Today in history
On Oct. 22, 1962, in a nationally broadcast address, President John F. Kennedy revealed the presence of Soviet-built missile bases under construction in Cuba and announced a quarantine of all offensive military equipment being shipped to the Communist island nation.
In 1746, Princeton University was first chartered as the College of New Jersey.
In 1797, French balloonist Andre-Jacques Garnerin (gahr-nayrAN’) made the first parachute descent, landing safely from a height of about 3,000 feet over Paris.
In 1836, Sam Houston was inaugurated as the first constitutionally elected president of the Republic of Texas.
In 1926, Ernest Hemingway’s first novel, “The Sun Also Rises,” was published by Scribner’s of New York.
In 1928, Republican presidential nominee Herbert Hoover spoke of the “American system of rugged individualism” in a speech at New York’s Madison Square Garden.
In 1934, bank robber Charles “Pretty Boy” Floyd was shot to death by federal agents and local police at a farm near East Liverpool, Ohio.
In 1953, the Franco-Lao Treaty of Amity and Association effectively made Laos an independent member of the French Union.
In 1964, Jean-Paul Sartre was named winner of the Nobel Prize in literature, even though the French writer had said he would decline the award.
In 1979, the U.S. government allowed the deposed Shah of Iran to travel to New York for medical treatment — a decision that precipitated the Iran hostage crisis. French conductor and music teacher Nadia Boulanger died in Paris.
In 1981, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization was decertified by the federal government for its strike the previous August.
In 1991, the European Community and the European Free Trade Association concluded a landmark accord to create a free trade zone of 19 nations by 1993.
In 2014, a gunman shot and killed a soldier standing guard at a war memorial in Ottawa, then stormed the Canadian Parliament before he was shot and killed by the usually ceremonial sergeant-at-arms.
Ten years ago: A federal jury in Kansas City, Missouri, convicted Lisa Montgomery of killing expectant mother Bobbie Jo Stinnett, cutting the baby from her womb and taking the infant home (four days later, the jury recommended that Montgomery receive the death penalty). China’s Communist Party gave President Hu Jintao a second five-year term. Marie Osmond fainted onstage during ABC’s live broadcast of “Dancing With the Stars” after performing a samba with partner Jonathan Roberts.
“Forgiveness is the final form of love.” — Reinhold Niebuhr, American clergyman and author (1892-1971).