- National Diversity Day
- Bathtub Day
- National Frappe Day
- World Smile Day
- Goodwill Day-Namibia
- On This Day
- 1765 --- Nine American colonies sent a total of 28 delegates to New York City for the Stamp Act Congress. The delegates adopted the "Declaration of Rights and Grievances."
- 1816 --- A steamboat with a design that will soon prove ideal for western rivers arrives at the docks in New Orleans. The Washington was the work of a shipbuilder named Henry M. Shreve, who had launched the steamboat earlier that year on the Monongahela River just above Pittsburgh. Shreve's cleverly designed Washington had all the features that would soon come to characterize the classic Mississippi riverboat: a two-story deck, a stern-mounted paddle wheel powered by a high-pressure steam engine, a shallow, flat-bottomed hull, and a pilothouse framed by two tall chimneys.
- 1868 --- Inauguration Day for Cornell University, with an entering class of 412 students. Cornell is an agricultural land grant university endowed by Ezra Cornell, one of the founders of Western Union Telegraph Co.
- 1871 --- The most devastating fire in United States history is ignited in Wisconsin. Over the course of the next day, 1,200 people lost their lives and 2 billion trees were consumed by flames. Despite the massive scale of the blaze, it was overshadowed by the Great Chicago Fire, which began the next day about 250 miles away.
- 1913 --- Henry Ford's entire Highland Park, Michigan automobile factory is run on a continuously moving assembly line when the chassis--the automobile's frame--is assembled using the revolutionary industrial technique. A motor and rope pulled the chassis past workers and parts on the factory floor, cutting the man-hours required to complete one "Model T" from 12-1/2 hours to six. Within a year, further assembly line improvements reduced the time required to 93 man-minutes. The staggering increase in productivity effected by Ford's use of the moving assembly line allowed him to drastically reduce the cost of the Model T, thereby accomplishing his dream of making the car affordable to ordinary consumers.
- 1918 --- The Georgia Tech football team defeated Cumberland College 222-0. Georgia Tech carried the ball 978 yards and never threw a pass.
- 1922 --- The first radio network -- of sorts -- debuted. It was a network of just two stations. WJZ in Newark, NJ teamed with WGY in Schenectady, NY to bring the World Series game direct from the Polo Grounds in New York. Columnist Grantland Rice was behind the microphone for that broadcast.
- 1940 --- The U.S. Post Office issued a 1-cent stamp commemorating Eli Whitney, inventor of the cotton gin, a machine for separating the seeds from cotton fibres.
- 1949 --- Less than five months after Great Britain, the United States, and France established the Federal Republic of Germany in West Germany, the Democratic Republic of Germany is proclaimed within the Soviet occupation zone. Criticized by the West as an un-autonomous Soviet creation, Wilhelm Pieck was named East Germany's first president, with Otto Grotewohl as prime minister.
- 1950 --- The Frank Sinatra Show debuted. It was the crooner’s first plunge into TV, the beginning of a $250,000 per year, five-year contract. Ben Blue, The Blue Family, the Whippoorwills and Axel Stordahl’s orchestra were regulars on the show.
- 1954 --- Marian Anderson became the first black singer hired by New York's Metropolitan Opera.
- 1955 --- Alan Ginsberg reads his poem "Howl" at a poetry reading at Six Gallery in San Francisco. The poem was an immediate success that rocked the Beat literary world and set the tone for confessional poetry of the 1960's and later.
- 1956 --- A U.S. House subcommittee began investigations of allegedly rigged TV quiz shows.
- 1960 --- The first episode of the one-hour television drama "Route 66" airs on CBS. The program had a simple premise: It followed two young men, Buz Murdock and Tod Stiles, as they drove across the country in an inherited Corvette (Chevrolet was one of the show's sponsors), doing odd jobs and looking for adventure.
- 1960 --- In the second of four televised debates, Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kennedy and Vice President Richard Nixon turn their attention to foreign policy issues.
