Today in history
On Oct. 3, 1226, Francis of Assisi, founder ofthe Franciscan religious order, died; he was canonized in 1228.
In 1863 President Abraham Lincoln declared the last Thursday in November Thanksgiving Day.
In 1929 the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes formally changed its name to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.
In 1941 Adolf Hitler declared in a speech in Berlin that Russia had been “broken” and would “never rise again.”
In 1942 President Franklin Roosevelt established the Office of Economic Stabilization.
In 1944 during World War II, U.S. troops cracked the Siegfried Line north of Aachen, Germany.
In 1951 the New York Giants captured the National League pennant in Game 3 by a score of 5-4 as third baseman Bobby Thomson hit a three-run homer off the Brooklyn Dodgers’ Ralph Branca in the “shot heard ’round the world.”
In 1955 “Captain Kangaroo” and “The Mickey Mouse Club” premiered on CBS and ABC.
In 1960 “The Andy Griffith Show” premiered on CBS.
In 1961 “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” also starring Mary Tyler Moore, made its debut on CBS.
In 1962 astronaut Wally Schirra blasted off from Cape Canaveral aboard the Sigma 7 on a nine-hour flight.
In 1967 Riverview, the North Side amusement park that entertained generations of Chicagoans, was shut down.
In 1974 Frank Robinson became Major League Baseball’s first black manager as he was named to lead the Cleveland Indians.
In 1981 Irish nationalists at the Maze Prison near Belfast, Northern Ireland, ended seven months of hunger strikes that had claimed 10 lives.
In 1987 U. S. and Canadian negotiators agreed on a framework for an accord to eliminate all tariffs between the world’s two largest trading partners.
In1990 West Germany and East Germany ended 45 years of postwar division, declaring the creation of a new unified country.
In 1991 Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton entered the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. Also in 1991, South African author Nadine Gordimer was named winner of the Nobel Prize in literature.
In 1995 the jury in the O.J. Simpson murder trial announced its verdicts, finding the former football star not guilty of the 1994 slayings of his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ronald Goldman. (Simpson was later found liable in a civil trial.)
In 1996 Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska won the Nobel Prize in literature.
In 1997 Attorney General Janet Reno said Justice Department investigators had no evidence President Bill Clinton violated the law with White House coffees and overnight stays for big contributors. (However, Reno did extend a probe of Vice President Al Gore’s telephone fund-raising.)
In1998 Pope John Paul II beatified Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac, the World War II archbishop of Zagreb, a controversial figure because many Serbs and Jews had accused him of sympathizing with the Nazis. Also in 1998, actor Roddy McDowall, who starred in the Lassie films as a child and in “Planet of the Apes” 25 years later, died of cancer in Los Angeles; he was 70.
In 2001 the Senate approved an agreement normalizing trade between the United States and Vietnam.
In 2002 five people were shot to death in the Washington area within a 14-hour period, beginning the hunt for the “Beltway Sniper.”
In 2003 a tiger attacked magician Roy Horn of the duo Siegfried & Roy during a performance in Las Vegas, leaving the illusionist in critical condition on his 59th birthday.
In 2004 actress Janet Leigh died in Beverly Hills, Calif.; she was 77.
In 2005 President George W. Bush nominated White House counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. (She withdrew three weeks later after criticism over her lack of judicial experience and Republican concerns about her conservatism.) Also in 2005, Australians Barry Marshall and Robin Warren won the 2005 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine.
In 2012 the Weather Channel announced it would start naming winter storms, a move that received a cool reception from meteorologists around the country.
In 2013 driver Miriam Carey, 34, of Stamford, Conn., was shot to death after leading police on a chase from the White House to the U.S. Capitol. Carey’s 1-year-old daughter was in the vehicle. Also in 2013, at least 350 people from Africa drowned after a migrant boat caught fire and capsized off the Italian island of Lampedusa.
In 2014 Turkish lawmakers approved allowing ground troops into Iraq and Syria to battle Islamic State militants.