September 19th
 

1737 ~ Birthday of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, Declaration of Independence Signer, Senator.

1796 ~ George Washington made his farewell address.

1900 ~ Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid robbed the First National Bank of $32,640.

1935 ~ Death of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, rocket scientist, physicist.

1941 ~ Birthday of Mama Cass Elliott, musician.

1945 ~ Lord Haw Haw (William Joyce) sentenced to death in London.

1949 ~ Birthday of Twiggy, English model.

1984 ~ Birthday of Amber Rayne, Porn Actress.

1989 ~ A terrorist bomb exploded in a UTA DC-10 above Niger killing 171.

1991 ~ Ötzi the Iceman ws discovered by German tourists.

September 20th
 

1519 ~ Ferdinand Magellan set out from Spain on a voyage to find a western passage to the Spice Islands in Indonesia.

1934 ~ Birthday of Sophia Loren, Italian actress.

1948 ~ Birthday of George R. R. Martin, Science Fiction Writer.

1970 ~ The Soviet probe Luna 16 collected moon soil samples for return to earth.

1973 ~ Billie Jean King defeated Bobby Riggs in straight sets 6-4, 6-3, 6-3 in a $100,000 winner-take-all “Battle of the Sexes“ tennis match.

1984 ~ A suicide car bomber attacked the U.S. Embassy annex in north Beirut, killing 20 people.

2000 ~ After playing 2,632 consecutive games for the Baltimore Orioles, Cal Ripken, Jr took a day off.

2000 ~ Death of Gherman Titov, cosmonaut.

2004 ~ CBS News apologized for a "mistake in judgment" in its story questioning President George W. Bush's National Guard service, saying it could not vouch for the authenticity of documents featured in the report.

2005 ~ Death of Simon Wiesenthal, Nazi hunter.

September 21st
 

19 BC ~ Death of Virgil, Roman poet. (Aeneid, etc.)

1756 ~ Birthday of John MacAdam, road builder.

1780 ~ Benedict Arnold gave the British the plans to West Point.

1866 ~ Birthday of H. G. Wells, science fiction author.

1874 ~ Birthday of Gustav Holst, Composer.

1897 ~ The Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus letter was published in the New York Sun.

1937 ~ The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien first published.

1947 ~ Birthday of Stephen King, Author.

2003 ~ The Galileo mission was terminated by sending the probe into Jupiter's atmosphere.

2008 ~ And then there were none: The last two independent Wall Street investment banks, Goldman Sachs & Morgan Stanley, became bank holding companies as a result of the subprime mortgage crisis.

Kind of a neat variety of things that happened on Tuesday (yesterday).

September 22nd
 

1791 ~ Birthday of Michael Faraday, Scientist.

1828 ~ Death of Shaka Zulu, Zulu leader.

1862 ~ President Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.

1869 ~ Richard Wagner's opera Das Rheingold opened in Munich.

1910 ~ The Duke of York's Cinema, the oldest continually operating cinema in the UK, opened in Brighton.

1964 ~ ”Fiddler on the Roof”, the first musical to surpass 3,000 performances, opened at the Imperial Theatre.

1975 ~ Sara Jane Moore’s assassination attempt on U.S. President Gerald Ford was foiled by Oliver Sipple.

1980 ~ Iraq invaded Iran.

1972 ~ Birthday of Dana Vespoli, porn actress.

2001 ~ Death of Isaac Stern, Violinist.

September 23rd
 

63 B.C. ~ Birthday of Caesar Augustus, 1st Roman Emperor.

1642 ~ First commencement at Harvard College.

1806 ~ Discovery of Neptune by French astronomer Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier.

1884 ~ Herman Hollerith applied for a patent on his mechanical adding machine.

1920 ~ Birthday of Mickey Rooney, actor.

1930 ~ Birthday of Ray Charles, U.S. R&B and jazz musician, singer.

1952 ~ Richard Nixon made his “Checkers speech".

1972 ~ Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos introduced a dictatorial government.

1982 ~ Birthday of Shyla Stylez, Porn Actress.

2002 ~ The first public version of the Firefox web browser was released.

September 24th
 

622 ~ Muhammad completed his hegira from Mecca to Medina.

