TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT Oct. 14, 1947

U.S. Air Force Capt. Charles E. Yeager became the first test pilot to break the sound barrier as he flew the experimental Bell XS-1 rocket plane over Muroc Dry Lake in California.

ON THIS DATE 1964

Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was named winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev was toppled from power; he was succeeded by Leonid Brezhnev as First Secretary and by Alexei Kosygin as Premier.

1968

The first successful live telecast from a manned U.S. spacecraft was transmitted from Apollo 7.

2001

As U.S. jets opened a second week of raids in Afghanistan, President George W. Bush sternly rejected a Taliban offer to discuss handing over Osama bin Laden to a third country.