On This Day in History

[deputy tom]

7 hours ago, Schmidt Meister said:

On October 9, 1967, socialist revolutionary and guerilla leader Che Guevara, age 39, is killed by the Bolivian army. The U.S.-military-backed Bolivian forces captured Guevara on October 8 while battling his band of guerillas in Bolivia and assassinated him the following day. His hands were cut off as proof of death and his body was buried in an unmarked grave. In 1997, Guevara’s remains were found and sent back to Cuba, where they were reburied in a ceremony attended by President Fidel Castro and thousands of Cubans.
Ernesto Rafael Guevara de la Serna was born to a well-off family in Argentina in 1928. While studying medicine at the University of Buenos Aires, he took time off to travel around South America on a motorcycle; during this time, he witnessed the poverty and oppression of the lower classes. He received a medical degree in 1953 and continued his travels around Latin America, becoming involved with left-wing organizations. In the mid 1950s, Guevara met up with Fidel Castro and his group of exiled revolutionaries in Mexico. Guevara played a key role in Castro’s seizure of power from Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959 and later served as Castro’s right-hand man and minister of industry. Guevara strongly opposed U.S. domination in Latin America and advocated peasant-based revolutions to combat social injustice in Third World countries. Castro later described him as “an artist of revolutionary warfare.”
Guevara resigned, some say he was dismissed, from his Cuban government post in April 1965, possibly over differences with Castro about the nation’s economic and foreign policies. Guevara then disappeared from Cuba, traveled to Africa and eventually resurfaced in Bolivia, where he was killed.

Ernesto "Che" Guevara After His Execution - Bolivia - October 9, 1967

Today I will raise my glass to the executioners who caused this celebratory event. tom.

[deputy tom]

As it's also Leif Erikson Day I'll also raise my glass to him. My son had a DNA test done and it turns out we're also Vikings. Woo-Hoo. tom.

[Schmidt Meister]

On October 10, 1985, the hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro reaches a dramatic climax when U.S. Navy F-14 fighters intercept an Egyptian airliner attempting to fly the Palestinian hijackers to freedom and force the jet to land at a NATO base in Sigonella, Sicily. American and Italian troops surrounded the plane, and the terrorists were taken into Italian custody.
On October 7, four heavily armed Palestinian terrorists hijacked the Achille Lauro in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Alexandria, Egypt. Some 320 crewmembers and 80 passengers were taken hostage. Hundreds of other passengers had disembarked the cruise ship earlier that day to visit Cairo and tour the Egyptian pyramids. Identifying themselves as members of the Palestine Liberation Front, a Palestinian splinter group, the gunmen demanded the release of 50 Palestinian militants imprisoned in Israel. If their demands were not met, they threatened to blow up the ship and kill the 11 Americans on board. The next morning, they also threatened to kill the British passengers.
The Achille Lauro traveled to the Syrian port of Tartus, where the terrorists demanded negotiations on October 8. Syria refused to permit the ship to anchor in its waters, which prompted more threats from the hijackers. That afternoon, they shot and killed Leon Klinghoffer, a 69-year-old Jewish-American who was confined to a wheelchair as the result of a stroke. His body was then pushed overboard in the wheelchair.
Yasir Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) condemned the hijacking, and PLO officials joined with Egyptian authorities in attempting to resolve the crisis. On the recommendation of the negotiators, the cruise ship traveled to Port Said. On October 9, the hijackers surrendered to Egyptian authorities and freed the hostages in exchange for a pledge of safe passage to an undisclosed destination.
The next day, October 10, the four hijackers boarded an EgyptAir Boeing 737 airliner, along with Mohammed Abbas, a member of the Palestine Liberation Front who had participated in the negotiations; a PLO official; and several Egyptians. The 737 took off from Cairo at 4:15 p.m. EST and headed for Tunisia. President Ronald Reagan gave his final order approving the plan to intercept the aircraft, and at 5:30 p.m. EST, F-14 Tomcat fighters located the airliner 80 miles south of Crete. Without announcing themselves, the F-14s trailed the airliner as it sought and was denied permission to land at Tunis. After a request to land at the Athens airport was likewise refused, the F-14s turned on their lights and flew wing-to-wing with the airliner. The aircraft was ordered to land at a NATO air base in Sicily, and the pilot complied, touching down at 6:45 p.m. The hijackers were arrested soon after. Abbas and the other Palestinian were released, prompting criticism from the United States, which wanted to investigate their possible involvement in the hijacking.
On July 10, 1986, an Italian court later convicted three of the terrorists and sentenced them to prison terms ranging from 15 to 30 years. Three others, including Mohammed Abbas, were convicted in absentia for masterminding the hijacking and sentenced to life in prison. They received harsher penalties because, unlike the hijackers, who the court found were acting for “patriotic motives,” Abbas and the others conceived the hijacking as a “selfish political act” designed “to weaken the leadership of Yasir Arafat.” The fourth hijacker was a minor who was tried and convicted separately.