1755 ~ Birthday of John Marshall, the fourth and longest-serving Chief Justice of the American Supreme Court.

1890 ~ As a pre-condition to Utah being admitted to the U.S., the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) officially renounced polygamy.

1957 ~ President Eisenhower sent Army troops to Little Rock, Arkansas, to enforce desegregation.

1976 ~ The Rhodesian Government agreed to introduce black majority rule to the country within two years.

1979 ~ Birthday of Sabrine Maui, Filipina Porn Actress.

1979 ~ Birthday of Katja Kassin, German Porn Actress.

1988 ~ Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson beat Carl Lewis in the 100 Meters sprint at the Seoul Olympics. Mr. Johnson was later disqualified for using performance enhancing drugs.

1991 ~ Death of Dr. Seuss, Writer.

1996 ~ President Clinton signed the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty at the United Nations.

September 25th
 

1683 ~ Birthday of Jean-Philippe Rameau, Composer.

1890 ~ Yosemite National Park established.

1897 ~ Birthday of William Faulkner, American writer, awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

1932 ~ Birthday of Glenn Gould, Pianist.

1950 ~ UN forces recaptured Seoul, the South Korean capital.

1957 ~ U.S. Army paratroopers ended the Little Rock school crisis.

1981 ~ Sandra Day O'Connor was sworn in as the 102nd Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, the first woman to hold the office.

1983 ~ Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov averted World War III by refusing to accept - despite the (erroneous) alert given by the Soviet early warning system - that the U.S. had launched missiles against the USSR.

2002 ~ The Vitim event, a possible NEO impact in Siberia, Russia.

2008 ~ China launched its third human spaceflight, Shenzhou 7.

September 26th
 

1687 ~ The Parthenon in Athens was partially destroyed after an explosion caused by the bombing from the Venetian forces besieging the Ottoman Turks.

1888 ~ Birthday of T. S. Eliot, Poet.

1898 ~ Birthday of George Gershwin, Composer.

1944 ~ Allied troops began a retreat from Arnhem.

1948 ~ Birthday of Olivia Newton-John, Singer.

1957 ~ ”West Side Story” opened on Broadway at the Winter Garden Theatre.

1960 ~ Kennedy and Nixon met in the first nationally televised debate between presidential candidates.

1977 ~ Birthday of Kaylynn, Porn Actress.

1980 ~ Birthday of Jane Darling, Porn Actress

1983 ~ Australia II won the “America’s Cup”.

September 27th
 

1389 ~ Birthday of Cosimo de Medici, Florentine ruler.

1540 ~ The Jesuit Order received its charter from Pope Paul III.

1722 ~ Birthday of Samuel Adams, Patriot & Brewer.

1917 ~ Death of Edgar Degas, Impressionist painter.

1918 ~ Birthday of Sir Martin Ryle, English physicist and astronomer, awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 1974 .

1921 ~ Death of Engelbert Humperdinck, Composer.

1964 ~ The Warren Commission issued a report concluding that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone in assassinating President Kennedy.

1996 ~ The Taliban drove the government of Afghani President Burhanuddin Rabbani out of the capital Kabul. They then dragged former leader Mohammad Najibullah out of the U.N. compound and hanged him from a traffic light pole.

1998 ~ The Google web search engine was launched.

2001 ~ An armed man went on a shooting rampage in Zug, Switzerland, killing 14 people before taking his own life.

September 28th
 

1066 ~ William the Conqueror invaded England, landing at Pevensey, Sussex.

1915 ~ Birthday of Ethel Rosenberg, Spy.

1924 ~ The first round-the-world flight completed. It took 175 days.

1925 ~ Birthday of Seymour Cray, Computer Scientist.

1928 ~ Alexander Fleming discovered what later became known as penicillin, for which he shared the 1945 Nobel Prize in Medicine.

1970 ~ Death of Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egyptian statesman.

1976 ~ Stevie Wonder released Songs in the Key of Life.

1995 ~ Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin and PLO chairman Yasser Arafat signed an accord to transfer much of the West Bank to the control of its Arab residents.

1988 ~ Death of Charles Addams, Cartoonist, creator of The Adams Family.

