October 23

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 Mole Day - This day is to celebrate the mole, 6 X 10 to the 23rd power. The day is to encourage students to get enthused about science, especially chemistry. Sponsor: National Mole Day Foundation.

Saint John of Capistrano Feast Day - In 1456, Saint John of Capistrano died of the plague. Every year on this day the swallows leave the San Juan Capistrano mission in California.

Stay Up Late Day - Johnny Carson was born on this day in 1925. To celebrate his birthday, you have permission to stay up late. Sponsor: The Life of the Party.

TV Talk Show Host - Honors the talented talk show hosts of TV and radio. Sponsor: Blue Collar Show.

Born on this Day

• 1752: French chef Nicholas Appert, inventor of the canning process.
  

• 1817: French lexicographer Pierre Larousse .
  

• 1835: Adlai E. Stevenson, vice president under Grover Cleveland from 1893-1897
  

• 1844: British poet Robert Bridges Today's History Focus
  

• 1869: John Heisman, American college football coach from 1892 to 1927 who had a trophy for best college player named after him
  

• 1873: William Coolidge, inventor of the X-ray tube
  

• 1906: Olympic swimming medalist in 1924, Gertrude Ederle
  

• 1914: College and Pro Football Hall of Famer 'Bruiser' (Frank) Kinard
  

• 1918: Actor James Daly (Hallmark Hall of Fame, Eagle in a Cage, Medical Center, Planet of the Apes, The Invaders)
  

• 1923: Baseball player, Ewell Blackwell
  

• 1923: Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, Ned Rorem
  

• 1925: Former "Tonight Show" host Johnny Carson
  

• 1927: Saxophoneist Sonny (William) Criss (The Bop Masters, Saturday Morning, Criss Craft, Out of Nowhere, Warm and Sonny)
  

• 1931: Baseball pitcher (U.S. Senator from Kentucky)- Jim Bunning
  

• 1931: Actress, Diana Dors (Fluck) (Children of the Full Moon, Oliver Twist, Unicorn, Theatre of Blood, The Devil's Web, Baby Love)
  

• 1935: World Golf Hall of Famer Juan 'Chi-Chi' Rodriguez
  

• 1939: Singer Charlie Foxx (Mockingbird)
  

• 1940: Songwriter Eleanor (Ellie) Greenwich (My Baby, Chapel of Love, Da Do Ron Ron, Then He Kissed Me, River Deep)
  

• 1940: Soccer great Pele
  

• 1942: Author Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park, Twister, Rising Sun, The Great Train Robbery, The Terminal Man, Disclosure, The Great Impostor, The Secret of Canta Victoria, Congo)
  

• 1943: Rhythm-and-blues singer Barbara Ann Hawkins (The Dixie Cups)
  

• 1947: Musician Greg Ridley
  

• 1956: Country singer Dwight Yoakam
  

• 1959: Parodist "Weird Al" Yankovic
  

• 1966: Rhythm-and-blues singer David Thomas (Take 6)
  

• 1966: Rock musician Brian Nevin (Big Head Todd and the Monsters)
  

• 1968: Country singer-musician Junior Bryant (Ricochet)
  

Events in History on this day
  

• 4004BC According to 17th century divine James Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh, and Dr. John Lightfoot of Cambridge, the world was created on this day, a Sunday, at 9 a.m.
  

• 42 BC: One of the conspirators against Julius Caesar, Marcus Brutus, died.
  

• 0042 Brutus, assassin, kills himself after losing PHILIPPI (BCE)
  

• 0304: Death of St. Severus
  

• 0425: Valentinian III installed as Western Roman Emperor
  

• 0877: Death of St Ignatius of Constantinople
  

• 1260: Murder of Kotuz, Egyptian Caliph
  

• 1295: Treaty of Paris between Scotland and France against the English
  

• 1520: Coronation of Charles V as Holy Roman Emperor
  

• 1526: Election of Ferdinand I as King of Bohemia
  

• 1641: Rebellion in Ireland. Catholics, under Phelim O'Neil, rose against the Protestants and cruelly massacred men, women and children to the number of 40,000 (some say 100,000).
  

• 1707: The British Parliament met for the first time.
  

• 1764: Paris police were investigating the murder of the composer Jean-Marie Leclair. They thought Leclair's nephew stabbed him to death to steal his wife but they never found evidence for an arrest.
  

• 1783: Virginia emancipates slaves who fought for independence during the Revolutionary War.
  

• 1864: Forces led by Union General Samuel R. Curtis defeated Confederate General Stirling Price's army in Missouri.
  

• 1897: Scriabin's career got a boost when he performed his own piano concerto in Odessa.
  

• 1915: 25,000 women marched in New York City, demanding the right to vote.
  

• 1939: The first major Old West writer, Zane Gray, died.
  

• 1942: The British Eighth Army launched an offensive at El Alamein in Egypt; a World War II battle that eventually swept the Germans out of North Africa.
  

