TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON: OCTOBER 4
1537 The 1st complete English-language Bible, the “Matthew Bible” is printed, with translations by William Tyndale and Miles Coverdale
1777 At Germantown, Pa., British General Sir William Howe repels George Washington’s last attempt to retake Philadelphia, compelling Washington to spend the winter at Valley Forge.
1795 General Napoleon Bonaparte leads the rout of counterrevolutionaries in the streets of Paris, beginning his rise to power.
1874 Kiowa leader Satanta, known as “the Orator of the Plains,” surrenders in Darlington, Texas. He is later sent to the state penitentiary, where he commits suicide October 11, 1878.
1883 The Orient Express departs on its first official journey from Paris to Istanbul
1915 The Dinosaur National Monument was established. The area covered part of Utah and Colorado.
1933 “Esquire” magazine was published for the first time.
1941 Willie Gillis Jr., a fictional everyman created by illustrator Norman Rockwell, makes his first appearance, on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post; a series of illustrations on several magazines’ covers would depict young Gillis throughout World War II.
1943 US captures the Solomon Islands in the Pacific.
1965 Pope Paul VI made the first visit to the Western Hemisphere by a reigning pope. He came to New York to address the UN General Assembly.
1976 In Gregg v. Georgia, the U.S. Supreme Court lifts the ban on the death sentence in murder cases. This restores the legality of capital punishment, which had not been practiced since 1967. The first execution following this ruling was Gary Gilmore in 1977.
1984 US govt closes down due to budget problems
1987 1st “Scrub Sunday” of NFL football with replacement players
1992 Mozambique’s 16-year civil war ends with the Rome General Peace Accords.
1993 Russian Vice-President Alexander Rutskoi and Chairman Ruslan Khasbulatov surrendered to Boris Yeltsin after a ten-hour tank assault on the Russian White House. The two men had barricaded themselves in after Yeltsin called for general elections and dissolved the legislative body.
1997 Hundreds of thousands of men attended a Promise Keepers rally on the Mall in Washington, DC.
2001 NATO granted the United States open access to their airfields and seaports and agreed to deploy ships and early-warning radar planes in the war on terrorism.
2002 John Walker Lindh, the “American Taliban,” received a 20-year sentence.
2004 SpaceShipOne reached an altitude of 368,000 feet. It was the first privately built, manned rocket ship to fly in space twice within a two week window. The ship won the Ansari X Prize of $10 million dollars for their success.
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
