Today in History: October 3 | Arts & Entertainment
In 1226, Saint Francis of Assisi, founder of the Franciscan order, died; he was canonized in 1228.
In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday in November Thanksgiving Day.
In 1932, Iraq became independent from British administration.
In 1941, Adolf Hitler declared in a speech in Berlin that Russia had been “broken” and would “never rise again”. ”The Maltese Falcon” — the version starring Humphrey Bogart and directed by John Huston — premiered in New York.
In 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the Office of Economic Stabilization.
In 1944, during World War II, US Army troops broke through the Siegfried Line north of Aachen, Germany.
In 1952, the United Kingdom successfully conducted an atomic bomb test off the coast of Australia, becoming the world’s third nuclear power.
In 1955, “Captain Kangaroo” and “The Mickey Mouse Club” premiered on CBS and ABC, respectively.
In 1961, “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” also starring Mary Tyler Moore, debuted on CBS.
In 1967, folk singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie died in New York of complications from Huntington’s disease; he was 55 years old.
In 1970, the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) was created under the Department of Commerce.
In 1974, Frank Robinson was named Major League Baseball’s first black manager while in charge of the Cleveland Indians.
In 1981, Irish nationalists at Maze Prison near Belfast, Northern Ireland, ended seven months of hunger strikes that left 10 people dead.
In 1990, East Germany and West Germany were reunified.
In 1995, the jury in OJ Simpson’s Los Angeles murder trial found the former football star not guilty of the 1994 murders of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ronald Goldman (however, Simpson went on to been found liable for damages in a civil trial case).
In 2001, the Senate approved an agreement normalizing trade between the United States and Vietnam.
In 2003, a tiger attacked magician Roy Horn of the duo ‘Siegfried & Roy’ during a performance in Las Vegas, leaving the superstar illusionist in critical condition on his 59th birthday.
In 2008, OJ Simpson was convicted of robbing two sports memorabilia dealers at gunpoint from a hotel room in Las Vegas. President George W. Bush signed into law the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, a bailout for the US financial system.
In 2011, an Italian appeals court freed Amanda Knox from Seattle after four years in prison, dismissing murder convictions against Knox and an ex-boyfriend for stabbing their British roommate, Meredith Kercher.
In 2015, Vice President Joe Biden, speaking at the Human Rights Campaign Dinner in Washington, gave his unequivocal support for letting transgender people serve openly in the US military; the Obama administration would lift a longstanding ban in June 2016. (In 2019, the Supreme Court upheld a Trump administration policy under which people who have undergone gender transition cannot enlist. ) A US airstrike on a Doctors Without Borders hospital in the northern Afghan town of Kunduz killed 14 staff and 28 patients and caregivers.
In 2017, Yahoo announced that the biggest data breach in history affected all 3 billion accounts on its service, not the one billion it had revealed earlier.
TODAY’S FACT: In 1789, President George Washington declared November 26 of that year a Thanksgiving Day to express his gratitude for the creation of the United States of America.
SPORTS TODAY: In 1951, New York Giants player Bobby Thomson hit the “Shot Heard ‘Round the World”, a three-run homer in the bottom of the ninth inning to clinch the League pennant national against the Brooklyn Dodgers.
QUOTE OF THE DAY: “Life is used to not hanging on. You have to ride it as you find it. You have to change with that. — Woody Guthrie, American folk singer-songwriter (1912-1967).
TODAY’S NUMBER: $1 trillion – the amount of public and private funds East Germany received from West Germany in the five years after reunification.
