October 5

But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.

Psalm 1:2

October is:

Campaign for Healthier Babies Month Cooking, Crafts, and Home Books Month Clergy Appreciation Month Computer Learning Month Family History Month Lupus Awareness 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:

Chester Alan Arthur Day - The 21st president of the U.S. was born this day in 1830.

PBS Day - PBS became a network on this day in 1970. Sponsor: Public Broadcasting Service

Born on this Day

• 1703: Jonathan Edwards, grandfather of Aaron Burr and the New England preacher of a famous sermon in American history, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God."
  

• 1713: French philosopher Denis Diderot
  

• 1728: Chevalier d'Eon, French spy who conducted missions for his country disguised as a woman. He was a brilliant fencer. He was fatally wounded in 1810 while giving a fencing exhibition in London. It was not until after an autopsy that it was discovered that "she" was a "he."
  

• 1830: Chester A. Arthur in Fairfield, Vermont. He was the 21st president of the United States.
  

• 1840: English poet and art historian John Addington Symonds
  

• 1882: American rocket pioneer Robert Goddard in Worcester, Massachusetts. He is known as the "Father of the Space Age," and possessed over 200 rocketry patents.
  

• 1902: Founder of McDonald's Ray Kroc. The one time piano player at WGN radio in Chicago, Illinois, had his start in the hamburger business by selling milkshake machines.
  

• 1908: Director Joshua Logan (Paint Your Wagon, Camelot, Ensign Pulver, Fanny, South Pacific, Sayonara, Bus Stop, Picnic)
  

• 1918: TV host Allen Ludden (Password, The G.E. College Bowl, Liar's Club)
  

• 1919: Actor Donald Pleasence (You Only Live Twice, Fantastic Voyage, Tale of Two Cities, The Adventures of Robin Hood)
  

• 1922: "Family Circus" cartoonist Bil Keane
  

• 1923: Political activist and defrocked priest Philip Berrigan
  

• 1923: Actress Glynis Johns (Mary Poppins, The Ref, A Little Night Music, The Sundowners, Coming of Age)
  

• 1924: Comedian Bill Dana
  

• 1929: NASA astronaut Richard Gordon, Jr.
  

• 1933: Actress Diane Cilento
  

• 1936: The president of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Havel. Chech dissident dramatist who became the first freely elected president of Czechoslovakia in 55 years
  

• 1938: Country singer Johnny Duncan
  

• 1941: Rhythm-and-blues singer Arlene Smith (The Chantels)
  

• 1942: Singer Richard Street (formerly of The Temptations)
  

• 1943: Singer-musician Steve Miller
  

• 1950: Actor Jeff Conaway
  

• 1951: Actress Karen Allen (Ghost in the Machine, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Backfire, National Lampoon's Animal House, Starman)
  

• 1952: Writer-producer-director Clive Barker
  

• 1954: Rock singer and famine-relief organizer Bob Geldof. He was the organizer of Live Aid, and was nominated for the Nobel Peace prize.
  

• 1959: Maya Lin, American architect who designed the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C.
  

• 1962: Auto racer Michael Andretti
  

• 1964: Rock singer-musician Dave Dederer (Presidents of the United States of America)
  

• 1965: Hockey player Mario Lemieux
  

• 1975: Rock musician Brian Mashburn (Save Ferris)
  

• 1975: Actress Kate Winslet
  

• 1975: Actor Scott Weinger

Events in History on this day
  

• 0610: Heraclius attacks Constantinople with his fleet
  

• 1056: Death of Henry III "the Black," Holy Roman Emperor
  

• 1285: Death of Philip III, "the Bold," King of France
  

• 1511: England joins the "Holy League" against France
  

• 1553: First Parliament of (Bloody) Mary Tudor, Queen of England convened.
  

• 1646: A bounty of 100 pounds of tobacco was offered in the Virginia Colony for evidence of having killed a wolf.
  

• 1762: Opera, as we know it today, began when Gluck conducted the premiere of "Orfeo et Euridice."
  

• 1762: The British fleet bombards and captures Spanish-held Manila in the Philippines.
  

• 1789: The French marched on Versailles to dethrone the monarchy. They sang a revolutionary song written for the occasion by a musician in the King's own opera orchestra.
  

• 1813: The Battle of the Thames was fought in Upper Canada during the War of 1812. The British troops were soundly defeated, and their Indian ally, Tecumseh, was killed.
  

• 1821: Greek rebels capture Tripolitza, the main Turkish fort in the Pelponnese area of Greece.
  

• 1864: At the Battle of Allatoona, a small Union post is saved from Lt. Gen. John Bell Hood's army.
  

• 1877: "From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever." With those words, Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce Indians surrendered to the U.S. Cavalry at Bear's Paw, Chinook,
  Montana, after a 1,700-mile trek to reach Canada falls 40 miles short.
  

• 1880: Jacques Offenbach, French composer, dies.
  

• 1882: Outlaw Frank James surrenders in Missouri six months after brother Jesse's assassination.
  

• 1892: The Dalton Gang, notorious for its train robberies, was practically wiped out while attempting to rob a pair of banks in Coffeyville, Kansas.
  

• 1915: Germany apologized for the sinking earlier in the spring of the HMS Lusitania.
  

• 1921: The World Series was broadcast on radio for the first time. This was not a play by play but a posting of events.
  

• 1925: WSM Radio in Nashville started broadcasting. One of its first programs was "WSM Barn Dance" which was renamed "Grand Ole Opry" two years later. It became the longest running radio show in history.
  

• 1930: Laura Ingalls was the first woman to make a transcontinental airplane flight. She flew a Moth bi-plane from New York to California, arriving four days later. She logged 30 hours and 27 minutes of flying time.
  

