HIGHLIGHTS IN HISTORY
Today’s highlight:
On Oct. 4, 1957, The Space Age began as the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, into orbit.
On this date:
1777: Gen. George Washington’s troops launched an assault on the British at Germantown, Pennsylvania, resulting in heavy American casualties.
1861: During the Civil War, the United States Navy authorized construction of the first ironclad ship, the USS
Monitor.
1959: The Soviet Union launched Luna 3, a space probe which transmitted images of the far side of the moon.
1960: An Eastern Air Lines Lockheed L-188A Electra crashed on takeoff from Boston’s Logan International Airport, killing all but 10 of the 72 people on board.
1990: For the first time in nearly six decades, German lawmakers met in the Reichstag for the first meeting of reunified Germany’s parliament.
1991: Twenty-six nations, including the United States, signed the Madrid Protocol, which imposed a 50-year ban on oil exploration and mining in Antarctica.
2002: “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh received a 20-year sentence after a sobbing plea for forgiveness before a federal judge in Alexandria, Virginia. In a federal court in Boston, a laughing Richard Reid pleaded guilty to trying to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight with explosives in his shoes. (The British citizen was later sentenced to life in prison.) 2004: The SpaceShipOne rocket plane broke through Earth’s atmosphere to the edge of space for the second time in five days, capturing the $10 million Ansari X prize aimed at opening the final frontier to tourists. Pioneering astronaut Gordon Cooper died in Ventura, California, at age 77. Ten years ago: The U.S. military said it had killed an al-Qaida in Iraq leader (Mahir Ahmad Mahmud al-Zubaydi) suspected of masterminding one of the deadliest attacks in Baghdad, several other recent bombings and the 2006 videotaped killing of a Russian official.
Five years ago:
Vo Nguyen Giap, the military commander who’d led Vietnamese Communist forces against the French and then the Americans, died in Hanoi at age 102. One year ago: Four U.S. soldiers were killed in the African country of Niger when a joint patrol of U.S. and Niger forces was ambushed by militants who were believed linked to the Islamic State group.