[Schmidt Meister]

On October 10, 1944, 800 Romani children, including more than a hundred boys between 9 and 14 years old, are systematically murdered.
Auschwitz was really a group of camps, designated I, II, and III. There were also 40 smaller “satellite” camps. It was at Auschwitz II, at Birkenau, established in October 1941, that the SS created a complex, monstrously orchestrated killing ground: 300 prison barracks; four “bathhouses,” in which prisoners were gassed; corpse cellars; and cremating ovens. Thousands of prisoners were also used as fodder for medical experiments, overseen and performed by the camp doctor, Josef Mengele (“the Angel of Death”).
A mini-revolt took place on October 7, 1944. As several hundred Jewish prisoners were being forced to carry corpses from the gas chambers to the furnace to dispose of the bodies, they blew up one of the gas chambers and set fire to another, using explosives smuggled to them from Jewish women who worked in a nearby armaments factory. Of the roughly 450 prisoners involved in the sabotage, about 250 managed to escape the camp during the ensuing chaos. They were all found and shot. Those co-conspirators who never made it out of the camp were also executed, as were five women from the armaments factory, but not before being tortured for detailed information on the smuggling operation. None of the women talked.
Romani people, too, had been singled out for brutal treatment by Hitler’s regime early on. Deemed “carriers of disease” and “unreliable elements who cannot be put to useful work,” they were marked for extermination along with the Jews of Europe from the earliest years of the war. Approximately 1.5 million Romani people were murdered by the Nazis. In 1950, as Romani people attempted to gain compensation for their suffering, as were other victims of the Holocaust, the German government denied them anything, saying, they "have been persecuted under the Nazis not for any racial reason but because of an asocial and criminal record.” They were stigmatized even in light of the atrocities committed against them.

[Schmidt Meister]

On October 10, 1845, the United States Naval Academy opens in Annapolis, Maryland, with 50 midshipmen students and seven professors. Known as the Naval School until 1850, the curriculum included mathematics and navigation, gunnery and steam, chemistry, English, natural philosophy, and French. The Naval School officially became the U.S. Naval Academy in 1850, and a new curriculum went into effect, requiring midshipmen to study at the academy for four years and to train aboard ships each summer, the basic format that remains at the academy to this day.

[Schmidt Meister]

October 10th In Music

1902 - Kalamazoo, Michigan, mandolin maker Orville Gibson founds the Gibson Mandolin-Guitar Mfg. Co, Ltd. In 1936 it would create the first commercially successful electric guitar.

1964 - The Shangri-Las release "Leader Of The Pack."

1970 - Black Sabbath were at No. 1 on the UK chart with their second album 'Paranoid.' The album which contains some of the band's best-known signature songs, including the title track, 'Iron Man' and 'War Pigs' is now regarded as one of the classic Heavy Metal albums.

1987 - Whitesnake went to No. 1 on the US singles chart with 'Here I Go Again’.

1995 - Peter Frampton releases Frampton Comes Alive II. The album is the sequel to his 1975 smash Frampton Comes Alive - the best-selling live album in history.

Birthdays:

1945 - Jerry Lacroix. American music group Blood Sweat & Tears. They scored the 1969 US No. 2 single 'Spinning Wheel', and the 1969 US No. 12 single 'You've Made Me So Very Happy'. They had a US No. 1 with their second album Blood, Sweat & Tears in 1968. Born in Alexandria, Louisiana.

1945 - Alan Cartwright. Bassist with Procol Harum, who had the 1967 US No. 5 single 'A Whiter Shade Of Pale' (one of the few singles to have sold over 10 million copies) and scored the hits 'Homburg', 'Conquistador'. Born in London, England. Cartwright died on 3.4.2021 age 75.

[Schmidt Meister]

n October 11, 1939, a crucial letter was delivered to President Franklin D. Roosevelt that led to the beginnings of the Manhattan Project, which would eventually produce the first atomic bombs during World War II.
In August 1939, Albert Einstein signed the letter, authored by physicist Leo Szilard, that urged Roosevelt to fund research into the possibility of using nuclear fission as a weapon.
Einstein and Szilard believed Nazi Germany was conducting similar research.
In order to alert Roosevelt to the possibility of an atomic bomb, economist Alexander Sachs met with Roosevelt to hand-deliver the letter to him on Oct. 11.
This meeting led to Roosevelt forming a committee that consisted of civilian and military representatives to study uranium. Based on the committee’s findings, the U.S. government started funding research that focused on radioactive isotope separation and nuclear chain reactions.

