie Cantor.) A silent version of the film was released to movie theaters who had not yet popped for the $20,000 or so that it cost to rewire their venue.
- 1949 --- American-born Iva Toguri D'Aquino, convicted as Japanese wartime broadcaster Tokyo Rose, was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
- 1961 --- President John F. Kennedy, speaking on civil defense, advises American families to build bomb shelters to protect them from atomic fallout in the event of a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union. Kennedy also assured the public that the U.S. civil defense program would soon begin providing such protection for every American. Only one year later, true to Kennedy's fears, the world hovered on the brink of full-scale nuclear war when the Cuban Missile Crisis erupted over the USSR's placement of nuclear missiles in Cuba. During the tense 13-day crisis, some Americans prepared for nuclear war by buying up canned goods and completing last-minute work on their backyard bomb shelters.
- 1962 --- Robert Goulet began the role of Sir Lancelot in "Camelot".
- 1966 --- The Baltimore Orioles Jim Palmer became the youngest pitcher (20 years, 11 months) to wina complete-game, World-Series shutout. He defeated Sandy Koufax and the Dodgers in Game Two of the 1966 Series.
- 1969 --- For the first time in Beatles history a George Harrison song got the A side of a 45, "Something"/"Come Together."
- 1973 --- The surprise attack by Egyptian and Syrian forces on Israel in October 1973 throws the Middle East into turmoil and threatens to bring the United States and the Soviet Union into direct conflict for the first time since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Though actual combat did not break out between the two nations, the events surrounding the Yom Kippur War seriously damaged U.S.-Soviet relations and all but destroyed President Richard Nixon's much publicized policy of detente.
- 1976 --- In a debate with Democratic candidate Jimmy Carter, President Gerald R. Ford asserted there was "no Soviet domination of eastern Europe." Ford later conceded that he had misspoken.
- 1979 --- Pope John Paul II became the first pontiff to visit the White House, where he was received by President Jimmy Carter.
- 1981 --- Islamic extremists assassinate Anwar Sadat, the president of Egypt, as he reviews troops on the anniversary of the Yom Kippur War. Led by Khaled el Islambouli, a lieutenant in the Egyptian army with connections to the terrorist group Takfir Wal-Hajira, the terrorists, all wearing army uniforms, stopped in front of the reviewing stand and fired shots and threw grenades into a crowd of Egyptian government officials. Sadat, who was shot four times, died two hours later. Ten other people also died in the attack. Before executing their plan, Islambouli's team of assassins took hits of
hashish to honor a long-standing Middle Eastern tradition. As their vehicle passed the reviewing stand, they jumped out and started firing. Vice President Hosni Mubarak was sitting near Sadat but managed to survive the attack. Taking over the country when Sadat died, Mubarak arrested hundreds of people suspected to have participated in the conspiracy to kill Sadat. Eventually, charges were brought against 25 men, who went to trial in November. Many of those charged were unrepentant and proudly admitted their involvement. Islambouli and four others were executed, while 17 others were sentenced to prison time.
- 1993 --- The Natchez Trace Parkway's Double Arch Bridge is put into place. The $11 million, 1,572-foot–long bridge carries the parkway over Route 96 near Franklin, Tennessee. It was the first precast segmental concrete arch bridge to be built in the United States. (These bridges are more cost-efficient than traditional ones, because workers at the bridge site simply need to assemble concrete pieces that have already been cast.)
- 1996 --- Democratic President Bill Clinton faces his Republican challenger, Senator Bob Dole from Kansas, in their first debate of that year's presidential campaign. The debate, which took place in Hartford, Connecticut, and was moderated by Jim Lehrer of PBS, gave the candidates a chance to put forth their views on education, the economy, Medicare and tax cuts. Clinton took credit for improving the economy and slashing the budget deficit he had inherited from George H.W. Bush when he took over the presidency in 1992. Dole challenged Clinton's "ad hoc" approach to foreign affairs, challenged his record on crime and spending and proposed a whopping tax cut of more than $550 billion.
- 1997 --- The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 1997 was awarded to American biology professor Stanley B. Prusiner “for his discovery of Prions - a new biological principle of infection”.
- 2004 --- The top U.S. arms inspector in Iraq, Charles Duelfer, reported finding no evidence Saddam Hussein's regime had produced weapons of mass destruction after 1991.
- Birthdays
- David Hidalgo
- Helen Wills Moody
- King Wenceslas
- Jenny Lind
- Carole Lombard
- Thor Heyerdahl
- Shana Alexander
- Elisabeth Shue
- 279th Day of the Year /86 Remaining
- Winter Begins in 76 Days
- Sunrise:7:10
- Sunset:6:44
- 11 Hours 34 Minutes
- Moon Rise:5:44pm
- Moon Set:5:06am
- Moon Phase:96%
- Full Moon October 8 @ 3:50am
- Full Hunter’s Moon
- Full Blood Moon
- Full Sanguine Moon
This full Moon is often referred to as the Full Hunter’s Moon, Blood Moon, or Sanguine Moon. Many moons ago, Native Americans named this bright moon for obvious reasons. The leaves are falling from trees, the deer are fattened, and it’s time to begin storing up meat for the long winter ahead. Because the fields were traditionally reaped in late September or early October, hunters could easily see fox and other animals that come out to glean from the fallen grains. Probably because of the threat of winter looming close, the Hunter’s Moon is generally accorded with special honor, historically serving as an important feast day in both Western Europe and among many Native American tribes.
- Tides
- High Tide:9:53am/10:09pm
- Low Tide:3:32am/3:56pm