TODAY IN HISTORY

Today is Wednesday, October

On this day in history:

1793 - During the French Revolution, Queen Marie Antoinette was beheaded after being convicted of treason. 1837 - The first group of German migrants arrives in the new colony of South Australia. 1847 - Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte was first published in London.

1867 - James Nash sparks off the gold rush in Gympie, Queensland.

1941 - The Nazis advanced to within 60 miles of Moscow. Romanians entered Odessa, USSR, and began exterminating 150,000 Jews.

1964 - China detonated its first atomic bomb becoming the world’s fifth nuclear power. 1967 - NATO headquarters opened in Brussels.

1970 - Anwar Sadat was elected president of Egypt to succeed Gamal Abdel Nassar.

1978 - Poland’s Karol Josef Wojtyla was elected Pope John Paul II.

1982 - China announced that it had successfully fired a ballistic missile from a submarine. 1993 - The UN Security Council approved the deployment of US warships to enforce a blockade on Haiti to increase pressure on the controlling military leaders. 1994 - German Chancellor Helmut Kohl was re-elected to a fourth term.

1996 - It is reported that thieves stole a set of fossilised dinosaur footprints from a sacred Aboriginal site.

Birthdays

Noah Webster 1758

Oscar Wilde 1854

David Ben-Gurion 1886 Eugene O’Neill 1888

Linda Darnell 1921

Bert Kaempfert 1923 Angela Lansbury 1925 Gunter Grass 1927 Charles Colson 1931

Tony Anthony 1937

Nico (Velvet Underground) 1938

Barry Corbin 1940

Fred Turner (Bachman Turner Overdrive) 1943

Dwight Douglas Lewis 1945 Suzanne Somers (Mahoney) 1946

Bob Weir (Grateful Dead) 1947 Bob Collyard 1949

Tim Robbins 1958

Gary Kemp (Spandau Ballet) 1959

Flea (Red Hot Chili Peppers) 1962