DAILY ALMANAC
Today is Friday, Oct. 15, the 288th day of 2021. There are 77 days left in the year.
On this date:
1783: The first manned balloon flight took place in Paris as Jean-francois Pilatre de Rozier ascended in a basket attached to a tethered Montgolfier hot-air balloon, rising to about 75 feet.
1928: The German dirigible Graf Zeppelin landed in Lakehurst, New Jersey, completing its first commercial flight across the Atlantic.
1945: The former premier of Vichy France, Pierre Laval, was executed for treason.
1946: Nazi war criminal Hermann Goering fatally poisoned himself hours before he was to have been executed.
1954: Hurricane Hazel made landfall on the Carolina coast as a Category 4 storm; Hazel was blamed for some 1,000 deaths in the Caribbean, 95 in the U.S. and 81 in Canada.
1966: President Lyndon B. Johnson signed a bill creating the U.S. Department of Transportation. The revolutionary Black Panther Party was founded by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale in Oakland, California.
1976: In the first debate of its kind between vice-presidential nominees, Democrat Walter F. Mondale and Republican Bob Dole faced off in Houston.
1991: Despite sexual harassment allegations by Anita Hill, the Senate narrowly confirmed the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court, 52-48.
2003: Eleven people were killed when a Staten Island ferry slammed into a maintenance pier. (The ferry’s pilot, who’d blacked out at the controls, later pleaded guilty to eleven counts of manslaughter.)
2009: A report of a 6-year-old Colorado boy trapped inside a runaway helium balloon engrossed the nation before the boy, Falcon Heene, was found safe at home in what turned out to be a hoax. (Falcon’s parents served up to a month in jail.)
2015: President Barack Obama abandoned his pledge to end America’s longest war, announcing plans to keep at least 5,500 U.S. troops in Afghanistan at the end of his term in 2017 and hand the conflict off to his successor.
2017: Actress and activist Alyssa Milano tweeted that women who had been sexually harassed or assaulted should write “Me too” as a status; within hours, tens of thousands had taken up the #Metoo hashtag (using a phrase that had been introduced 10 years earlier by social activist Tarana Burke.)
Singer Barry Mcguire is 86. Actor Linda Lavin (“Alice”) is 84. Drummer Don Stevenson of Moby Grape is 79. Actor Victor Banerjee (“A Passage to India”) is 75. Musician Richard Carpenter of The Carpenters is 75. Singer Tito Jackson
is 68. Actor Larry Miller
(“The Nutty Professor”) is 68. Actor Jere Burns
(“Good Morning, Miami,” “Dear John”) is 67. TV chef Emeril Lagasse is 62. Drummer Mark Reznicek (The Toadies) is 59. Singer Eric Benet is 55. Actor Vanessa Marcil (“Las Vegas,” “Beverly Hills 90210”) is 53. “Trading Spaces” host Paige Davis is 52. Actor Dominic West (“The Wire”) is 52. Singer Kimberly Schlapman of Little Big Town is 52. Singer Ginuwine is 51. Singer Jaci Velasquez is 42.