TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – OCT 26
1774 The First Continental Congress of the U.S. adjourned in Philadelphia.
1825 The Erie Canal, connecting Lake Erie to the Hudson River, opened.
1881 Three Earp brothers and Doc Holliday have a shootout with the Clantons and McLaurys at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona Territory.
1918 Germany’s supreme commander, General Erich Ludendorff, resigns, protesting the terms to which the German Government has agreed in negotiating the armistice. This sets the stage for his later support for Hitler and the Nazis, who claim that Germany did not lose the war on the battlefield but were “stabbed in the back” by politicians.
1944 Harry S. Truman, while campaigning as the Democratic vice presidential nominee has told reporters he never was, am not and never will be a member of the Ku Klux Klan.
1955 The Village Voice is first published, backed in part by Norman Mailer.
1957 The Russian government announces that Marshal Georgi Zhukov, the nation’s most prominent military hero, has been relieved of his duties as Minister of Defense. Khrushchev accused Zhukov as promoting his own “cult of personality” and saw him as a threat to his own popularity.
1959 The first photographs are seen on earth of the far side of the moon when the Lunik III, a Soviet satellite which are sent back to earth via radio signals.
1967 Future US Senator and Presidential Candidate, John McCain, a US Navy pilot in the Vietnam war, is shot down over North Vietnam and spends the next 5 1/2 years in prison, two of those years were spent in solitary confinement.
1977 Last natural case of smallpox discovered in Merca district, Somalia. Considered the anniversary of the eradication of smallpox, the most spectacular success of vaccination
1979 The President of South Korea, Park Chung-hee, asssinated by Kim Jae-kyu, head of the country’s Central intelligence Agency; Choi Kyu-ha is named acting president.
1984 Baby Fae received a heart from a baboon. While the operation was successful, Baby Fae’s body rejected the heart, and she died a few weeks later.
1988 Roussel Uclaf, a French pharmaceutical company, announced it was halting the worldwide distribution of RU-486. The pill is used to induce abortions. The French government made the company reverse itself two days later.
1990 The U.S. State Department issued a warning that terrorists could be planning an attack on a passenger ship or aircraft.
1993 Deborah Gore Dean was convicted of 12 felony counts of defrauding the U.S. government and lying to the U.S. Congress. Dean was a central figure in the Reagan-era HUD scandal.
1996 Federal prosecutors cleared Richard Jewell as a suspect in the Olympic park bombing.
2001 The USA PATRIOT Act signed into law by Pres. George W. Bush, greatly expanding intelligence and legal agencies’ ability to utilize wiretaps, records searches and surveillance.
2002 Russian Spetsnaz storm the Moscow Theatre, where Chechen terrorists had taken the audience and performers hostage three days earlier; 50 terrorists and 150 hostages die in the assault.
2013 Sixteen people identified as hostile rebels were hanged in Iran. The hangings were in retaliation for the deaths of fourteen border guards who were killed in an ambush.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
