Today in history
Today is Wednesday, October 7, the 280th day of 2015. There are 85 days left in the year. On this date in the SCV: In 1988, Saugus post office box customers were in the process of being assigned their old box number and transferred to a new Santa Clarita post office that would open later that month. Today’s Highlight in History: On October 7, 1985, Palestinian gunmen hijacked the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro in the Mediterranean. ( The hijackers killed Leon Klinghoffer, a Jewish-American tourist, before surrendering on October 9.) Ten years ago: The Nobel Peace
Prize was awarded to the International Atomic Energy Agency and its chief, Mohamed ElBaradei. Actor-comedian Charles Rocket was found dead in a field near his home in Canterbury, Connecticut, an apparent suicide; he was 56. Five years ago: New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie canceled construction of a decades-in-themaking train tunnel between New Jersey and Manhattan, citing cost overruns that had ballooned the price tag from $ 5 billion to $10 billion or more. A toxic red sludge that had burst out of a Hungarian factory’s reservoir reached the mighty Danube after wreaking havoc on smaller rivers and creeks. One year ago: North Korea publicly
acknowledged to the international community the existence of its “reform through labor” camps, a mention that appeared to come in response to a highly critical U.N. human rights report. Two Japanese scientists, Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano, and a naturalized American, Shuji Nakamura, won the Nobel Prize for physics for inventing a new kind of light-emitting diode ( LED) that promised to revolutionize the way the world lighted its offices and homes. On this date: In 1765, the Stamp Act Congress convened in New York to draw up colonial grievances against England. In 1849, author Edgar Allan Poe died in Baltimore at age 40. In 1858, the fifth debate between Illinois senatorial candidates Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas took place in Galesburg. In 1929, former Interior Secretary Albert B. Fall, one of the main figures of the Teapot Dome scandal, went on trial, charged with accepting a bribe from oil tycoon Edward L. Doheny. ( Fall was found guilty and sentenced to a year in prison; he served nine months. Doheny was acquitted at his own trial of offering the bribe Fall was convicted of taking.) In 1940, Artie Shaw and his Orchestra recorded Hoagy Carmichael’s “Star Dust” ( as it was spelled then) for RCA Victor. In 1949, the Republic of East Germany was formed. In 1954, Marian Anderson became the first black singer hired by the Metropolitan Opera Company in New York.