History This Week- Oct. 15 to 21, 2021

A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.” – MAHATMA GANDHI

October 15

October 15, 1815 – Napoleon Bonaparte arrived on the Island of St. Helena beginning a British-imposed exile following his defeat at the Battle of Waterloo.

Mata Hari

October 15, 1917 – World War I spy Mata Hari was executed by a French firing squad at Vincennes Barracks, outside Paris.

October 15, 1945 – Pierre Laval, the former premier of Vichy France, was executed for collaborating with Nazi Germany during World War II.

October 15, 1946 – Nazi leader Hermann Goering committed suicide by swallowing poison in his Nuremberg prison cell just hours before his scheduled hanging for war crimes.

October 15, 1964 – Soviet Russia‘s leader Nikita Khrushchev was deposed as First Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party and replaced by Leonid Brezhnev.

October 15, 1991 – The U.S. Senate confirmed Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court by a 52-48 vote following several days of tumultuous hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee concerning sexual harassment charges made by a former aide. Thomas became the second African American to sit on the Court, replacing retired Justice Thurgood Marshall, an African American.

Birthday – German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) was born in the Province of Saxony. Best known for stating, “God is dead,” and for his prediction in the late 1800s, “There will be wars such as there have never been on Earth before.” He eventually succumbed to mental illness.

Birthday – Lee Iacocca was born to Italian immigrant parents in Allentown, Pennsylvania, October 15, 1924 (as Lido Anthony Iacocca). Dubbed “America’s first corporate folk hero,” he was a mechanical engineer who became an automobile executive at Ford and later helped save Chrysler from bankruptcy. He also served as foundation chairman for the rehabilitation of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.

October 16

October 16, 1701 – Yale University was founded in Killingworth, Connecticut (as the Collegiate School of Connecticut). The school moved to New Haven in 1716. Two years later, the name was changed to Yale College to honor Elihu Yale, a philanthropist. In 1886, it became Yale University.

October 16, 1793 – Queen Marie Antoinette was beheaded during the Reign of Terror following the French Revolution. She was the wife of King Louis XVI and had become the symbol of the people’s hatred for the old regime due to her extravagance and frivolity. According to legend, she responded, “Let them eat cake,” when told poor people had no bread.

October 16, 1853 – The Crimean War began after the Turkish Ottoman Empire declared war on Russia, Britain, France and portions of Italy allied with the Turks against Russia. It became the first war observed up close by newspaper reporters and photographers. One of the battles was immortalized in Tennyson’s poem, The Charge of the Light Brigade. Amid poor sanitary conditions, disease killed many wounded French and British troops. British nurse Florence Nightingale then pioneered modern-style sanitation methods, saving many lives.

October 16, 1859 – Fanatical abolitionist John Brown seized the Federal Arsenal at Harpers Ferry with about 20 followers. Three days later, Brown was captured and the insurrection was put down by U.S. Marines under the command of Col. Robert E. Lee. Brown was convicted by the Commonwealth of Virginia of treason, murder, and inciting slaves to rebellion, and was hanged on December 2, 1859.

October 16, 1916 – The first birth control clinic in America was opened in Brooklyn, New York, by Margaret Sanger, a nurse who worked among the poor on the Lower East Side of New York City.

October 16, 1946 – Ten former Nazi leaders were hanged by the Allies following their conviction for war crimes at Nuremberg, Germany.

October 16, 1964China detonated its first nuclear bomb at the Lop Nor test site in Sinkiang.

October 16, 1978 – Cardinal Karol Wojtyla of Poland was elected Pope. He was the first non-Italian Pope chosen in 456 years and took the name John Paul II.

October 16, 1995 – The Million Man March took place in Washington, D.C., under the direction of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who delivered the main address to the gathering of African American males.

Noah Webster

Birthday – American teacher and journalist Noah Webster (1758-1843) was born in West Hartford, Connecticut. His name became synonymous with “dictionary” after he compiled the first American dictionaries of the English language.

Birthday – Irish poet and playwright Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was born in Dublin, Ireland. Best known for his comedies including The Importance of Being Earnest. And his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray in which he wrote, “There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about and that is not being talked about.”

Birthday – David Ben-Gurion (1886-1973) was born in Plonsk, Poland. He was largely responsible for founding the modern state of Israel in 1948 and is revered as “Father of the Nation.”

Birthday – American playwright Eugene O’Neill (1888-1953) was born in New York City. He wrote more than 35 plays and was the first American dramatist awarded a Nobel Prize for literature. He also received four Pulitzers. His dramas, which dealt realistically with psychological and social problems, included Beyond the Horizon, The Iceman Cometh, The Emperor Jones and Long Day’s Journey into Night.

