Today is Friday, Oct. 4, the 277th day of 2019.
Today’s Highlights in History:
On Oct. 4, 2002, “American Taliban“ John Walker Lindh received a 20-year sentence after a sobbing plea for forgiveness before a federal judge in Alexandria, Virginia. In a federal court in Boston, a laughing Richard Reid pleaded guilty to trying to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight with explosives in his shoes (the British citizen was later sentenced to life in prison).
On this date:
In 1777, Gen. George Washington’s troops launched an assault on the British at Germantown, Pennsylvania, resulting in heavy American casualties.
In 1861, during the Civil War, the United States Navy authorized construction of the first ironclad ship, the USS Monitor.
In 1940, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini conferred at Brenner Pass in the Alps.
In 1951, the MGM movie musical “An American in Paris,“ starring Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron, had its U.S. premiere in New York.
In 1957, the Space Age began as the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, into orbit.
In 1970, rock singer Janis Joplin, 27, was found dead in her Hollywood hotel room.
In 1989, Triple Crown-winning racehorse Secretariat, suffering a hoof ailment, was humanely destroyed at age 19.
In 1990, for the first time in nearly six decades, German lawmakers met in the Reichstag for the first meeting of reunified Germany’s parliament.
In 1991, 26 nations, including the United States, signed the Madrid Protocol, which imposed a 50-year ban on oil exploration and mining in Antarctica.
In 2003, a Palestinian woman blew herself up inside a restaurant in Haifa, Israel, killing 21 bystanders.
In 2004, the SpaceShipOne rocket plane broke through Earth’s atmosphere to the edge of space for the second time in five days, capturing the $10 million Ansari X prize aimed at opening the final frontier to tourists. Pioneering astronaut Gordon Cooper died in Ventura, California, at age 77.
In 2017, President Donald Trump visited hospital bedsides and a police base in Las Vegas in the aftermath of the shooting rampage three nights earlier that left 58 people dead.
Ten years ago: Greek Socialists trounced the governing conservatives in a landslide election. Argentine folk singer Mercedes Sosa, 74, died in Buenos Aires.
Five years ago: North Korea’s presumptive No. 2 leader, Hwang Pyong So, and other members of Pyongyang’s inner circle met with South Korean officials in the rivals’ highest level face-to-face talks in five years. Former Haitian “president for life“ Jean-Claude Duvalier, 63, died in Port-au-Prince. Paul Revere, 76, the organist and leader of the Raiders rock band, died in Garden Vallley, Idaho.
One year ago: The Senate Judiciary Committee said it had received an FBI report on sexual misconduct allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh; leading GOP lawmakers said there was nothing new in the report, while Democrats complained that the investigation omitted interviews with some potential witnesses and accused the White House of limiting the scope of the probe. President Donald Trump told a Minnesota rally that Republican voters would be motivated by what he called the “rage-fueled resistance” by Democrats to the Kavanaugh nomination. Former rap mogul Marion “Suge” Knight was sentenced in Los Angeles to 28 years in prison for running down and killing a Compton businessman with a pickup truck.
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