There are 81 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On Oct. 11, 1986, President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev opened two days of talks in Reykjavik, Iceland, concerning arms control and human rights.
On this date:
In 1614, the New Netherland Co. was formed by a group of merchants from Amsterdam and Hoorn to set up fur trading in North America.
In 1809, just over three years after the famous Lewis and Clark expedition ended, Meriwether Lewis was found dead in a Tennessee inn, an apparent suicide; he was 35.
In 1884, American first lady Eleanor Roosevelt was born in New York City.
In 1906, the San Francisco Board of Education ordered the city’s Asian students segregated in a purely “Oriental” school. (The order was later rescinded at the behest of President Theodore Roosevelt, who promised to curb future Japanese immigration to the United States.)
In 1968, Apollo 7, the first manned Apollo mission, was launched with astronauts Wally Schirra (shih-RAH’), Donn Fulton Eisele and R. Walter Cunningham aboard. The government of Panama was overthrown in a military coup.
In 1984, Challenger astronaut Kathryn D. Sullivan became the first American woman to walk in space as she and fellow Mission Specialist David C. Leestma spent 3 1/2 hours outside the shuttle.
In 1991, testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Anita Hill accused Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of sexually harassing her; Thomas re-appeared before the panel to denounce the proceedings as a “high-tech lynching.”
In 2002, former President Jimmy Carter was named the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.
In 2005, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said it had finished pumping out the New Orleans metropolitan area, which was flooded by Hurricane Katrina six weeks earlier and then was swamped again by Hurricane Rita.
In 2006, the charge of treason was used for the first time in the U.S. war on terrorism, filed against Adam Yehiye Gadahn (ah-DAHM’ YEH’-heh-yuh guh-DAHN’), also known as “Azzam the American,” who’d appeared in propaganda videos for al-Qaida. (Gadahn was killed by a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan in Jan. 2015.)
In 2014, customs and health officials began taking the temperatures of passengers arriving at New York’s Kennedy International Airport from three West African countries in a stepped-up screening effort meant to prevent the spread of the Ebola virus.
In 2020, the Los Angeles Lakers beat the Miami Heat 106-93 to win the NBA finals in six games; LeBron James scored 28 points as the NBA wrapped up a season that sent players to a “bubble” at Walt Disney World in Florida for three months because of the pandemic.
