TODAY HISTORY IN
Today is Saturday, Oct. 12, the 285th day of 2019. There are 80 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History: On Oct. 12, 1984, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher escaped an attempt on her life when an Irish Republican Army bomb exploded at a hotel in Brighton, England, killing five people. On this date:
■ In 1492 (according to the Old Style calendar), Christopher Columbus’ expedition arrived in the present-day Bahamas.
■ In 1810, the German festival Oktoberfest was first held in Munich to celebrate the wedding of Bavarian Crown Prince Ludwig and Princess Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen.
■ In 1870, General Robert E. Lee died in Lexington, Va., at age 63.
■ In 1942, during World War II, American naval forces defeated the Japanese in the Battle of Cape Esperance. Attorney General Francis Biddle announced during a Columbus Day celebration at Carnegie Hall in New York that Italian nationals in the United States would no longer be considered enemy aliens.
■ In 1973, President Richard Nixon nominated House minority leader Gerald R. Ford of Michigan to succeed Spiro T. Agnew as vice president.
■ In 1976, it was announced in China that Hua Guofeng had been named to succeed the late Mao Zedong as chairman of the Communist Party; it was also announced that Mao’s widow and three others, known as the “Gang of Four,” had been arrested.
■ In 1997, singer John Denver was killed in the crash of his privately built aircraft in Monterey Bay, California; he was 53.
■ In 2000, 17 sailors were killed in a suicide bomb attack on the destroyer USS Cole in Yemen.
■ In 2001, NBC announced that an assistant to anchorman Tom Brokaw had contracted the skin form of anthrax after opening a “threatening” letter to her boss containing powder.
■ In 2002, bombs blamed on al-Qaida-linked militants destroyed a nightclub on the Indonesian island of Bali, killing 202 people, including 88 Australians and seven Americans.
■ In 2007, Former Vice President Al Gore and the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change won the Nobel Peace Prize for sounding the alarm over global warming.
Five years ago: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed that a health care worker at the Texas hospital where Ebola victim Thomas Eric Duncan was treated before his death had tested positive for the illness in the first known case of Ebola being contracted or transmitted in the U.S. (The worker, later identified as nurse Nina Pham, was treated and declared free of Ebola.)
Today’s Birthdays: Broadcast journalist Chris Wallace is 72. Actress-singer Susan Anton is
69. Rhythm-and-blues singer Claude McKnight (Take 6) is 57. Rock singer Bob Schneider is 54. Actor Hugh Jackman is 51. Actor Adam Rich is 51. Country musician Martie Maguire (Courtyard Hounds, The Dixie Chicks) is
50. Actor Kirk Cameron is 49. Olympic gold medal skier Bode Miller is 42.
Thought for Today: “The want of logic annoys. Too much logic bores. Life eludes logic, and everything that logic alone constructs remains artificial and forced.” — Andre Gide, French author and critic (1869-1951).