Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Today in history
On Oct. 12, 1492, Christopher Columbus arrived with his expedition in the presentday Bahamas.
In 1870 Gen. Robert E. Lee died in Lexington, Va.; he was 63.
In 1915 former President Theodore Roosevelt criticized the concept of “hyphenated Americanism,” referring to U.S. citizens who identified themselves by dual nationalities.
In 1915 English nurse Edith Cavell was executed by the Germans in occupied Belgium during World War I.
In 1933 bank robber John Dillinger escaped from a jail in Allen County, Ohio, with the help of his gang, who killed the sheriff.
In 1942, during World War II, American naval forces defeated the Japanese in the Battle of Cape Esperance.
Also in 1942 President Franklin Roosevelt delivered one of his so-called fireside chats in which he recommended the drafting of 18- and 19-year-old men. Also in 1942 Attorney General Francis Biddle announced that Italian nationals in the United States would no longer be considered enemy aliens.
In 1964 the Soviet Union launched a Voskhod space capsule with a three-man crew on the first manned mission involving more than one crew member.
In 1968 the 19th Summer Olympics officially opened in Mexico City.
In 1971 the rock opera “Jesus Christ Superstar” opened at the Mark Hellinger Theatre on Broadway.
In 1973 President Richard Nixon nominated House minority leader Gerald Ford, of Michigan, to succeed Spiro Agnew as vice president.
In 1976 it was announced in China that Hua Guo-feng had been named to succeed the late Mao Zedong as chairman of the Communist Party.
In 1986 the superpower meeting in Reykjavik, Iceland, ended in stalemate, with President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev unable to agree on arms control or a date for a full-fledged summit in the United States.
In 1987 former Kansas Gov. Alfred “Alf ” M. Landon, who ran for president against Franklin Roosevelt, died in Topeka; he was 100.
In 1988 federal prosecutors announced that Sundstrand Corp. had agreed to plead guilty to fraud charges and pay a $115 million settlement for overbilling the Pentagon for airplane parts over five years.
In 1989 the House approved a statutory federal ban on desecration of the American flag. (The Senate defeated the measure a week later.)
In 1990 the U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to condemn Israel’s security forces for killing 17 Palestinian demonstrators on the Temple Mount.
In 1991, testifying for a second day on sexual harassment charges leveled by law professor Anita Hill, Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas told the Senate Judiciary Committee he would “rather die than withdraw,” and repeated his denial of Hill’s allegations.
In 1992 several hundred people were killed when an earthquake struck Cairo.
In 1994 Panama granted political asylum to ousted Haitian military leader Raoul Cedras. Also in 1994 the Magellan space probe ended its 4-year mapping mission of Venus, plunging into the planet’s atmosphere.
In 1995, after a 48-hour delay, the U.S.-brokered cease-fire in Bosnia-Herzegovina went into effect.
In 1996 President Bill Clinton signed into law the Water Resources Development Act, which authorized federal water projects across the country.
In 1997 singer John Denver was killed in the crash of his privately built aircraft in Monterey Bay, Calif.; he was 53.
In 1998 Matthew Shepard, a gay University of Wyoming student, died five days after being beaten and lashed to a fence; two men were charged with his murder. (Russell Henderson later pleaded guilty to murder; a second suspect, Aaron McKinney, was convicted of murder; both were sentenced to life in prison.)