TODAY IN HISTORY

FRIDAY OCT 15, 2021 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.

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, N.J., 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 4storm; 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.

2003

Eleven people were killed when a Staten Island ferry slammed into a maintenance pier.

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.

2015

President Barack Obama abandoned his pledge to end America’s longest war, announcing plans to keep at least 5,500U.S. troops in Afghanistan at the end of his term in 2017 and hand the conflict off to his successor.