Today in history
Today is Tuesday, Oct. 25, the 299th day of 2016. There are 67 days left in the year.
On this date in the SCV:
In 1988, The Signal reported that Steven Lavine was inaugurated as president of the California Institute of the Arts with a ritual of guns, drums, bells, clapping hands, swordplay and dancing feet. He spoke of Utopia. The school was founded by Walt Disney and was, he said, “born at a moment of Utopian high hopes” at the tail end of the Sixties “when significant numbers of people believed a shift in the national conscience was possible.” Cal Arts had begun 18 years ago, he said, in a span of time that had seen other alternative arts colleges fade away. Somehow CalArts survived in all its improbability.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On Oct. 25, 1962, during a meeting of the U.N. Security Council, U.S. Ambassador Adlai E. Stevenson II demanded that Soviet Ambassador Valerian Zorin confirm or deny the existence of Soviet-built missile bases in Cuba, saying he was prepared to wait “until hell freezes over” for an answer; Stevenson then presented photographic evidence of the bases to the Council.
Ten years ago:
Acknowledging painful losses in Iraq, President George W. Bush told a news conference he was not satisfied with the progress of the long and unpopular war, but insisted the United States was winning and should not think about withdrawing. Serial killer Danny Harold Rolling was executed by injection for butchering five University of Florida students in Gainesville in 1990. Five years ago: Deposed Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, his son Muatassim and former Defense Minister Abu Bakr Younis were buried at dawn in a secret location, five days after Gadhafi was killed when revolutionary fighters overwhelmed his hometown of Sirte.
One year ago:
Declaring that “today is a time of mercy,” Pope Francis closed a historic meeting of bishops that approved an important new direction in welcoming divorced and civilly remarried Catholics into the church. Six people were killed when a Canadian whale-watching boat capsized off Vancouver Island. Flip Saunders, 60, who rose from the backwaters of basketball’s minor leagues to become one of the most powerful men in the NBA as coach, team president and part owner of the Minnesota Timberwolves, died in Minneapolis. On this date: In 1415, during the Hundred Years’ War, outnumbered English soldiers led by Henry V defeated French troops in the Battle of Agincourt in northern France. In 1760, Britain’s King George III succeeded his late grandfather, George II. In 1854, the “Charge of the Light Brigade” took place during the Crimean War as an English brigade of more than 600 men charged the Russian army, suffering heavy losses. In 1929, former Interior Secretary Albert B. Fall was convicted in Washington, D.C. of accepting a $100,000 bribe from oil tycoon Edward L. Doheny. (Fall was sentenced to a year in prison and fined $100,000; he ended up serving nine months.) In 1939, the play “The Time of Your Life,” by William Saroyan, opened in New York. In 1944, New York socialite and amateur soprano Florence Foster Jenkins, 76, performed a recital to a capacity crowd at Carnegie Hall. (The next day, a scathing review by Earl Wilson in the New York Post remarked, “She can sing anything but notes.”)