Birthday – American jurist William O. Douglas (1898-1980) was born in Maine, Minnesota. He served as an associate justice on the Supreme Court for 36 years and was also a world traveler, conservationist, outdoorsman and author.

October 17

October 17, 1777 – During the American Revolutionary War, British General John Burgoyne and his entire army of 5,700 men surrendered to American General Horatio Gates after the Battle of Saratoga, the first big American victory.

October 17-25, 1944 – The Battle of Leyte Gulf, the largest naval battle in history, took place off the Philippine Islands, during World War II in the Pacific. The battle involved 216 U.S. warships and 64 Japanese ships and resulted in the destruction of the Japanese Navy including the Japanese Battleship Musashi, one of the largest ever built.

Pope John Paul I

Birthday – Pope John Paul I (1912-1978) was born in Forno di Canale, Italy (as Albino Luciani). He was elected the 263rd Pope of the Roman Catholic Church on September 28, 1978 but died in Rome just 34 days later.

October 18

October 18, 1685 – The Edict of Nantes was revoked by King Louis XIV of France thus depriving Protestant Huguenots of all religious and civil liberties previously granted to them by Henry IV in 1598.

October 18, 1945 – The Nuremberg War Crimes Trial began with indictments against 24 former Nazi leaders including Hermann Göring and Albert Speer. The trial lasted 10 months, with delivery of the judgment completed on October 1, 1946. Twelve Nazis were sentenced to death by hanging, three to life imprisonment, four to lesser prison terms, and three were acquitted.

October 19

October 19, 1781 – As their band played The World Turned Upside Down, the British Army marched out in formation and surrendered to the Americans at Yorktown. More than 7,000 British and Hessian troops, led by British General Lord Cornwallis, surrendered to General George Washington. The war between Britain and its American colonies was effectively ended. The final peace treaty was signed in Paris on September 3, 1783.

October 19, 1960 – The U.S. embargo of Cuba began as the State Department prohibited shipment of all goods except medicine and food.

October 19, 1987 – “Black Monday” occurred on Wall Street as stocks plunged a record 508 points or 22.6 per cent, the largest one-day drop in stock market history.

Mikhail Gorbachev

October 19, 1990 – Beset by a seriously eroding economy, Soviet Russia’s President Mikhail Gorbachev won parliamentary approval to switch to a market economy.

October 20

October 20, 1818 – The U.S. and Britain agreed to set the U.S.- Canadian border at the 49th parallel.

October 20, 1935 – Mao Zedong’s 6,000 mile “Long March” ended as his Communist forces arrived at Yanan, in northwest China, almost a year after fleeing Chiang Kai-shek’s armies in the south.

October 20, 1944 – During World War II in the Pacific, General Douglas MacArthur set foot on Philippine soil for the first time since his escape in 1942, fulfilling his promise, “I shall return.”

Jacqueline Kennedy

October 20, 1968 – Jacqueline Kennedy married multi-millionaire Greek businessman Aristotle Onassis, ending nearly five years of widowhood following the assassination of her first husband, President John F. Kennedy.

October 20, 1973 – The ‘Saturday Night Massacre’ occurred during the Watergate scandal as President Richard M. Nixon fired Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus. Attorney General Elliot Richardson resigned. A firestorm of political protest erupted over the firings leading to widespread demands for Nixon’s impeachment.

Birthday – British architect Christopher Wren (1632-1723) was born in Wiltshire, in southwestern England. Considered one of the greatest minds of his time, he designed St. Paul’s Cathedral and 52 churches for the City of London. His secular buildings included the “new” wing of Hampton Court near London and Greenwich Hospital, now the Royal Naval College.

October 21

October 21, 1805 – The Battle of Trafalgar took place between the British Royal Navy and the combined French and Spanish fleets. The victorious British ended the threat of Napoleon’s invasion of England. British naval hero Admiral Horatio Nelson was mortally wounded aboard his ship Victory.

Thomas Edison

October 21, 1879 – Thomas Edison successfully tested an electric incandescent lamp with a carbonized filament at his laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey, keeping it lit for over 13 hours.

October 21, 1915 – The first transatlantic radio voice message was made by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company from Virginia to Paris.

October 21, 1944 – During World War II in Europe, American troops captured Aachen in western Germany after a week of hard fighting. It was the first large German city taken by the Allies.

October 21, 1967 – Thousands of anti-war protesters stormed the Pentagon during a rally against the Vietnam War in Washington, D.C. About 250 were arrested. No shots were fired, but demonstrators were struck with nightsticks and rifle butts.

Birthday – Jazz great Dizzy Gillespie (1917-1993) was born in Cheraw, South Carolina (as John Birks Gillespie). He was a trumpet player, composer, band leader and one of the founding fathers of modern jazz, known for his trademark puffed cheeks and bent trumpet.

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