2000 ~ Death of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, fifteenth Prime Minister of Canada.

September 29th
 

1547 ~ Birthday of Miguel de Cervantes, Author (Don Quixote).

1714 ~ George, Elector of Hanover, arrived in Greenwich to assume the British throne as King George I.

1758 ~ Birthday of Horatio Nelson, English icon.

1901 ~ Birthday of Enrico Fermi, Italian physicist. Awarded the 1938 Nobel Prize in Physics.

1916 ~ John D. Rockefeller became the first billionaire.

1957 ~ The New York Giants played their last game at the Polo Grounds.

1960 ~ Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev disrupted a meeting of the UN General Assembly.

1962 ~ Alouette 1, the first Canadian satellite was launched.

1978 ~ Death of Pope John Paul, who reigned just 33 days.

2004 ~ The asteroid 4179 Toutatis passed within 964,000 miles of Earth.

September 30th
 

1791 ~ Mozart's opera “The Magic Flute” premiered in Vienna, Austria.

1913 ~ Death of Rudolf Diesel, German inventor.

1924 ~ Birthday of Truman Capote, Author (In Cold Blood).

1927 ~ Babe Ruth became the first baseball player to hit 60 home runs in a season.

1938 ~ British, French, German and Italian leaders agreed that Nazi Germany would be allowed to annex Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland.

1954 ~ The submarine USS Nautilus was commissioned as the first nuclear reactor powered vessel.

1955 ~ Death of James Dean, American actor.

1982 ~ Birthday of Tory Lane, Porn Actress.

1991 ~ President Jean-Bertrand Aristide of Haiti was forced from office.

2005 ~ The controversial drawings of Muhammad were printed in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten.

October 1st
 

1905 ~ The Julliard School of Music was founded in New York City.

1930 ~ Birthday of Richard Harris, Irish actor, singer-songwriter. Dumbledore could rock when he wanted to!

1939 ~ Winston Churchill during a radio broadcast described the Soviet Union as ''a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma''.

1943 ~ The International War Crimes Tribunal in Nuremburg sentenced 12 Nazi leaders to death.

1949 ~ The People's Republic of China was formed with Mao Zedong as its head.

1961 ~ The New York Yankees' Roger Maris hit his 61st home run of the season.

1968 ~ The cult horror movie "Night of the Living Dead" had its world premiere in Pittsburgh.

1971 ~ Walt Disney World opened in Orlando, Florida. Eventually it would become the largest, man-made, tourist attraction in the world.

1976 ~ Birthday of Dora Venter, Hungarian Porn Actress.

1979 ~ The United States returned sovereignty of the Panama canal to Panama.

Richard Harris nearly had an IRA fatwa put on him for his song "Too many Saviours on my Cross", which bitterly denounced sectarian violence in Northern Ireland.

October 2nd
 

1187 ~ Saladin captured Jerusalem after 88 years of Crusader rule.

1800 ~ Birthday of Nat Turner, leader of an American slave uprising.

1836 ~ Charles Darwin returned to England after a 5-year journey aboard the HMS Beagle collecting data he will later use to develop his theory of evolution.

1869 ~ Birthday of Mahatma Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Indian political leader.

1890 ~ Birthday of Groucho Marx, American comedian and actor.

1904 ~ Birthday of Graham Greene, British novelist.

1935 ~ Italy invaded Abyssinia (Ethiopia).

1967 ~ Thurgood Marshall sworn in as the first African-American justice of United States Supreme Court.

1985 ~ Death of Rock Hudson, Actor.

1993 ~ Hardline Communists riot in Moscow.

October 3rd
 

1873 ~ Birthday of Emily Post, etiquette advisor.

1900 ~ Birthday of Thomas Wolfe, American novelist.

1916 ~ Birthday of James Herriot, veterinarian, author.

1922 ~ Rebecca L. Felton, D-Ga., became the first woman to be seated in the U.S. Senate. She was appointed to serve out the remaining term of Sen. Thomas E. Watson.

1925 ~ Birthday of Gore Vidal, author.

1952 ~ The Uk became the world's third nuclear power after successfully testing a nuclear weapon.

