Today in history
Today is Friday, Oct. 13, the 286th day of 2017. There are 79 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History
On Oct. 13, 1792, the cornerstone of the executive mansion, later known as the White House, was laid by President George Washington during a ceremony in the District of Columbia.
On this date
In A.D. 54, Roman Emperor Claudius I died, poisoned apparently at the behest of his wife, Agrippina.
In 1307, King Philip IV of France ordered the arrests of Knights Templar on charges of heresy.
In 1775, the United States Navy had its origins as the Continental Congress ordered the construction of a naval fleet.
In 1843, the Jewish organization B’nai B’rith (buhNAY’ brith) was founded in New York City.
In 1932, President Herbert Hoover and Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes laid the cornerstone for the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington.
In 1944, during World War II, American troops entered Aachen, Germany.
In 1957, CBS-TV broadcast “The Edsel Show,” a one-hour live special starring Bing Crosby designed to promote the new, illfated Ford automobile. (It was the first special to use new videotape technology to delay the broadcast to the West Coast.)
In 1962, Edward Albee’s four-character drama “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” opened on Broadway.
In 1972, a Uruguayan chartered flight carrying 45 people crashed in the Andes; survivors resorted to feeding off the remains of some of the dead in order to stay alive until they were rescued more than two months later.
In 1981, voters in Egypt participated in a referendum to elect Vice President Hosni Mubarak (HAHS’nee moo-BAH’-rahk) the new president, one week after the assassination of Anwar Sadat.
In 1999, the Senate rejected the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, with 48 senators voting in favor and 51 against, far short of the 67 needed for ratification. In Boulder, Colorado, the JonBenet Ramsey grand jury was dismissed after 13 months of work with prosecutors saying there wasn’t enough evidence to charge anyone in the 6-year-old beauty queen’s 1996 slaying.
In 2010, rescuers in Chile using a missile-like escape capsule pulled 33 men one by one to fresh air and freedom 69 days after they were trapped in a collapsed mine a half-mile underground.
Ten years ago: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, after meeting with humanrights activists in Moscow, told reporters the Russian government under Vladimir Putin had amassed so much central authority that the power-grab could undermine its commitment to democracy.
Five years ago: Republicans Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan rallied college students in all corners of allimportant Ohio and hammered at President Barack Obama for going easy on China over unfair trade practices; Obama took precious time off the campaign trail to practice for the next debate against his GOP rival. The Detroit Tigers beat the New York Yankees 6-4 in the first game of the American League Championship Series. Actor and TV host Gary Collins, 74, died in Biloxi, Mississippi.
One year ago: Donald Trump heatedly rejected the growing list of sexual assault allegations against him as “pure fiction,” hammering his female accusers as “horrible, horrible liars.” Bob Dylan was named winner of the Nobel prize in literature. Death claimed Thailand’s longtime monarch, King Bhumibol, at age 88 and Nobel Prize-winning Italian playwright Dario Fo at age 90.