TODAY IN HISTORY
1885: Poet Ezra Pound was born in Hailey, Idaho.
1912: Vice President James S. Sherman, running for a second term of office with President William Howard Taft, died six days before Election Day. (Sherman was replaced with Nicholas Murray Butler, but Taft, the Republican candidate, ended up losing in an Electoral College landslide to Democrat Woodrow Wilson.)
1938: The radio play “The War of the Worlds,” starring Orson Welles, aired on CBS.
1945: The U.S. government announced the end of shoe rationing, effective at midnight.
1961: The Soviet Union tested a hydrogen bomb, the “Tsar Bomba,” with a force estimated at about 50 megatons. The Soviet Party Congress unanimously approved a resolution ordering the removal of Josef Stalin’s body from Lenin’s tomb.
1972: 45 people were killed when an Illinois Central Gulf commuter train was struck from behind by another train on Chicago’s South Side.
1974: Muhammad Ali knocked out George Foreman in the eighth round of a 15-round bout in Kinshasa, Zaire, known as the “Rumble in the Jungle,” to regain his world heavyweight title.
1975: The New York Daily News ran the headline “Ford to City: Drop Dead” a day after President Gerald R. Ford said he would veto any proposed federal bailout of New York City.
1995: By a razor-thin vote of 50.6 percent to 49.4 percent, Federalists prevailed over separatists in a Quebec secession referendum.
2000: Comedian, television host, author and composer Steve Allen died in Encino, California, at age 78.
2001: Ukraine destroyed its last nuclear missile silo, fulfilling a pledge to give up the vast nuclear arsenal it had inherited after the breakup of the former Soviet Union.
2005: The body of Rosa Parks arrived at the U.S. Capitol, where the civil rights icon became the first woman to lie in honor in the Rotunda; President George W. Bush and congressional leaders paused to lay wreaths by her casket.
2013: The Boston Red Sox romped to their third World Series championship in 10 seasons, thumping the St. Louis Cardinals 6-1 in Game 6 at Fenway.