TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY IS MONDAY, OCT. 14, the 287th day of 2019. There are 78 days left in the year. Today’s Highlight in History: On Oct. 14, 1947, U.S. Air Force Capt. Charles E. (“Chuck”) Yeager became the first test pilot to break the sound barrier when he flew the experimental Bell XS-1 (later X-1) rocket plane over Muroc Dry Lake in California.

In 1939, a German U-boat torpedoed and sank the HMS Royal Oak, a British battleship anchored at Scapa Flow in Scotland’s Orkney Islands; 833 of the more than 1,200 men aboard were killed.

In 1964, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was named winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

In 1968, the first successful live telecast from a manned U.S. spacecraft was transmitted from Apollo 7. In 1987, a 58-hour drama began in Midland, Texas, as 18-month-old Jessica McClure slid 22 feet down a narrow abandoned well; she was rescued on Oct. 16.

In 2001, as U.S. jets opened a second week of raids in Afghanistan, President George W. Bush rejected a Taliban

offer to hand Osama bin Laden over to a third country.

In 2003, John Allen Muhammad pleaded not guilty to murder as the first trial in the Washington-area sniper case began in Virginia Beach, Va. Muhammad was convicted of killing Dean Harold Meyers and executed in 2009.

In 2017, a truck bombing in Somalia’s capital killed more than 500 people in one of the world’s deadliest attacks; officials blamed the extremist group al-Shabab and said it was meant to target Mogadishu’s international airport, but the bomb detonated in a crowded street after soldiers opened fire.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS: Country singer Melba Montgomery is 82. Fashion designer Ralph Lauren is 80. Singer Sir Cliff Richard is 79. Singer-musician Justin Hayward (The Moody Blues) is 73. Actor Greg Evigan is 66. Singermusician Thomas Dolby is 61. Actress Lori Petty is 56. Actor Steve Coogan is 54. Singer Karyn White is 54. Actor Edward Kerr is 53. Actor Jon Seda is 49. Actor Ben Whishaw is 39.