[Schmidt Meister]

On October 11, 1968, Apollo 7, the first manned Apollo mission, is launched with astronauts Walter M. Schirra, Jr.; Donn F. Eisele; and Walter Cunningham aboard. Under the command of Schirra, the crew of Apollo 7 conducted an 11-day orbit of Earth, during which the crew transmitted the first live television broadcasts from orbit.

[Schmidt Meister]

On October 11, 1954, the Viet Minh formally take over Hanoi and control of North Vietnam.
The Vietnam Doc Lap Dong Minh (Vietnam Independence League), or Viet Minh as it would become known to the world, was a Communist front organization founded by Ho Chi Minh in 1941 to organize resistance against French colonial rule and occupying Japanese forces.
With the end of the Japanese occupation in 1945, the French attempted to reimpose colonial rule. The Viet Minh launched a long and bloody guerrilla war against French colonial forces in what came to be known as the First Indochina War. Ultimately, the Viet Minh, under the leadership of General Vo Nguyen Giap, decisively defeated the French at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in May 1954. On August 1, the armistice ending the war went into effect. The triumphant Viet Minh marched into Hanoi as the French prepared to withdraw their forces.
Under the provisions of the agreement signed at the Geneva Conference in July, Vietnam was to be temporarily split into approximately equal halves. The two halves were to be separated by a Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) running along the 17th parallel. The northern half was to be governed by the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, which had been proclaimed by Ho Chi Minh, and the southern half would be governed by the noncommunist State of Vietnam until 1956, at which time the two zones were to be reunified following internationally supervised elections. Ngo Dinh Diem, who had become premier of the State of Vietnam in June, was a Catholic and staunchly anticommunist. Diem disliked the Geneva Accords and set about to consolidate his power in the south. By the middle of 1955, Diem had effectively gained control of most of South Vietnam, and in July of that year, he declared his refusal to permit the elections called for at Geneva. This announcement led to a stepped-up insurgency in the south and ultimately to the Second Indochina War, when North Vietnamese regular units were committed in the south and U.S. forces arrived. Vietnam was not reunited until April 1975, when North Vietnamese troops captured Saigon.

[Schmidt Meister]

On October 11, 1809, the famous explorer Meriwether Lewis dies under mysterious circumstances in the early hours of the morning after stopping for the night at Grinder’s Tavern along the Natchez Trace in Tennessee.
Three years earlier, Lewis and his co-commander, William Clark, had completed their exploration of the newly acquired Louisiana Territory and the Pacific Northwest. Famous and celebrated throughout the nation as a result, Lewis nonetheless found his return to civilized eastern life difficult. President Thomas Jefferson appointed him as governor of Louisiana Territory, but Lewis soon discovered that the complex politics and power struggles of the territory were earning him more enemies than friends. At the same time, bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., were questioning the legitimacy of some of the purchases Lewis had made for the expedition in 1803, raising the threat of bankruptcy if he were forced to cover these costs personally. Finally, some three years after the end of his journey, Lewis still had failed to complete the work necessary to publish the critically important scientific and geographical information he and Clark had gathered in their journals-much to the disappointment of his close friend and mentor, Thomas Jefferson.
For all these reasons, most recent historians have concluded that Lewis’ death was a suicide brought on by deep depression and the heavy weight of worries he bore. According to the account given by Mrs. Grinder, the mistress of the tavern along the Natchez Trace where Lewis died, during his final hours Lewis began to pace in his room and talk aloud to himself “like a lawyer.” She then heard a pistol shot and Lewis exclaiming, “O Lord!” After a second pistol shot, Lewis staggered from his room and called for help, reportedly saying, “O Madam! Give me some water, and heal my wounds.” Strangely, Mrs. Grinder did nothing to help him; she later said that she was too afraid. The next morning servants went to his room where they reportedly found him “busily engaged in cutting himself from head to foot” with a razor. Fatally wounded in the abdomen, Lewis died shortly after sunrise.
Based largely on Mrs. Grinder’s story, most historians have argued that Lewis tried to kill himself with two pistol shots, and when death did not come quickly enough, tried to finish the job with his razor. However, in a 1962 book, Suicide or Murder? The Strange Death of Governor Meriwether Lewis, the author Vardes Fisher raised questions about the reliability of Mrs. Grinder’s story and suggested that Lewis might have actually been murdered, either by Mrs. Grinder’s husband or bandits. Since then a minority of historians has continued to raise challenges to the suicide thesis. But ultimately, nearly two centuries after the event, we may never be able to discover exactly what happened that night along the Natchez Trace when one of the nation’s greatest explorers died at the young age of 35.

