Oct 7 in History

1806 — Carbon paper is patented in London by inventor Ralph Wedgewood.

1849 — American writer Edgar Allan Poe, 40, dies a tragic death in Baltimore. Four days earlier, on the day of a municipal election, he was found in a delirious condition outside Ryan’s Fourth Ward Poll. It was associated with cooping, a form of voter fraud in the US during the 19th century in which unsuspecting victims were drugged and forced to vote, often several times at different polling places, for a particular candidate — until being left for dead. Admitted to the Washington Medical College, Poe is never coherent long enough to explain what happened or why he was wearing clothes that were not his. All medical records, including his death certificate, have been lost. His actual cause of death remains a mystery, leading to widespread speculation. About a decade after his death, his friend John Ruben Thompson wrote a lecture reporting that being cooped contributed to Poe’s death.

1931 — Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, winner of the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize, is born in Klerksdorp. 1949 — The German Democratic Republic (East Germany) is established with Wilhelm Pieck as president and Otto Grotewohl as minister president. 1952 — Vladimir Putin, president of Russia, is born in Leningrad.

1959 — Mario Lanza, 38, opera and film star, dies of a heart attack in a clinic in Rome where he underwent a controversial weight-loss programme colloquially known as “the twilight sleep treatment”, which required patients to be kept immobile and sedated for prolonged periods.

1959 — The space probe Luna 3 takes the first photographs of the far side of the moon. The radiocontrolled Luna 3 was part of the USSR’s highly successful lunar programme, which completed 20 missions to the moon between January 1959 and October 1970.

1982 — The Andrew Lloyd Webber musical “Cats”, featuring the popular song “Memory”, opens on Broadway at Winter Garden Theater. It closes on September 10 2000 after 7,485 performances. Having premiered at the New London Theatre in the West End on May 11 1981, it runs for 8,949 performances and closes on May 11 2002.

1992 — The Ubykh language of the Northeastern Caucasus becomes extinct when Tevfik Esenç, 88, a Circassian exile in Turkey and the last known fully competent speaker of the language, dies in Haciosman, Manyas.

2011 — The Dutch government says it will move to reclassify high-potency marijuana alongside hard drugs such as cocaine and ecstasy.