1967 ~ Death of Woody Guthrie, folk musician.

1973 ~ Frank Robinson was named major league baseball's first black manager as he was put in charge of the Cleveland Indians.

1990 ~ The re-unification of Germany. East Germany ceased to exist.

1995 ~ A jury found O.J. Simpson not guilty of murder in the 1994 slayings of his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ronald Goldman.

October 4th
 

1903 ~ Birthday of John Vincent Atanasoff, inventor of the digital electronic computer.

1924 ~ Birthday of Charlton Heston, Actor.

1941 ~ Birthday of Anne Rice, Author.

1943 ~ Birthday of H. Rap Brown, civil rights activist & murderer.

1957 ~ Launch of Sputnik I, the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth.

1983 ~ The first Hooters restaurant opened in Clearwater, Florida.

1985 ~ Free Software Foundation founded.

1993 ~ Russian President Boris Yeltsin ordered the army to begin storming the Russian parliament building.

2002 ~ John Walker Lindh, the “American Taliban”, received a 20-year sentence.

2004 ~ The SpaceShipOne rocket plane broke through Earth's atmosphere for the second time in five days to capture a $10 million prize.

October 5th
 

1813 ~ Death of Tecumseh, American Indian leader.

1882 ~ Birthday of Robert Goddard, rocket scientist.

1902 ~ Birthday of Ray Kroc, founder of McDonald's Corporation.

1947 ~ President Harry Truman gave the first televised White House address.

1968 ~ The beginning of The Troubles of Northern Ireland.

1969 ~ “Monty Python's Flying Circus" made its debut on BBC Television.

1970 ~ Montreal, Quebec: British Trade Commissioner James Cross was kidnapped by members of the FLQ terrorist group.

1994 ~ Forty eight members of a Swiss cult die in a mass suicide.

2000 ~ Mass demonstrations in Belgrade led to the resignation of Slobodan Milosevic.

2004 ~ Death of Maurice Wilkins, New Zealand physicist, Nobel laureate.

October 6th
 

1600 ~ Jacopo Peri's “Euridice”, the earliest surviving opera, premiered in Florence.

1846 ~ Birthday of George Westinghouse, Engineer & Inventor.

1892 ~ Death of Alfred Tennyson, British poet laureate.

1914 ~ Birthday of Thor Heyerdahl, Norwegian explorer, leader of the “Kon-Tiki” expedition.

1927 ~ Opening of “The Jazz Singer”, the first talking movie.

1948 ~ Birthday of Gerry Adams, Irish politician.

1973 ~ Egyptian troops cross the Suez Canal, starting the Yom Kippur War.

1981 ~ Anwar al-Sadat was assassinated.

1887 ~ Death of Bette Davis, Actress.

1995 ~ The first extrasolar planet was discovered orbiting 51 Pegasi, in the constellation of Pegasus.

October 7th
 

1571 ~ The Ottoman Empire was defeated at the battle of Lepanto.

1796 ~ Death of Thomas Reid, Scottish philosopher.

1849 ~ Death of Edgar Allan Poe, American writer.

1885 ~ Birthday of Niels Bohr, Physicist, awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 1922.

1931 ~ Birthday of Desmond Tutu, South African archbishop and anti-apartheid activist, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984.

1982 ~ "Cats" opened on Broadway.

1985 ~ The “Achille Lauro” was hijacked by Palestinian terrorists.

1986 ~ Birthday of Bree Olson, Porn Actress.

2001 ~ The U.S. began its air offensive against al-Qaeda and the Taleban in Afghanistan.

2003 ~ California governor Gray Davis was recalled from office and replaced by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

October 8th
 

1871 ~ The Great Chicago Fire destroyed about 17,450 buildings, killed about 250 people and left another 90,000 homeless.

1920 ~ Birthday of Frank Herbert, Science Fiction writer.

1949 ~ Birthday of Sigourney Weaver, Actress.

1952 ~ The UK suffered its worst peacetime rail accident.

1961 ~ In London, the Post Office Tower opened.

1969 ~ Birthday of Julia Ann, Porn Actress.

1982 ~ Solidarity, and all other labor organizations in Poland, were banned.

