TODAY IN HISTORY

Today is Tuesday, Oct. 23, the 296th day of 2018.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

On Oct. 23, 1983, 241 U.S. service members, most of them Marines, were killed in a suicide truck-bombing at Beirut International Airport in Lebanon; a near-simultaneous attack on French forces killed 58 paratroopers.

ON THIS DATE

In 1707, the first Parliament of Great Britain, created by the Acts of Union between England and Scotland, held its first meeting.

In 1915, tens of thousands of women paraded up Fifth Avenue in New York City, demanding the right to vote.

In 1942, during World War

II, Britain launched a major offensive against Axis forces at El Alamein (el ah-lahMAYN’) in Egypt, resulting in an Allied victory.

In 1944, the World War II Battle of Leyte (LAY’-tee) Gulf began, resulting in a major Allied victory against Japanese forces.

In 1956, a student-sparked revolt against Hungary’s Communist rule began; as the revolution spread, Soviet forces started entering the country, and the uprising was put down within weeks.

In 1958, Boris Pasternak was named winner of the Nobel Prize in literature. (However, Soviet authorities pressured Pasternak into relinquishing the award.)

In 1973, President Richard Nixon agreed to turn over White House tape recordings subpoenaed by the Watergate special prosecutor to Judge John J. Sirica. In 1987, the U.S. Senate rejected, 58-42, the Supreme Court nomination of Robert H. Bork. In 1991, Cambodia’s warring factions and representatives of 18 other nations signed a

peace treaty in Paris. In 1995, a jury in Houston convicted Yolanda Saldivar of murdering Tejano singing star Selena. (Saldivar is serving a life prison sentence.) In 2001, the nation’s anthrax scare hit the White House with the discovery of a small concentration of spores at an offsite mail processing center.

In 2006, former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling was sentenced by a federal judge in Houston to 24 years, four months for his role in the company’s collapse. Eventually 10 years was cut off Skilling’s prison sentence, and he was released to a halfway house in Aug. 2018.

Ten years ago: Badgered by lawmakers on the House Oversight Committee, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan denied the nation’s economic crisis was his fault but conceded the meltdown had revealed a flaw in a lifetime of economic thinking and left him in a “state of shocked disbelief.”

Five years ago: A defensive Obama administration acknowledged its problemplagued health insurance website didn’t get enough testing before going live; it said technicians were deep into the job of fixing major computer snags, but provided no timetable.

One year ago: New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced a civil rights investigation into the Weinstein Co., amid sexual harassment and assault allegations against its founder, Harvey Weinstein.

THOUGHT FOR TODAY

“Be content with what you are, and wish not change; nor dread your last day, nor long for it.” — Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor (CE 121-CE 180).