TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT Oct. 5, 1986

In an incident that helped expose the Iran-Contra affair, a plane secretly ferrying supplies to Nicaraguan Contra rebels was shot down over southern Nicaragua by Sandinista forces. One of the plane’s occupants, Eugene Hasenfus, parachuted to safety while three other men were killed. Hasenfus was captured, tried and convicted in Nicaragua, but then was pardoned and allowed to return to the United States.

ALSO ON THIS DATE 1947

President Harry S. Truman delivered the first televised White House address as he spoke on the world food crisis.

1969

The British TV comedy program “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” made its debut on BBC 1.

1990

A jury in Cincinnati acquitted an art gallery and its director of obscenity charges stemming from an exhibit of sexually graphic photographs by the late Robert Mapplethorpe.