1992 ~ Death of Willy Brandt, German politician.

2003 ~ Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected governor of California.

2004 ~ Martha Stewart went to jail.

October 9th
 

1804 ~ Hobart, Tasmania, was founded.

1835 ~ Birthday of Camille Saint-Saëns, Composer.

1859 ~ Birthday of Alfred Dreyfus, French military officer.

1940 ~ Birthday of John Lennon, Musician & Songwriter.

1942 ~ The Statute of Westminster Adoption Act formalized Australian autonomy.

1948 ~ Birthday of Jackson Browne (Doctor My Eyes, The Pretender, Running On Empty).

1961 ~ Ray Charles' "Hit the Road Jack" reached #1.

1967 ~ Guerrilla leader Che Guevara was executed in Bolivia.

1970 ~ Birthday of Savannah, Porn Actress.

1974 ~ Death of Oskar Schindler, businessman.

October 10th
 

1813 ~ Birthday of Giuseppe Verdi, Italian composer.

1845 ~ In Annapolis, Maryland, the Naval School (later renamed the United States Naval Academy) opened with 50 midshipmen students and seven professors.

1875 ~ Death of Aleksey Tolstoy, Novelist & Poet.

1938 ~ The Sudetenland was ceded to Nazi Germany by the terms of the Munich Agreement.

1966 ~ Simon and Garfunkel released the album Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme.

1970 ~ A crisis hit Canada when Quebec Vice-Premier Pierre Laporte became the second statesman kidnapped by members of the FLQ terrorist group.

1973 ~ Vice President Spiro T. Agnew pleaded no contest to one count of federal income tax evasion and resigned.

1975 ~ Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor remarried.

1980 ~ UK PM Margaret Thatcher gave a defiant speech at the Tory party conference "… I have only one thing to say: You turn if you want to. The lady's not for turning!"

1985 ~ U.S. Navy F-14s intercepted the plane carrying the “Achille Lauro” cruise ship hijackers and forced it to land at a NATO base in Sicily where they were arrested.

October 11th
 

1844 ~ Birthday of Henry Heinz, food manufacturer.

1899 ~ In South Africa, a war between the UK and the Boers of the Transvaal and Orange Free State began.

1958 ~ Pioneer 1 was launched; it failed to go as far as planned, fell back to Earth and burned up in the atmosphere.

1961 ~ Death of Chico Marx, comedian.

1962 ~ Pope John XXIII convened the Second Vatican Council.

1968 ~ Launch of Apollo 7, the first manned Apollo mission.

1975 ~ The debut of Saturday Night Live.

1976 ~ China's "Gang of Four" was arrested.

1991 ~ Death of Redd Foxx, Comedian & actor.

2002 ~ The U.S. Senate joined the House in approving the use of America's military against Iraq.

October 12th
 

1870 ~ Death of Gen. Robert E. Lee, Leader.

1872 ~ Birthday of Ralph Vaughan Williams, English composer.

1968 ~ Summer Olympics open in Mexico City.

1970 ~ Birthday of Julian, Porn Actor.

1977 ~ Four Palestinians hijacked a Lufthansa Airlines flight to Somalia and demanded release of 11 members of the Red Army Faction.

1984 ~ UK PM Margaret Thatcher narrowly escaped an IRA bomb attack.

1986 ~ Presidents Reagan and Gorbachev failed to agree on Star Wars at a disarmament summit in Reykjavik.

1999 ~ Death of Wilt Chamberlain, American basketball player.

2000 ~ Terrorists attacked the USS Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden.

2002 ~ A terrorist bomb at a Bali nightclub killed 202 people, mainly Australians.

October 13th
 

54 ~ Death of Claudius, Roman Emperor.

1307 ~ All Knights Templar in France were simultaneously arrested by agents of the French king, to be later tortured into admitting heresy.

1773 ~ Charles Messier discovered the Whirlpool Galaxy.

1812 ~ Death of Sir Isaac Brock, British general (killed in the Battle of Queenston Heights).

1925 ~ Birthday of Margaret Thatcher, UK PM.

1943 ~ Italy changes alliances from the Axis to the Allies.

