ON OCTOBER 4 ...
In 1777 George Washington’s troops launched an assault on the British at Germantown, Pa., resulting in heavy American casualties.
In 1861 Frederic Remington, a sculptor and illustrator who specialized in Western themes, was born in Canton, N.Y.
In 1895 the first U.S. Open golf tournament was held at Newport Country Club in Rhode Island.
In 1931 the comic strip “Dick Tracy,” created by Chester Gould, made its debut.
In 1940 Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini conferred at Brenner Pass in the Alps, where the Nazi leader sought Italy’s help in fighting the British.
In 1957 the Space Age began as the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first man-made satellite, into orbit. Also in 1957 the television series “Leave It to Beaver” premiered on CBS.
In 1958
the
first transAtlantic passenger jetliner service was begun by British Overseas Airways Corp. with flights between London and New York.
In 1970 rock singer Janis Joplin was found dead in Hollywood; she was 27.
In 1985 Islamic Jihad issued a statement saying it had killed American hostage William Buckley. (Fellow hostage David Jacobsen, however, later said he believed Buckley had died of torture injuries four months earlier.)
In 1987 National Football League owners staged their first games since the players union went on strike, with nonstriking and replacement personnel on the gridiron at sparsely attended stadiums.
In 1990 for the first time in nearly six decades, German lawmakers met in the Reichstag for the first meeting of reunified Germany’s parliament.
In 1991, in Madrid, 26 nations, including the United States, signed the Antarctic Treaty, which imposed a 50-year ban on oil exploration and mining in Antarctica.
In 1993 dozens of cheering Somalis dragged the body of an American soldier through the streets of Mogadishu.
In 1995 Pope John Paul II arrived in the United States for a five-day visit.
In 1997 hundreds of thousands of men attended a Promise Keepers rally on the Mall in Washington in one of the largest religious gatherings in U.S. history.
In 2002 John Walker Lindh, the so-called American Taliban, was sentenced to 20 years in prison after his tearful plea for forgiveness before a federal judge in Alexandria, Va. Also in 2002 Richard Reid pleaded guilty in a federal court in Boston to trying to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight with explosives hidden in his shoes.
In 2005 Americans John Hall and Roy Glauber and German Theodor Haensch won the 2005 Nobel Prize in physics.
In 2012 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced a fungal meningitis outbreak linked to tainted epidural steroid injections. (At least 36 people died and hundreds were sickened in 19 states.)
In 2013 retired Vietnamese Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, called the “Red Napolean,” died in Hanoi; he was 102. Giap masterminded the defeat of the United States during the Vietnam War.
In 2014 deposed Haitian dictator Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier died in Haiti; he was 63. Also in 2014 Paul Revere, organist and leader of the rock band Paul Revere and the Raiders, died in Idaho; he was 76.
In 2016 at least 1,000 people were killed when Hurricane Matthew slammed into Haiti’s rural southwestern tip with howling 145 mph winds.