TODAY IN HISTORY
TODAY IS SUNDAY, OCT. 20, the 293rd day of 2019. There are 72 days left in the year.
On this date in 2011, Moammar Gadhafi, 69, Libya’s dictator for 42 years, was killed after revolutionary fighters overwhelmed his hometown of Sirte and captured the last major bastion of resistance two months after his regime fell.
In 1803, the U.S. Senate ratified the Louisiana Purchase.
In 1944, during World War II, Gen. Douglas MacArthur stepped ashore at Leyte in the Philippines, 2½ years after saying, “I shall return.”
In 1947, the House Un-American Activities Committee opened hearings into alleged community influence and infiltration in the U.S. motion picture industry.
In 1967, a jury in Meridian, Mississippi, convicted seven men of violating the civil rights of slain civil rights workers James Chaney, Andre Goodman and Michael Schwernere; the seven received prison terms ranging from 3 to 10 years.
In 1973, in the so-called “Saturday Night Massacre,” special Watergate Prosecutor Archibald Cox was dismissed and Attorney General Elliot L. Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William B. Ruckelshaus resigned.
In 1976, 78 people were killed when the Norwegian tanker Frosta rammed the commuter ferry George Prince on the Mississippi River near New Orleans.
In 1977, three members of the rock group Lynyrd Skynyrd, including lead singer Ronnie van Zant, were killed, along with three others, in the crash of a chartered plane near McComb, Mississippi. In 1986, the government of Nicaragua formally charged captured American mercenary Eugene Hasenfus with several crimes, including terrorism. Although convicted and sentenced to prison, Hasenfus was pardoned and released by Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega.
In 1990, three members of the rap group 2 Live Crew were acquitted by a jury in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, of violating obscenity laws with an adultsonly concert in nearby Hollywood the previous June.
In 1999, the government laid out new rules to protect children’s privacy on the internet and to shield them from commercial email.
In 2004, a U.S. Army staff sergeant, Ivan “Chip” Frederick, pleaded guilty to abusing Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison. Frederick was sentenced to eight years in prison; he was paroled in 2007.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS: Japan’s Empress Michiko is 85. Rockabilly singer Wanda Jackson is 82. Former actress the Rev. Mother Dolores Hart is 81. Actress Melanie Mayron is 67. Retired MLB All-Star Keith Hernandez is 66. Movie director Danny Boyle is
63. Actor Viggo Mortensen is 61. Rock musician Doug Eldridge (Oleander) is
52. Political commentator and blogger Michelle Malkin is 49. Actor Kenneth Choi and singers Dannii Minogue and Jimi Westbrook (country group Little Big Town) are 48. Actor Sam Witwer is 42. Actor John Krasinski and rock musician Daniel Tichenor (Cage the Elephant) are 40. Actress Jennifer Nicole Freeman is 34.