- 1964 --- The Beatles appeared on "Shindig!" The show was taped in London and included the songs "I'm a Loser," "Kansas City," and "Boys."
- 1969 --- The Youngbloods hit, Get Together, passed the million-selling mark to achieve gold record status.
- 1975 --- A New York State Supreme Court judge reverses a deportation order for John Lennon, allowing him to remain legally in his adoptive home of New York City. Protests against the Vietnam War had escalated significantly following the announcement of the Cambodia invasion on April 30, 1970, and the shooting deaths of four student protestors at Kent State just four days later. Many such gatherings would feature peaceful demonstrators singing Lennon's 1969 anthem "Give Peace A Chance," but others were more threatening. Newly relocated to New York City, John Lennon began to associate publicly with such radical figures as Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and Bobby Seale, and the White House reportedly grew concerned, according to the 2006 documentary The U.S. vs. John Lennon, over his potentially powerful influence with a generation of 18-to-20-year-olds who would be allowed, for the very first time, to vote in the 1972 presidential election.
- 1981 --- The Egyptian parliament, after the assassination of Anwar Sadat, named Vice President Hosni Mubarak the next president of Egypt.
- 1982 --- The musical "Cats" opened at the Winter Garden Theatre. In 1997 the show became the longest running show in Broadway history. (*7,485 performances).
- 1983 --- Sean Connery stars in Never Say Never Again as the British secret service agent James Bond, a role he last played in 1971. The film’s title referenced the fact that the Scottish-born actor had previously remarked that he would never play Agent 007 again.
- 1984 --- Walter Payton becomes the NFL’s all-time rushing leader, breaking the record Cleveland’s Jim Brown set in 1965. In front of 53,752 people at Soldier Field, Payton carried the ball 154 yards and finished the game with a new career rushing record--12,400 yards, 88 more than Brown.
- 1985 --- Palestinian gunmen hijacked the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro in the Mediterranean with more than 400 people aboard.
- 1993 --- Toni Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. She was the first black woman to receive the award and one of America’s most significant novelists of the twentieth century. She is the Author of six major Novels, The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, Tar Baby, Beloved and Jazz. Song of Solomon won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1977 and Beloved won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988.
- 1995 --- Alanis Morrissette’s "Jagged Little Pill" album made it to number one on the Billboard 200 chart.
- 2000 --- Vojislav Kostunica took the oath of office as Yugoslavia's first popularly elected president.
- 2001 --- Barry Bonds of the wrapped up his record-breaking season with his 73rd home run.
- 2001 --- A U.S.-led coalition begins attacks on Taliban-controlled Afghanistan with an intense bombing campaign by American and British forces. Logistical support was provided by other nations including France, Germany, Australia and Canada and, later, troops were provided by the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance rebels. The invasion of Afghanistan was the opening salvo in the United States "war on terrorism" and a response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.
- 2003 --- Arnold Schwarzenegger is elected governor of California, the most populous state in the nation with the world's fifth-largest economy. Despite his inexperience, Schwarzenegger came out on top in the 11-week campaign to replace Gray Davis, who had earlier become the first United States governor to be recalled by the people since 1921.
- 2006 --- Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist who had chronicled Russian military abuses against civilians in Chechnya, was found shot to death in Moscow.
- Birthdays
- Desmond Tutu
- Toni Braxton
- Vladimir Putin
- Elijah Muhammad
- Leon Trotsky
- Niels Bohr
- June Allyson
- Oliver North
- John Cougar Mellencamp
- Yo Yo Ma
- 280th Day of the Year / 85 Remaining
- Winter Begins in 75 Days
- Sunrise:7:11
- Sunset:6:42
- 11 Hours 31 Minutes
- Moon Rise:6:23pm
- Moon Set:6:16am
- Moon Phase:99%
- 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:10:31am/11:34pm
- Low Tide:4:07am/4:43pm