• 1931: Clyde Pangborn and Hugh Herndon complete the first nonstop flight over the Pacific. Their flight, begun October 3, lasted 41 hours, 31 minutes and covered 5,000 miles. They piloted their Bellanca CH-200 monoplane from Samushiro, 300 miles north of Tokyo, Japan, to Wenatchee, Washington.
  

• 1937: Saying, "The epidemic of world lawlessness is spreading," President Roosevelt called for a "quarantine" of aggressor nations.
  

• 1941: Former Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis - the first Jewish member of the nation's highest court - died in Washington at age 84.
  

• 1942: America's 'Yankee Doodle Dandy', George M. Cohan died at age 64. Cohan was a legendary songwriter whose spirited and star-spangled tunes that lit up Broadway will be a part of Americana forever.
  

• 1947: In the first televised White House address, President Truman asked Americans to refrain from eating meat on Tuesdays and poultry on Thursdays to help stockpile grain for starving people in Europe.
  

• 1952: After an 11-year run on ABC Radio, "Inner Sanctum", the legendary mystery series, was heard for the final time.
  

• 1953: Earl Warren was sworn in as the 14th chief justice of the United States, succeeding Fred M. Vinson.
  

• 1955: A stage adaptation of "The Diary of Anne Frank" opened at the Cort Theatre in New York.
  

• 1962: The Beatles' first hit, "Love Me Do," was first released in the United Kingdom.
  

• 1965: Pope Paul VI made an unprecedented 14-hour visit to New York to plead for world peace before the United Nations.
  

• 1965: Henry Mancini received a gold record for the soundtrack LP from the movie, "The Pink
  Panther."
  

• 1965: U.S. forces in Saigon receive permission to use tear gas.
  

• 1966: A sodium cooling system malfunction causes a partial core meltdown at the Enrico Fermi demonstration breeder reactor near Detroit, Mich. Radiation was contained.
  

• 1969: "Monty Python's Flying Circus" made its debut on BBC television.
  

• 1970: Anwar Sadat, a colleague of Gamil Abdel Nasar succeeds as president of Egypt following Nassar's death.
  

• 1975: Sen. Frank Church, D-Idaho, charged that the CIA tried to kill Cuban President Fidel Castro during the administrations of three U.S. presidents.
  

• 1978: Yiddish author Isaac Bashevis Singer won the Nobel Prize for literature.
  

• 1983: Solidarity founder Lech Walesa was named winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts on behalf of Polish workers.
  

• 1984: The space shuttle Challenger, carrying a crew of five men and two women, blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on an eight-day mission.
  

• 1985: seven Israeli tourists were killed by an Egyptian policeman who went on a shooting rampage at a Sinai beach resort. The policeman, convicted of murder, died in prison the following January, an apparent suicide.
  

• 1986: American Eugene Hasenfus was captured by Sandinista soldiers after the weapons plane he was flying in was shot down over southern Nicaragua.
  

• 1987: Supreme Court nominee Robert H. Bork suffered new setbacks as Senate Democratic Leader Robert Byrd and Republican senators Lowell P. Weicker Junior of Connecticut and John H. Chafee of Rhode Island declared they were opposed to his confirmation.
  

• 1988: Republican Dan Quayle and Democrat Lloyd Bentsen clashed in the only vice-presidential debate of the 1988 campaign. (The most memorable moment of the evening was when Bentsen lambasted Quayle, who'd suggested a parallel between himself and John F. Kennedy, by telling him, "Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy.")
  

• 1989: TV evangelist Jim Baker was convicted on all 24 counts of fraud and conspiracy for fleecing his PTL flock.
  

• 1989: The Dalai Lama, the spiritual and temporal leader of Tibet, was named winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.
  

• 1990: A jury in Cincinnati acquitted an art gallery and its director of obscenity charges stemming from an exhibit of sexually graphic photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe.
  

• 1990: The U.S. House of Representatives rejected a $500 billion budget agreement forged by congressional leaders and the Bush administration.
  

• 1991: Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev announced sweeping cuts in nuclear weapons in response to President Bush's arms reduction initiative.
  

• 1992: Both houses of Congress voted to override President Bush's veto of a measure to re-regulate cable television companies.
  

• 1993: Army General John Shalikashvili was confirmed by the Senate to head the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
  

• 1993: China set off an underground nuclear blast, ignoring a plea from President Clinton not to do so.
  

• 1994: 48 people were found dead in an apparent murder-suicide carried out simultaneously in two Swiss villages by members of a secret religious doomsday cult; five other bodies were found in an apartment owned by the sect in Montreal, Canada.
  

• 1995: Seamus Heaney of Ireland won the 1995 Nobel Prize in literature.
  

• 1995: Bosnia's combatants agreed to a 60-day cease-fire and new talks on ending their 3 -1/2 years of battle.
  

• 1996: Already under fire for his drug policies, President Clinton revealed that a secret FBI memorandum said the government's anti-drug strategy "had never been properly organized." Clinton argued that the problems predated his administration.
  

• 1997: The White House released videotapes of President Clinton greeting supporters at 44 coffee klatches; Republicans seized on the tapes as proof that Clinton had raised campaign donations at the White House in violation of the law.
  

• 1998: The House Judiciary Committee voted along hardened partisan lines to investigate whether President Clinton should be removed from office.
  

• 1998: Michael Carneal pleaded guilty but mentally ill to shooting to death three fellow students and wounding five other people at Heath High School in West Paducah, Ky. (Carneal was later sentenced to life in prison without the chance of parole for 25 years.)
  

• 1999: It was announced that MCI WorldCom Inc. had agreed to pay $115 billion for Sprint Corp. Two packed commuter trains collided near London's Paddington Station, killing 31 people.
  
  

No time to do a History Focus for Today

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