TODAY IN HISTORY
TODAY IS TUESDAY, OCT. 12, the 285th day of 2021. There are 80 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT IN HISTORY: On this date in 2000, 17 sailors were killed in a suicide bomb attack on the destroyer USS Cole in Yemen.
In 1792, the first recorded U.S. celebration of Columbus Day was held to mark the tricentennial of Christopher Columbus’ landing.
In 1933, bank robber John Dillinger escaped from a jail in Allen County, Ohio, with the help of his gang, who killed the sheriff, Jess Sarber.
In 1942, during World War II, American naval forces defeated the Japanese in the Battle of Cape Esperance. Attorney General Francis Biddle announced during a Columbus Day celebration at Carnegie Hall in New York that Italian nationals in the United States would no longer be considered enemy aliens.
In 1973, President Richard Nixon nominated House minority leader Gerald R. Ford of Michigan to succeed Spiro T. Agnew as vice president.
In 1984, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher escaped an attempt on her life when an Irish Republican Army bomb exploded at a hotel in Brighton, England, killing five people.
In 1986, the superpower meeting in Reykjavik, Iceland, ended in stalemate, with President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev unable to agree on arms control or a date for a fullfledged summit in the United States.
In 1997, singer John Denver was killed in the crash of his privately built aircraft in Monterey Bay, California; he was 53. In 2002, bombs blamed on al-Qaidalinked militants destroyed a nightclub on the Indonesian island of Bali, killing 202 people, including 88 Australians and seven Americans.
In 2007, former Vice President Al Gore and the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change won the Nobel Peace Prize for sounding the alarm over global warming.
In 2017, President Donald Trump lashed out at hurricane-devastated Puerto Rico, saying the federal government can’t keep sending help “forever” and suggesting that the U.S. territory was to blame for its financial struggles.
In 2019, a Black woman, Atatiana Jefferson, was fatally shot by a white Fort Worth, Texas, police officer inside her home after police were called to the residence by a neighbor who reported that the front door was open. (Officer Aaron Dean, who shot Jefferson through a back window, resigned in the days after the shooting and is charged with murder; he has pleaded not guilty and is scheduled to go to trial in November.)
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS: Former Sen. Jake Garn, R-Utah, is 89. Broadcast journalist Chris Wallace is 74. Actor-singer Susan Anton is 71. Pop/rock singer/ songwriter Jane Siberry is 66. Actor Hiroyuki Sanada is 61. Actor Carlos Bernard, jazz musician Chris Botti and R&B singer Claude McKnight (Take 6) are 59. Rock singer Bob Schneider is 56. Actors Hugh Jackman and Adam Rich are 53. R&B singer Garfield Bright (Shai) and country musician Martie Maguire (Courtyard Hounds, The Chicks) are 52. Actor Kirk Cameron is 51. Olympic gold medal skier Bode Miller is 44.