Today in history

Today is Saturday, Oct. 3, the 277th day of 2020. There are 89 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On Oct. 3, 1995, the jury in the O. J. Simpson murder trial in Los Angeles found the former football star not guilty of the 1994 slayings of his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ronald Goldman (however, Simpson was later found liable for damages in a civil trial).

On this date:

In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday in November Thanksgiving Day.

In 1941, Adolf Hitler declared in a speech in Berlin that Russia had been “broken” and would “never rise again.”

In 1961, “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” also starring Mary Tyler Moore, made its debut on CBS.

In 1967, folk singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie, the Dust Bowl Troubadour best known for “This Land Is Your Land,” died in New York of complications from Huntington’s disease; he was 55.

In 1970, the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) was established under the Department of Commerce.

In 1974, Frank Robinson was named major league baseball’s first Black manager as he was placed in charge of the Cleveland Indians.

In 1981, Irish nationalists at the Maze Prison near Belfast, Northern Ireland, ended seven months of hunger strikes that had claimed 10 lives.

In 2001, the Senate approved an agreement normalizing trade between the United States and Vietnam.

In 2003, a tiger attacked magician Roy Horn of duo “Siegfried & Roy” during a performance in Las Vegas, leaving the superstar illusionist in critical condition on his 59th birthday.

In 2008, O. J. Simpson was found guilty of robbing two sports-memorabilia dealers at gunpoint in a Las Vegas hotel room. (Simpson was later sentenced to nine to 33 years in prison; he was granted parole in July 2017 and released from prison in October of that year.)