October 31

Lead me in thy truth, and teach me: for thou art the God of my salvation; on thee do I wait all the day.

– Psalm 25:5

October is:

Clergy Appreciation Month National AIDS Awareness Month National Breast Cancer Awareness Month National Car Care Month National Caramel Month National Communicate With Your Kid Month National Cookie Month National Crime Prevention Month

Celebrate Today:

National Magic Day - The anniversary of the death of the great magician Harry Houdini's death in 1926. Sponsor: society of American Magicians.

National UNICEF Day - A day for raising money for the United Nations Children's Fund.

Nevada Admission Day - Nevada became the 36th state on this day in 1864.

Reformation Day - In 1517, Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg, Germany. This act sparked the Protestant Reformation.

Born on this Day

• 1345: Ferdinand I, King of Portugal
  

• 1442: Wladislaus III, King of Poland
  

• 1620: John Evelyn, English diarist, a founder of the Royal Society
  

• 1632: Dutch painter Jan Vermeer, the finest of the Flemish domestic painters.
  

• 1795: English poet John Keats (On First Looking into Chapman's Homer, Endymion: "A thing of beauty is a joy forever.", On a Grecian Urn, To a Nightingale, On Melancholy, To Autumn)
  

• 1860: Girl Scout Founder Juliette Low
  

• 1887: Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek, the first leader of Nationalist China
  

• 1896: Actress and singer Ethel Waters (Beulah, A Member of the Wedding, Cabin in the Sky, Pinky, Mamba's Daughters, At Home Abroad, Thousands Cheer)
  

• 1900: Actress and singer Ethel Waters
  

• 19??: Gary Moyers (Acappella)
  

• 19??: Aaron De La Cruz
  

• 1912: Actress-singer Dale Evans (Frances Butts)
  

• 1918: Former Attorney General Griffin Bell
  

• 1920: Popular mystery writer Dick Francis, who mainly writes books connected with horse racing
  

• 1922: Actress Barbara Bel Geddes (Dallas, Vertigo, I Remember Mama)
  

• 1922: Cambodian King Norodom Sihanouk
  

• 1922: Musician Illinois (Battiste) Jacquet (tenor saxophone: Flyin' Home, I Didn't Know about You; played with Lionel Hampton, Cab Calloway, Count Basie)
  

• 1927: Performer Lee Grant (Lyova Rosenthal) (Shampoo, Peyton Place, Fay, Backstairs at the White House, Citizen Cohen, Little Miss Marker, Airport '77, Voyage of the Damned, Valley of the Dolls, Mod Squad, In the Heat of the Night, The Balcony, The Detective Story)
  

• 1927: Musician, singer, pianist, record producer Anita Kerr (The Anita Kerr Singers)
  

• 1928: Movie critic Andrew Sarris
  

• 1928: Colorado Governor Roy Romer
  

• 1930: Former astronaut Michael Collins
  

• 1931: CBS anchorman Dan Rather
  

• 1936: Michael Landon (Eugene Orowitz) (Bonanza, Sam's Son, The Loneliest Runner, I was a Teenage Werewolf, God's Little Acre, Little House on the Prairie, Highway to Heaven)
  

• 1937: Folk singer Tom Paxton (I Can't Help but Wonder Where I'm Bound, The Last Thing on My Mind, Goin' to the Zoo, The Willing Conscript, Lyndon Johnson Told the Nation, Leaving London, All the Way Home, Is This Anyway to Run an Airline, Talking Vietnam Pot-Luck Blues, Forest Lawn)
  

• 1942: Actor David Ogden Stiers (Major Winchester on MASH)
  

• 1941: Singer Otis Williams (with the group: The Temptations: I Can't Get Next to You, Cloud Nine, Runaway Child, Running Wild, Just My Imagination, Papa was a Rolling Stone, Masquerade) some sources place his birthday as October 30, 1942.
  

• 1944: Actress Sally Kirkland
  

• 1944: Singer Kinky Friedman
  

• 1947: Olympic Hall of Famer in Track Frank Shorter
  

• 1948: Actress Deidre Hall (Our House, Days of Our Lives)
  

• 1950: John Candy comedian (Second City, The Blues Brothers, Home Alone, JFK, Little Shop of Horrors, National Lampoon's Vacation, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Spaceballs, Stripes, Uncle Buck, Who's Harry Crumb?; Emmy Award-winning writer: SCTV Network)
  

• 1950: NBC anchorwoman Jane Pauley
  

• 1950: Actress Lynda Goodfriend (Who's Watching the Kids, Happy Days, Blansky's Beauties)
  

• 1953: Singer-songwriter Johnny Clegg
  

• 1961: Rock musician Larry Mullen
  

• 1963: Actor Dermot Mulroney
  

• 1963: Rock musician Mikkey Dee (Motorhead)
  

• 1964: Actor Rob Schneider
  

• 1966: Rap musician Adrock
  

• 1967: Songwriter Adam Schlesinger ("That Thing You Do!")
  

• 1968: Rap performer Vanilla Ice (Robert Van Winkle)
  

• 1970: Rock singer Linn Berggren (Ace of Base) 
  

• 1980: Actor Eddie Kaye Thomas ("American Pie") 

Events in History on this day
  

• 0475: Romulus Augustulus, last Western Roman Emperor, elevated to the throne
  

• 0655: Death of St. Follian
  

• 0994: Death of St. Wolfgang
  

• 1512: Michaelangelo's Sistine Chapel shown
  

• 1517: Martin Luther posted the 95 Theses on the door of the Wittenberg Palace church, marking the start of the Protestant Reformation in Germany.
  

