DAILY ALMANAC
Today is Saturday, Oct. 2, the 275th day of 2021. There are 90 days left in the year.
On this date:
1890: Comedian Groucho Marx was born Julius Marx in New York.
1919: President Woodrow Wilson suffered a serious stroke at the White House that left him paralyzed on his left side.
1941: During World War II, German armies launched an all-out drive against Moscow; Soviet forces succeeded in holding onto their capital.
1944: German troops crushed the two-month-old Warsaw Uprising, during which a quarter of a million people had been killed.
1967: Thurgood Marshall was sworn as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court as the court opened its new term.
1970: One of two chartered twin-engine planes flying the Wichita State University football team to Utah crashed into a mountain near Silver Plume, Colorado, killing 31 of the 40 people on board.
1984: Richard W. Miller became the first FBI agent to be arrested and charged with espionage. (Miller was tried three times; he was sentenced to 20 years in prison, but was released after nine years.)
1986: The Senate joined the House in voting to override President Reagan’s veto of stiff economic sanctions against South Africa.
2002: The Washington, D.c.-area sniper attacks began, setting off a frantic manhunt lasting three weeks. (John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo were finally arrested for killing 10 people and wounding three others; Muhammad
was executed in 2009; Malvo was sentenced to life in prison.)
2005: A tour boat, the Ethan Allen, capsized on New York’s Lake George, killing 20 elderly passengers. Playwright August Wilson died in Seattle at age 60. Actor-comedian Nipsey Russell died in New York at age 87.
2017: Rock superstar Tom Petty died at a Los Angeles hospital at the age of 66, a day after suffering cardiac arrest at his home in Malibu, California.
2019: House Democrats threatened to make White House defiance of a congressional request for testimony and documents potential grounds for an article of impeachment against President Donald Trump. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo acknowledged for the first time that he had been on the phone call in which Trump pressed Ukraine’s president to investigate Democrat Joe Biden.
Critic Rex Reed is 83. Singer Don Mclean is 76. Actor Avery Brooks
(“Star Trek: Deep Space Nine”) is 73. Guitarist Mike Rutherford of Genesis and Mike and the Mechanics is 71. Musician Sting is 70. Actor Robin Riker (“General Hospital,” “The Bold and the Beautiful”) is 69. Actor Lorraine Bracco
(“The Sopranos”) is 67. Guitarist Greg Jennings
of Restless Heart is 67. Singer Phil Oakey of Human League is 66. Singer Freddie Jackson is 65. Singer-producer Robbie Nevil is 63. Drummer Bud Gaugh of Sublime and Long Beach Dub All-stars is 54. Musician Gillian Welch is 54. Actor Joey Slotnick (“Boston Public,” “The Single Guy”) is 53. Actor-talk show host Kelly Ripa is 51. Singer Tiffany is 50.