• 1944: The Battle of Leyte Gulf began.
  

• 1945: Jackie Robinson, the first black baseball player hired by a major league team, was signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers and sent to their Montreal farm team.
  

• 1946: The United Nations General Assembly convened in New York for the first time, at an auditorium in Flushing Meadow.
  

• 1947: The first husband and wife team to win Nobel Prizes, Carl and Gerty Cory of Washington University Medical School, won the prize for medicine on this day in for their work on undersstanding the conversion of sugar into glycogens.
  

• 1956: An anti-Stalinist revolt that was subsequently crushed by Soviet troops began in Hungary.
  

• 1972: Earthquakes killed more than 10,000 people in Nicaragua.
  

• 1972: The musical "Pippin" opened on Broadway.
  

• 1973: President Nixon agreed to turn White House tape recordings requested by the Watergate special prosecutor over to Judge John J. Sirica.
  

• 1978: China and Japan exchanged treaty ratification documents in Tokyo, formally ending four decades of hostility. .
  

• 1980: The resignation of Soviet Premier Alexei N. Kosygin was announced.
  

• 1983: A truck filled with explosives, driven by a Moslem terrorist, crashes into the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon. The bomb kills 237 Marines and injures 80. Almost simultaneously, a similar incident occurs at French military headquarters, where 58 die and 15 are injured.
  

• 1987: The US Senate rejected, 58-to-42, the Supreme Court nomination of Robert H. Bork.
  

• 1988: Democrat Lloyd Bentsen and the Reverend Jesse Jackson accused Republican George Bush of injecting race into the presidential campaign by focusing on prison escapee Willie Horton -- a charge a Bush spokesman labeled "absolutely ridiculous."
  

• 1989: In a case that inflamed racial tensions in Boston, Charles Stuart claimed he and his pregnant wife, Carol, had been shot in their car by a black robber. Carol Stuart and her prematurely delivered baby died; Charles Stuart later died, an apparent suicide, after he was implicated.
  

• 1989: Twenty-three people were killed in an explosion at Phillips Petroleum Company's chemical complex in Pasadena, Texas. 
  

• 1990: Deficit-reduction negotiations continued between the White House and congressional leaders. President Bush, campaigning in New England, blamed the Democratic-controlled Congress for the budget impasse. 
  

• 1991: The United States announced that all parties invited to the Middle East peace conference had accepted.
  

• 1992: President Bush announced that Vietnam had agreed to turn over all materials in its possession related to US personnel in the Vietnam War.
  

• 1992: Japanese Emperor Akihito began a visit to China, the first by a Japanese monarch.
  

• 1992: A French court convicted three former health officials of charges they knowingly allowed blood tainted with the AIDS virus to be used in transfusions.
  

• 1993: The Toronto Blue Jays repeated as baseball champions as they defeated the Philadelphia Phillies, 8-to-6, in game six of the World Series.
  

• 1993: An IRA bomb exploded in Belfast, Northern Ireland, killing ten people, including an IRA operative.
  

• 1994: A suicide bomber in Colombo, Sri Lanka, killed 50 people including Gamini Dissanayake, the opposition candidate for president.
  

• 1995: President Clinton met with Russian President Boris Yeltsin in Hyde Park, New York. The leaders agreed that Russian troops would help enforce peace in Bosnia, but remained deadlocked on the issue of NATO command. 
  

• 1995: A jury in Houston convicted Yolanda Saldivar of murdering Tejano singing star Selena. 
  

• 1996: Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole tried to persuade Ross Perot to quit the race and endorse the GOP ticket, but Perot refused.
  

• 1996: The civil trial of O.J. Simpson opened in Santa Monica, California (Simpson was later found liable in the deaths of his ex-wife, Nicole, and her friend, Ronald Goldman.)
  

• 1996: The New York Yankees tied the World Series at two games apiece, defeating the Atlanta Braves, 8-to-6.
  

• 1997: British au pair Louise Woodward, charged with murdering a baby in her care, testified at her trial in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that she'd never hurt eight-month-old Matthew Eappen, saying, "I love kids."
  

• 1997: The International Whaling Commission opened the way for an American Indian tribe, the Makah, to resume traditional whale hunts for the first time in seven decades.
  

• 1997: The Florida Marlins beat the Cleveland Indians, 8-to-7, in game five of the World Series.  
  

• 1998: Barnett Slepian, a doctor who performed abortions, was shot and killed at his home in suburban Buffalo, New York.
  

• 1998: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat signed a breakthrough land-for-peace agreement at the White House.
  

• 1998: Typhoon Babs pummeled the northern Philippines, killing at least 189 people. 
  

• 1999: Sixteen members of the Ku Klux Klan held a silent rally in New York City as thousands of counter-demonstrators jeered them. 
  

• 1999: The New York Yankees won the first game of the World Series, beating the Atlanta Braves, 4-1. (The Yankees went on to sweep the series.) . 
  

Today's History Focus

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