• 1608: A crowd of 30-thousand people showed up at St. Peter's Basillica in Vatican City to hear the organist Frescobaldi.
  

• 1803: Congress ratifies the purchase of the entire Louisiana area in North America, which added territory to the United States for 13 subsequent states.
  

• 1838: A mob of about 200 attacks a Mormon camp in Missouri, killing 20 men, women and children.
  

• 1864: Nevada was admitted to the Union as the 36th state.
  

• 1868: Postmaster General Alexander Williams Randall approved a standard uniform for postal carriers.
  

• 1897: The Boston Herald said of this day, on Richard Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathustra, "This work is unhealthy. It suffers severely from basstubaculosis."
  

• 1903: The Cleveland Theatre in Chicago welcomed the youngest member of the Barrymore family to the acting fold. Young John Barrymore made his stage debut in "Magda."
  

• 1918: In the worst global epidemic of the century, influenza has been spreading around the world since May. Before it ends in 1919 it will kill 20 million people--about twice as many as World War I.
  

• 1926: Magician Harry Houdini died in Detroit of gangrene and peritonitis resulting from a ruptured appendix. Today's History Focus
  

• 1930: In a rare recording, William 'Count' Basie sang with Bennie Moten's Orchestra, "Somebody Stole My Gal" -- on Victor Records.
  

• 1932: Prokofiev's 5th piano concerto premiered in Berlin.
  

• 1942: One of the great wartime radio shows premiered, as CBS debuted "Thanks to the Yanks". The show, starring Bob Hawk, became one of the most popular of the wartime programs.
  

• 1952: The United States explodes the first hydrogen bomb at Eniwetok Atoll in the Pacific.
  

• 1953: NBC televised "Carmen" on "Opera Theatre" -- in living color. It was the first major opera televised in anything other than black and white.
  

• 1955: Britain's Princess Margaret ended weeks of speculation by announcing she would not marry Royal Air Force Captain Peter Townsend.
  

• 1956: Rear Admiral G.J. Dufek became the first person to land an airplane at the South Pole.
  

• 1961: The body of Joseph Stalin was removed from public display, (in Stalin's Tomb). The longtime dictator of the former Soviet Union was reburied in a simple grave. This incident was the beginning of the USSR's "destalinization policy."
  

• 1966: Mirhir Sen, of Calcutta, India, swam the length of the Panama Canal. Previously, the distance swimmer had conquered the Palk Strait from India to Ceylon, the Straits of Gibraltar and the Dardanelles.
  

• 1967: Nguyen Van Thieu took the oath of office as the first president of South Vietnam's second republic.
  

• 1971: Saigon begins the release of 1,938 Hanoi POW’s.
  

• 1968: President Johnson ordered a halt to all US bombing of North Vietnam, saying he hoped for fruitful peace negotiations.
  

• 1984: Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated near her residence by two Sikh security guards. Her son, Rajiv, succeeded her.
  

• 1986: For the first time, Universal Studios in Hollywood opened at night. The plan was to give fans a Halloween scare. The night included Dracula, the Mummy, King Kong, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, and the Wolfman.
  

• 1987: Noburo Takeshita, leader of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party, was elected party president in his first official step toward replacing Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone.
  
  

• 1988: In Lebanon, the kidnappers of American hostage Terry Anderson released a videotape in which the Associated Press correspondent accused the Reagan administration of blocking his release.
  

• 1989: President Bush announced he and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev would hold a summit aboard ships in the Mediterranean near Malta in early December.
  

• 1990: During a campaign swing in suburban Washington, President Bush said "I have had it" with the way Iraq was treating American diplomats and hostages, but added he had no timetable for deciding on a possible military strike. 
  

• 1992: It was announced that five American nuns in Liberia had been shot to death near the capital Monrovia; the killings were blamed on rebels loyal to Charles Taylor.
  

• 1993: Hollywood star River Phoenix died.
  

• 1993: Movie director Federico Fellini died in Rome at age 73.
  

• 1994: 68 people were killed when an American Eagle ATR-72, en route from Indianapolis to Chicago, crashed in northern Indiana. 
  

• 1995: Stung by defeat in the secession referendum, Quebec Premier Jacques Parizeau said he would resign as head of the bitterly divided province at year's end. 
  

• 1996: Pontiac, Michigan, Dr. Jack Kevorkian was charged with assisting three suicides since June 1996 (he was later acquitted).
  

• 1996: Also in Pontiac, Jenny Jones testified at the trial of one of her talk show guests, Jonathan Schmitz, who was accused of killing another guest, Scott Amedure.
  

• 1996: A Brazilian Fokker-100 jetliner crashed in Sao Paulo, killing all 96 people on board and three on the ground.
  

• 1997: British au pair Louise Woodward received a mandatory life sentence, a day after a jury in Cambridge, Massachusetts, convicted her of second-degree murder in the death of eight-month-old Matthew Eappen. (The verdict was later reduced to manslaughter, and Woodward was set free.)
  

• 1997: Chinese President Jiang Zemin rang the bell at the New York Stock Exchange to open the day's trading.    
  

• 1998: A genetic study was released suggesting President Thomas Jefferson did in fact father at least one child by his slave Sally Hemings.
  

• 1998: Iraq announced it would cut off all dealings with UN weapons inspectors, a move condemned by the Security Council.
  

• 1999: EgyptAir Flight 990 crashed off the Massachusetts coast, killing all 217 people aboard.  
  

Today's History Focus

Send Mail to pbower@neo.rr.com

Looking for more quotations?
Past quotes from the Daily Miscellany can be found here!