TODAY IN HISTORY
Today is Wednesday, Nov. 1, the 305th day of 2017. There are 60 days left in the year. This is All Saints Day.
Today’s Highlight in History
On Nov. 1, 1512, Michelangelo’s just-completed paintings on the ceiling of the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel were publicly unveiled by the artist’s patron, Pope Julius II.
On this date
1478 — The Spanish Inquisition was established.
1604 — William Shakespeare’s tragedy “Othello” was presented at Whitehall Palace in London.
1765 — The Stamp Act, passed by the British Parliament, went into effect, prompting stiff resistance from American colonists.
1861 — During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln named Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan General-in-Chief of the Union armies, succeeding Lt. Gen. Winfield Scott.
1936 — In a speech in Milan, Italy, Benito Mussolini described the alliance between his country and Nazi Germany as an “axis” running between Rome and Berlin.
1949 — An Eastern Airlines DC-4 collided in midair with a Lockheed P-38 fighter plane near Washington National Airport, killing all 55 people aboard the DC-4 and seriously injuring the pilot of the P-38.
1950 — Two Puerto Rican nationalists tried to force their way into Blair House in Washington, D.C., in a failed attempt to assassinate President Harry S. Truman. (One of the pair was killed, along with a White House police officer.)
1952 — The United States exploded the first hydrogen bomb, code-named “Ivy Mike,” at Enewetak Atoll in the Marshall Islands.
1967 — The prison drama “Cool Hand Luke,” starring Paul Newman, was released by Warner Bros.-Seven Arts.
1989 — East Germany reopened its border with Czechoslovakia, prompting tens of thousands of refugees to flee to the West.
1991 — Clarence Thomas took his place as the newest justice on the Supreme Court. 2012 — Two Floyd County detectives, Lt. Dana Collum and Sgt. Dan Bickers, rescued a bed-ridden woman from her smoke-filled house on Southern Woods Drive. (The fire was started when a lit cigarette got too close to an oxygen tank.)
Ten years ago
Less than a week after workers ratified a new contract, Chrysler announced 12,000 job cuts, or about 15 percent of its work force.
One year ago
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon fired the commander of the peacekeeping force in South Sudan after an independent investigation sharply criticized the military response to deadly attacks in July on a U.N. compound housing 27,000 displaced people.
Most of an African-American church in Greenville, Mississippi, was destroyed by an arson fire; the building was spray-painted with the words “Vote Trump.”