TODAY IN HISTORY
TODAY IS WEDNESDAY, OCT. 30, the 303rd day of 2019. There are 62 days left in the year.
ON THIS DATE IN 1912, Vice President James S. Sherman, running for a second term of office with President William Howard Taft, died six days before Election Day. (Sherman was replaced with Nicholas Murray Butler, but Taft, the Republican candidate, ended up losing in an Electoral College landslide to Democrat Woodrow Wilson.)
In 1735 (New Style calendar), the second president of the United States, John Adams, was born in Braintree, Massachusetts.
In 1961, the Soviet Union tested a hydrogen bomb, the “Tsar Bomba,” with a force estimated at about 50 megatons. The Soviet Party Congress unanimously approved a resolution ordering the removal of Josef Stalin’s body from Lenin’s tomb.
In 1972, 45 people were killed when an Illinois Central Gulf commuter train was struck from behind by another train on Chicago’s South Side.
In 1974, Muhammad Ali knocked out George Foreman in the eighth round of a 15-round bout in Kinshasa, Zaire, known as the “Rumble in the Jungle,” to regain his world heavyweight title.
In 1975, the New York Daily News ran the headline “Ford to City: Drop Dead” a day after President Gerald R. Ford said he would veto any proposed federal bailout of New York City.
In 1979, President Carter announced his choice of federal appeals judge Shirley Hufstedler to head the newly created Department of Education.
In 1985, schoolteacher-astronaut Christa McAuliffe witnessed the launch of the space shuttle Challenger, the same craft that would carry her and six other crew members to their deaths in Jan. 1986.
In 1995, by a razor-thin vote of 50.6% to 49.4%, Federalists prevailed over separatists in a Quebec secession referendum.
In 1997, a jury in Cambridge, Massachusetts, convicted British au pair Louise Woodward of second-degree murder in the death of eight-monthold Matthew Eappen. (The judge, Hiller B. Zobel, later reduced the verdict to manslaughter and set Woodward free.)
In 2001, Ukraine destroyed its last nuclear missile silo, fulfilling a pledge to give up the vast nuclear arsenal it had inherited after the breakup of the former Soviet Union.
In 2005, the body of Rosa Parks arrived at the U.S. Capitol, where the civil rights icon became the first woman to lie in honor in the Rotunda; President George W. Bush and congressional leaders paused to lay wreaths by her casket.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS: Movie director Claude Lelouch is 82. Rock singer Grace Slick and songwriter Eddie Holland are 80. Rhythm-and-blues singer Otis Williams (The Temptations) is 78. Actress Joanna Shimkus is 76. Actor Henry Winkler is 74. Broadcast journalist Andrea Mitchell and rock musician Chris Slade (Asia) are 73. Country/rock musician Timothy B. Schmit (The Eagles) is 72. Actor Leon Rippy is 70. Actor Harry Hamlin is 68. Actor Charles Martin Smith is 66. Country singer T. Graham Brown is 65. Actor Kevin Pollak is 62. Rock singermusician Jerry De Borg (Jesus Jones) is 59. Actor Michael Beach is 56. Rock singer-musician Gavin Rossdale (Bush) is 54. Actor Jack Plotnick is 51. Comedian Ben Bailey, actor Billy Brown and actress Nia Long are 49. Country singer Kassidy Osborn (SHeDAISY) is 43. Actors Gael Garcia Bernal and Matthew Morrison are 41. Business executive and presidential adviser Ivanka Trump, actress Fiona Dourif and actor Shaun Sipos are 38. Actor Tasso Feldman is 36. Actress Janel Parrish is 31. Actor Tequan Richmond is 27. Actress Kennedy McMann is 23.