1982 ~ Birthday of Ian Thorpe, Australian swimmer.

1988 ~ The UK government lost the Spycatcher battle

1990 ~ Death of Lê Ðức Thọ, Vietnamese general & politician, awarded one half of the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize.

1992 ~ The UK government announced plans to close one third of the coal mines.

October 14th
 

1066 ~ Battle of Hastings: The Norman army of William the Conqueror defeated the Saxon army and kill King Harold II of England.

1944 ~ Given the choice between a public treason trial followed by death by firing squad or suicide with honor, German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel chose the latter.

1947 ~ Chuck Yeager flew a Bell X-1 faster than the speed of sound, the first man to do so in level flight.

1964 ~ Civil Rights movement leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr became the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.

1966 ~ Birthday of Savanna Samson, Porn Actress.

1977 ~ Death of Bing Crosby, Actor & Singer.

1983 ~ Birthday of Vanessa Lane, Porn Actress.

1990 ~ Death of Leonard Bernstein, Composer & Conductor.

1991 ~ Aung San Suu Kyi was named winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

1994 ~ PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin shared the Nobel Peace Prize.

October 15th
 

70 BC ~ Birthday of Virgil, Roman poet.

1844 ~ Birthday of Friedrich Nietzsche, Philosopher.

1964 ~ Birthday of P. G. Wodehouse, British novelist.

1908 ~ Birthday of John Kenneth Galbraith, Economist.

1917 ~ Mata Hari was executed by firing squad for spying for Germany.

1964 ~ Nikita Khrushchev “retired” as head of USSR.

1990 ~ Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

1991 ~ The Senate confirmed the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court.

1993 ~ Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

2003 ~ China launched its first manned spacecraft into orbit, becoming the third country to do so.

October 16th
 

1793 ~ Death of Marie Antoinette – guillotined.

1854 ~ Birthday of Oscar Wilde, Irish writer.

1859 ~ In one of the developments towards the American Civil War, John Brown led a raid of the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia.

1916 ~ Planned Parenthood founded by Margaret Sanger.

1925 ~ Birthday of Angela Lansbury, actress.

1964 ~ China detonated its first nuclear weapon.

1978 ~ Karol Józef Wojtyła became Pope John Paul II. He was the first non Italian to be elevated to the position since 1522.

1981 ~ Death of Moshe Dayan, Israeli general.

1984 ~ Desmond Tutu was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

1984 ~ Birthday of Melissa Lauren, French Porn Actress. Bon appétit!

October 17th
 

1915 ~ Birthday of Arthur Miller, Playwright.

1931 ~ Al Capone was convicted of income tax evasion.

1935 ~ Death of Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Spanish neuroscientist.

1956 ~ Queen Elizabeth opened the first commercial nuclear power station, at Calder Hall.

1968 ~ Olympic protest against racial discrimination.

1972 ~ Birthday of Eminem, rap music performer.

1973 ~ Arab oil-producing nations announced they would cut back oil exports to Western nations and Japan; the result was a total embargo that lasted until March 1974.

1977 ~ West German commandos stormed a hijacked Lufthansa jetliner on the ground in Mogadishu, Somalia, freeing all 86 hostages and killing three of the four hijackers.

1979 ~ Mother Teresa of India was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her work on behalf of the destitute in Calcutta.

1989 ~ The Loma Prieta earthquake hit the San Francisco Bay Area.

October 18th
 

1851 ~ Moby-Dick, a novel by Herman Melville, was first published as The Whale.

1871 ~ Death of Charles Babbage, mathematician and inventor of computing machines.

1919 ~ Birthday of Pierre Trudeau, fifteenth PM of Canada.

1922 ~ The British Broadcasting Company was founded.

1939 ~ Birthday of Lee Harvey Oswald, Assassin.

1954 ~ The Regency Division of Industrial Development Engineering Associates announced the first Transistor radio.

1962 ~ Dr. Watson of the United States, and Drs. Crick and Wilkins of the UK, were named winners of the Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology for their work in determining the double-helix molecular structure of DNA.

1976 ~ Birthday of Azlea Antistia, Porn Actress.

