TODAY IN HISTORY
On Oct. 3, 1967, folk singersongwriter Woody Guthrie, the Dust Bowl Troubadour best known for "This Land Is Your Land," died in New York of complications from Huntington's disease; he was 55.
On this date:
In 1789, President George Washington declared Nov. 26, 1789, a day of Thanksgiving to express gratitude for the creation of the United States of America.
In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday in November Thanksgiving Day.
In 1922, Rebecca L. Felton, D-Ga., became the first woman to be appointed to the U.S. Senate (however, she served only a day).
In 1932, Iraq became independent of British administration.
In 1941, Adolf Hitler declared in a speech in Berlin that Russia had been "broken" and would "never rise again."
In 1951, the New York Giants captured the National League pennant by a score of 54 as Bobby Thomson hit a threerun homer off Ralph Branca of the Brooklyn Dodgers in the "shot heard 'round the world."
In 1962, astronaut Wally Schirra became the fifth American to fly in space as he blasted off from Cape Canaveral aboard the Sigma 7 on a 9-hour flight.
In 1974, Frank Robinson was named major league baseball's first black manager as he was placed in charge of the Cleveland Indians.
In 1981, Irish nationalists at the Maze Prison near Belfast, Northern Ireland, ended seven months of hunger strikes that had claimed 10 lives.
In 1992, Barack Obama married Michelle Robinson at the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.
In 1995, the jury in the O.J. Simpson murder trial in Los Angeles found the former football star not guilty of the 1994 slayings of his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ronald Goldman (however, Simpson was later found liable for damages in a civil trial).
In 2008, O.J. Simpson was found guilty of robbing two sports-memorabilia dealers at gunpoint in a Las Vegas hotel room. (Simpson was later sentenced to nine to 33 years in prison; he was granted parole in July 2017 and released from prison on Oct. 1.)
Ten years ago: North Korea agreed to provide a complete list of its nuclear programs and disable its facilities at its main reactor complex by Dec. 31, 2007 (however, North Korea later said it would move to restore its nuclear reactor, saying the United States had failed to follow through with promised incentives).