Today is Saturday, Oct. 11, the 284th day of 2025
with 81 follow.
The moon is waning. Morning stars are Jupiter, Mercury, Neptune, Saturn, Uranus and Venus. Evening stars are Mars, Mercury, Neptune and Saturn.
On this date in history:
In 1811, the first steam-powered ferry in the world, the Juliana, started its run between New York City and Hoboken, N.J.
In 1868, Thomas Alva Edison filed papers for his first invention: an electrical vote recorder to rapidly tabulate floor votes in the U.S. Congress. Edison's device was issued U.S. Patent 90,646 on June 1, 1869. Members of Congress rejected the apparatus and it was never utilized.
In 1906, the San Francisco Board of Education banned Japanese-American students from attending public schools, ordering that instead they were to be taught in racially segregated schools. A compromise was reached in February 1907, allowing the students back into the schools with the Japanese government accepting new immigration restrictions for its citizens wishing to travel to the United States.
In 1910, President Theodore Roosevelt became the first U.S. president to take flight in an airplane. Piloted by Arch Hoxsey, Roosevelt would stay aloft for 4 minutes in a Wright brothers-built plane at Kinloch Field in St. Louis, Mo.
In 1947, the United States agreed to the United Nations Partition Plan of Palestine, which recommended the creation of independent Arab and Jewish States with the city of Jerusalem placed under direct trusteeship of the United Nations. The resolution was adopted by the General Assembly on Nov. 29, 1947, though a civil war, which would last nearly six months, erupted the next day between Arabs and Jews, resulting in the partition plan failing to be implemented.
In 1950, the Federal Communications Commission gave CBS the first license to broadcast color television.
In 1975, Saturday Night Live premiered on NBC with George Carlin as host and musicians Janis Ian and Billy Preston on the bill.
In 1984, Kathryn Sullivan, flying into orbit aboard the space shuttle Challenger, became the first American woman to walk in space.
In 1986, President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev met in Reykjavik, Iceland, to discuss arms control and human rights. While the talks collapsed at the last minute, work would continue, resulting in the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty between the two nations.
In 2000, Congress designated Cuyahoga Valley National Recreation Area as a national park, making it the first national recreation area to receive the upgrade in the United States.
In 2002, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to former U.S. President Jimmy Carter "for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development."
In 2002, Congress gave U.S. President George W. Bush its backing for using military force against Iraq.
In 2008, the U.S. State Department removed North Korea from its list of state sponsors of terrorism. In return, North Korea agreed to give international inspectors access to its nuclear facilities and to continue disabling its plutonium processing project.
In 2013, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons won the Nobel Peace Prize. The United Nations-backed OPCW, which has headquarters in The Hague, Netherlands, was overseeing the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons stockpile at the time it won the prize.
In 2024, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to Nihon Hidankyo, an organization made up of atomic bomb survivors in Japan for their actions opposing the use of nuclear weapons.
