TODAY IN HISTORY

On Oct. 11, 1776, the first naval battle of Lake Champlain was fought during the American Revolution. Gen. Benedict Arnold commanded American forces, which suffered heavy losses but stalled the English.

In 1868 Thomas A. Edison filed papers for his first invention, an electrical voice recorder to speed the tabulation of votes in Congress. (Congress would reject it.)

In 1884 Eleanor Roosevelt was born in New York City. (She later became the nation’s first lady as the wife of distant cousin Franklin D. Roosevelt.)

In 1932 the Democratic National Committee sponsored a television program from New York. It was the nation’s first political telecast.

In 1958 the lunar probe Pioneer 1 was launched. Failing to travel as far as planned, it fell back toward the Earth and burned up in the atmosphere.

In 1962 Pope John XXIII convened the first session of the Roman Catholic Church’s 21st Ecumenical Council, known as Vatican II.

In 1968 Apollo 7, the first manned mission of the Apollo series, was launched with astronauts Wally Schirra, Donn Eisele and R. Walter Cunningham.

Also in 1968 Panama’s National Guard staged a bloodless coup, ousting President Arnulfo Arias.

In 1976 reports from China said Mao Zedong’s widow, Jiang Qing, and three others had been arrested. (They would be denounced as the Gang of Four.)

In 1984 space shuttle astronaut Kathy Sullivan became the first American woman to perform a space walk.

Also in 1984 fugitive financier Marc Rich agreed to pay the U.S. government nearly $200 million, which was, at the time, the biggest tax-fraud penalty in U.S. history.

In 1986 President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev opened two days of talks in Reykjavik, Iceland, on issues of arms control and human rights.

In 1991 comedian and actor Redd Foxx died in Los Angeles; he was 68.