TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY IS THURSDAY, OCT. 12,

the 285th day of 2017. There are 80 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT IN HISTORY:

On this date in 1492 (according to the Old Style calendar), Christopher Columbus’ expedition arrived in the present-day Bahamas.

In 1792,

the first recorded U.S. celebration of Columbus Day was held to mark the tricentennial of Christopher Columbus’ landing.

In 1810,

the German festival Oktoberfest was first held in Munich to celebrate the wedding of Bavarian Crown Prince Ludwig and Princess Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen.

In 1915,

English nurse Edith Cavell was executed by a German firing squad for helping Allied soldiers escape from occupied Belgium during World War I.

In 1933,

bank robber John Dillinger escaped from a jail in Allen County, Ohio, with the help of his gang, who killed the sheriff, Jess Sarber.

In 1964,

the Soviet Union launched a Voskhod space capsule with a threeman crew on the first mission involving more than one crew member (the flight lasted just over 24 hours).

In 1984,

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher escaped an attempt on her life when an Irish Republican Army bomb exploded at a hotel in Brighton, England, killing five people.

In 1997,

singer John Denver was killed in the crash of his privately built aircraft in Monterey Bay, Calif.; he was 53.

In 2000,

17 sailors were killed in a suicide bomb attack on the destroyer USS Cole in Yemen.

In 2002,

bombs blamed on al-Qaidalinked militants destroyed a nightclub on the Indonesian island of Bali, killing 202 people, including 88 Australians and seven Americans.