1989 ~ Erich Honecker was forced to step down as leader of East Germany after 18 years in power.

2006 ~ Death of Anna Russell, English music satirist.

1 ~ Moby-Dick, a novel by Herman Melville, was first published as The Whale.

There was a truly terrible version done in 2010 set on a nuke sub converted to hunt a single prehistoric whale. It was sad.

On the transistor reference, our puters are just hyper-sophisticated transistor devices.

Yup.

October 19th
 

1745 ~ Death of Jonathan Swift, Author.

1781 ~ Lord Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, effectively ending the American War of Independence.

1812 ~ French forces under Napoleon Bonaparte began a retreat from Moscow.

1931 ~ Birthday of John Le Carré, Author.

1937 ~ Death of Ernest Rutherford, New Zealand physicist, father of nuclear physics.

1950 ~ Death of Edna St. Vincent Millay, Poet.

1954 ~ Metal fatigue was identified as the cause of Comet crashes.

1969 ~ U.S. Vice President Spiro T. Agnew referred to anti-Vietnam War protesters “an effete corps of impudent snobs.”

1987 ~ The DJI fell by 22% (Black Monday).

2005 ~ The trial of Saddam Hussein began.

October 20th
 

1740 ~ Maria Theresa took the throne of Austria.

1803 ~ The U.S. Senate ratified the Louisiana Purchase.

1882 ~ Birthday of Bela Lugosi, Actor.

1893 ~ Birthday of Jomo Kenyatta, President of Kenya.

1973 ~ In the “Saturday Night Massacre”, President Nixon abolished the office of special Watergate prosecutor, accepted the resignation of the Attorney General, and fired Deputy Attorney General William B. Ruckelshaus.

1973 ~ The Sydney Opera House opened.

1983 ~ Grenada's Prime Minister, Maurice Bishop, was assassinated.

1984 ~ Death of Paul Dirac, awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 1933.

1989 ~ Death of Anthony Quayle, English actor (The Guns of Navarone, Lawrence of Arabia, Anne of the Thousand Days).

1992 ~ The Toronto Blue Jays win the first World Series game outside the U.S.

October 21st
 

1772 ~ Birthday of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Poet.

1805 ~ A British fleet led by Admiral Lord Nelson defeated a combined French and Spanish fleet in the Battle of Trafalgar off the coast of Spain.

1805 ~ Death of Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson.

1833 ~ Birthday of Alfred Nobel, Swedish inventor and benefactor of the Nobel Prize.

1854 ~ Florence Nightingale and a staff of 38 nurses were sent to the Crimean War.

1879 ~ Thomas Edison invented a workable electric light.

1917 ~ Birthday of Dizzy Gillespie, Jazz Musician.

1929 ~ Birthday of Ursula K. Le Guin, Science Fiction Author.

1944 ~ The first kamikaze attack: HMAS Australia was hit by a Japanese plane carrying a 200 kg bomb.

1994 ~ North Korea and the United States signed an agreement requiring North Korea to stop its nuclear weapons program and agree to inspections.

October 22nd
 

1746 ~ Princeton University in New Jersey received its charter.

1836 ~ Sam Houston was inaugurated as the first President of the Republic of Texas.

1844 ~ Birthday of Sarah Bernhardt, Actress.

1906 ~ Death of Paul Cezanne, Painter.

1920 ~ Birthday of Timothy Leary, writer, psychedelic drug advocate.

1943 ~ Birthday of Catherine Deneuve, Actress.

1943 ~ The RAF air raid on Kassel, a city of 236,000 people, killed 10,000, and left 150,000 homeless.

1962 ~ US President Kennedy announced that American spy planes had discovered Soviet nuclear weapons in Cuba, and that he had ordered a naval "quarantine" of the island nation.

1973 ~ Death of Pablo Casals, Cellist & Conductor.

1990 ~ The region around the Aral Sea assessed as the world’s worst ecological disaster.

The destruction of the Aral Sea is truly a sad thing. I read aabout that in National Geographic a few years ago and it's a disgrace that the former Soviet Union allowed it to happen.

:(

It was a resource drawn on until it was no longer there.

The lake may return, but not most of the unique wildlife.