1831 – Isabella Bird, English explorer, writer, photographer, naturalist, and first woman to be elected Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (d. 1904)

1844 – Friedrich Nietzsche, German composer, poet, and philosopher (d. 1900)

1878 – Paul Reynaud, French lawyer and politician, 118th Prime Minister of France (d. 1966)

1881 – P. G. Wodehouse, English novelist and playwright (d. 1975)

1905 – C. P. Snow, English chemist and author (d. 1980)

1906 – Alicia Patterson, American journalist and publisher, co-founded Newsday (d. 1963)

1906 – Victoria Spivey, American singer-songwriter and pianist (d. 1976)

1908 – John Kenneth Galbraith, Canadian-American economist and diplomat, 7th United States Ambassador to India (d. 2006)

1909 – Robert Trout, American journalist (d. 2000)

1917 – Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., American historian and critic (d. 2007)

1920 – Mario Puzo, American author and screenwriter (d. 1999)

1923 – Italo Calvino, Italian novelist, short story writer, and journalist (d. 1985)

1923 – Antonio Fontán, Spanish journalist and politician (d. 2010)

1924 – Lee Iacocca, American businessman and author (d. 2019)

1926 – Michel Foucault, French historian and philosopher (d. 1984)

1926 – Karl Richter, German organist and conductor (d. 1981)

1935 – Barry McGuire, American singer-songwriter and guitarist

1937 – Linda Lavin, American actress and singer

1938 – Fela Kuti, Nigerian musician and activist (d. 1997)

1943 – Penny Marshall, American actress, director, and producer (d. 2018)

1944 – David Trimble, Northern Irish lawyer and politician, 3rd

1948 – Chris de Burgh, British-Irish singer-songwriter and pianist

1959 – Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York

1969 – Dominic West, English actor and director

…and on this day in the history…

1582 – Adoption of the Gregorian calendar begins, eventually leading to near-universal adoption.

1764 – Edward Gibbon is inspired to begin work on The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

1783 – The Montgolfier brothers' hot air balloon makes the first human ascent, piloted by Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier.

1878 – The Edison Electric Light Company begins operation.

1928 – The airship, Graf Zeppelin completes its first trans-Atlantic flight, landing in the United States.

In 1940, Charles Chaplin's first all-talking comedy, "The Great Dictator," a lampoon of Adolf Hitler, opened in New York.

1956 – FORTRAN, the first modern computer language, is first shared with the coding community.

1962 – The CIA notifies the State Department that Soviet ballistic missiles are in Cuba, leading to the Cuban Missile Crisis.

1964 – Alexei Kosygin becomes the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

1965 – Vietnam War: A draft card is burned during an anti-war rally by the Catholic Worker Movement, resulting in the first arrest under a new law.

1966 – The Black Panther Party is founded.

1969 – In the Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam, over two million demonstrate nationally; about 250,000 in Washington D.C.

1989 – Wayne Gretzky becomes the all-time leading points scorer in the NHL.

1990 – Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to lessen Cold War tensions and open up his nation.

On Oct. 15, 1991, despite sexual harassment allegations by Anita Hill, the Senate narrowly confirmed the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court, 52-48.

1994 – The Clinton administration returns Haiti's first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, to the island.

2001 – NASA's Galileo spacecraft passes within 112 miles of Jupiter's moon Io.

2003 – China launches Shenzhou 5, its first manned space mission.

2011 – The 2011 Global Protests occur.

Five years ago in 2014,

The San Francisco Giants came within one game of winning the NL Championship Series with a 6-4 win over the St. Louis Cardinals.

In 2017, actress and activist Alyssa Milano tweeted that women who had been sexually harassed or assaulted should write "Me too" as a status; within hours, tens of thousands had taken up the #MeToo hashtag (using a phrase that had been introduced 10 years earlier by social activist Tarana Burke.)

One year ago in 2018,

Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren released a DNA analysis that she said indicated that she has some Native American heritage; the move was intended as a rebuttal to President Donald Trump, who had mocked those claims. (A Stanford University expert concluded that Warren had a Native American ancestor who probably lived six to 10 generations ago.)

Almanac - Tuesday 10/15/19

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