TODAY IN HISTORY
TODAY IS SATURDAY, OCT. 30,
the 303rd day of 2021. There are 62 days left in the year. TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT IN HISTORY: On this date 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 1912, Vice President James S. Sherman, running for a second term 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 1921, the silent film classic “The Sheik,” starring Rudolph Valentino, premiered in Los Angeles. In 1938, the radio play “The War of the Worlds,” starring Orson Welles, aired on CBS. In 1945, the U.S. government announced the end of shoe rationing, effective at midnight. 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 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 1984, police in Poland found the body of kidnapped pro-Solidarity priest Father Jerzy Popieluszko, whose death was blamed on security officers.
In 1995, by a vote of 50.6% to 49.4%, Federalists prevailed over separatists in a Quebec secession referendum. 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 2002, Jam Master Jay (Jason Mizell), a rapper with the hip-hop group RunDMC, was killed in a shooting in New York. He was 37. 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 84. Rock singer Grace Slick and songwriter Eddie Holland are 82. R&B singer Otis Williams (The Temptations) is 80. Actor Joanna Shimkus is 78. Actor Henry Winkler is 76. Broadcast journalist Andrea Mitchell and rock musician Chris Slade (Asia) are 75. Country/rock musician Timothy B. Schmit (The Eagles) is 74. Actor Leon Rippy is 72. Actor Harry Hamlin is 70. Actor Charles Martin Smith is 68. Country singer T. Graham Brown is 67. Actor Kevin Pollak is 64. Rock singermusician Jerry De Borg (Jesus Jones) is 61. Actor Michael Beach is 58. Rock singer-musician Gavin Rossdale (Bush) is 56. Actor Jack Plotnick is 53. Comedian Ben Bailey, and actors Billy Brown and Nia Long are 51. Country singer Kassidy Osborn (SHeDAISY) is 45. Actors Gael Garcia Bernal and Matthew Morrison are 43. Business executive and former presidential adviser Ivanka Trump, and actors Fiona Dourif and Shaun Sipos are 40. Actor Tasso Feldman is 38. Actor Janel Parrish is 33. Actor Tequan Richmond is 29. Actor Kennedy McMann is 25.