Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Today in history
On Oct. 23, 1835, Adlai E. Stevenson, who would become the 22nd vice president, was born in Christian County, Ky. (He would serve in the second administration of Grover Cleveland, from 1893 to 1897.) In 1864 Union forces led by Gen. Samuel Curtis defeated Gen. Stirling Price’s army in Missouri. In 1869 John William Heisman, the coach who revolutionized the game of college football, was born in Cleveland. In 1910 Blanche Scott became the first woman to fly solo when her airplane rose 12 feet over a park in Fort Wayne, Ind. In 1915 25,000 women marched in New York to demand the right to vote. In 1925 longtime “Tonight Show” host Johnny Carson was born in Corning, Iowa. In 1940 soccer legend Pele was born Edson Arantes do Nascimento in Tres Coracoes, Brazil. In 1942 the British 8th Army attacked Axis forces to begin the key Battle of El Alamein in
Egypt during World War II. Also in 1942 writer Michael Crichton was born in Chicago. In 1944 the Battle of Leyte Gulf began in the Philippines. In 1946 the United Nations General Assembly convened in New York for the first time, in an auditorium in Flushing Meadows. In 1973 President Richard Nixon reversed himself and agreed to turn over the Watergate tapes to U.S. District Judge John Sirica.
In 1980 the resignation of Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin was announced.
In 1983, 241 American Marines and sailors in Lebanon were killed when a terrorist crashed a truck loaded with explosives into the U.S. compound at Beirut International Airport; a nearly simultaneous attack on French forces killed 58 paratroopers. In 1984 “NBC Nightly News” aired BBC television footage of the drought in Ethiopia, resulting in an outpouring of charitable contributions.
In 1987 the Senate rejected the Supreme Court nomination of Robert Bork 58-42.
In 1991 Cambodia’s warring factions and representatives of 18 other nations signed a peace treaty in Paris.
In 1993 the Toronto Blue Jays repeated as baseball champions as they defeated the Philadelphia Phillies 8-6 in Game 6 of the World Series. In 1995 a Houston jury convicted Yolanda Saldivar of
In 1996 the civil trial of O.J. Simpson opened in Santa Monica, Calif. (Simpson later was found liable in the deaths of his ex-wife, Nicole, and her friend Ronald Goldman.) In 1998, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat signed a land-forpeace agreement at the White House, following nine days of talks in Wye River, Md.
In 2001 anthrax was found on the machinery at a military base that sorts mail for the White House. Also in 2001 the Irish Republican Army announced that it had begun to disarm for the first time. In 2002 gunmen seized a Moscow theater, taking hundreds hostage and threatening to kill them unless the Russian army pulled out of Chechnya.