Today in history

Today is Friday, Oct. 30, the 304th day of 2020. There are 62 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On Oct. 30, 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 laywreaths by her casket.

On this date:

In 1735 (New Style calendar), the second president of the United States, John Adams, was born in Braintree, Massachusetts.

In 1885, poet Ezra Pound was born in Hailey, Idaho.

In 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.)

In 1921, the silent film classic “The Sheik,” starring Rudolph Valentino, premiered in Los Angeles.

In 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.

In 1974, Muhammad Ali knocked out George Foreman in the eighth round of a 15-round bout in Kinshasa, Zaire (zah-EER’), known as the “Rumble in the Jungle,” to regain his world heavyweight title.

In 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.

In 1984, police in Poland found the body of kidnapped pro-Solidarity priest Father Jerzy Popieluszko ( YEHR’zee pah-pee-WOOSH’-goh), whose deathwas blamed on security officers.

In 1985, schoolteacher-astronaut Christa McAuliffe witnessed the launch of the space shuttle Challenger, the same craft that would carry her and six other crew members to their deaths in Jan. 1986.