[Schmidt Meister]

On October 11, 1915, Prime Minister Vasil Radoslavov of Bulgaria issues a statement announcing his country’s entrance into the First World War on the side of the Central Powers.
Secretly courted by both sides in World War I as a potential ally in the tumultuous Balkan region, Bulgaria eventually decided in favor of the Central Powers. In his statement of October 11, 1916, Radoslavov argued that confronting the Allied powers, Britain, France and Russia, alongside Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire was desirable not only for economic reasons, as the latter two countries were Bulgaria’s chief partners in trade, but also as a way for the country to defend itself against the aggression of Serbia, the Russian ally and major power in the Balkans that Radoslavov considered to be his country’s “greatest foe.”
“Today we see races that are fighting, not indeed for ideals, but solely for their material interests,” Radoslavov maintained. “The more, therefore, we are bound to a country in a material way, the greater is that country’s interest in our maintenance and increase, since thereby that one will profit who helps us and is tied to us by economic bonds… The figures show that our trade, our interests, and our economic life are inseparably linked with Turkey, Germany, and Austria-Hungary…”
Bulgaria acted quickly after its declaration of war, invading the Serbian province of Macedonia and in the process driving a wedge in front of Allied forces in Greece in their attempts to aid the Serbian army. In the summer of 1916, Bulgaria invaded and occupied a section of then-neutral Greece, mounting a major offensive in August that was only halted by British aerial and naval attacks. A stalemate ensued until 1918, when the Allies began to put more pressure on the Germans on the Western Front, forcing them to transfer a number of troops from the Salonika front, as the battlegrounds of northern Greece and Macedonia were known, where they had been aiding their Bulgarian allies. Disintegrating morale and growing discontent among the Bulgarian troops and on the home front were compounded by a new Allied offensive, launched in mid-September. On September 24, the Bulgarian government authorized its army’s commander to seek an armistice. Bulgaria formally exited World War I on September 29, 1918, having lost some 90,000 soldiers over the course of the conflict.

[Schmidt Meister]

October 11th In Music

1975 - Neil Sedaka's "Bad Blood," with backup vocals by Elton John, hits No. 1 for the first of three weeks.

Birthdays:

1946 - Daryl Hall. American rock, R&B, and soul singer, from Hall and Oates. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2004. Hall and Oates have sold an estimated 40 million records, making them the third-bestselling music duo of all time. Born in Pottstown, Pennsylvania.

1946 - Gary Mallaber. Drummer/percussionist/backup singer for The Steve Miller Band. Born in Buffalo, New York.

1950 - Andrew Woolfolk. Saxophonist/flautist for Earth, Wind & Fire, who had the 1975 US No. 1 single 'Shining Star', and the 1981 UK No. 3 single 'Let's Groove'. The band has received 20 Grammy nominations and were the first African-American act to sell out Madison Square Garden. Born in Texas.

[Schmidt Meister]

On October 12, 1492, after sailing across the Atlantic Ocean, Italian explorer Christopher Columbus sights a Bahamian island, believing he has reached East Asia. His expedition went ashore the same day and claimed the land for Isabella and Ferdinand of Spain, who sponsored his attempt to find a western ocean route to China, India, and the fabled gold and spice islands of Asia.
Columbus was born in Genoa, Italy, in 1451. Little is known of his early life, but he worked as a seaman and then a maritime entrepreneur. He became obsessed with the possibility of pioneering a western sea route to Cathay (China), India, and the gold and spice islands of Asia. At the time, Europeans knew no direct sea route to southern Asia, and the route via Egypt and the Red Sea was closed to Europeans by the Ottoman Empire, as were many land routes. Contrary to popular legend, educated Europeans of Columbus’ day did believe that the world was round, as argued by St. Isidore in the seventh century. However, Columbus, and most others, underestimated the world’s size, calculating that East Asia must lie approximately where North America sits on the globe (they did not yet know that the Pacific Ocean existed).
With only the Atlantic Ocean, he thought, lying between Europe and the riches of the East Indies, Columbus met with King John II of Portugal and tried to persuade him to back his “Enterprise of the Indies,” as he called his plan. He was rebuffed and went to Spain, where he was also rejected at least twice by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. However, after the Spanish conquest of the Moorish kingdom of Granada in January 1492, the Spanish monarchs, flush with victory, agreed to support his voyage.
On August 3, 1492, Columbus set sail from Palos, Spain, with three small ships, the Santa Maria, the Pinta and the Nina. On October 12, the expedition reached land, probably Watling Island in the Bahamas. Later that month, Columbus sighted Cuba, which he thought was mainland China, and in December the expedition landed on Hispaniola, which Columbus thought might be Japan. He established a small colony there with 39 of his men. The explorer returned to Spain with gold, spices, and “Indian” captives in March 1493 and was received with the highest honors by the Spanish court. He was the first European to explore the Americas since the Vikings set up colonies in Greenland and Newfoundland in the 10th century.
During his lifetime, Columbus led a total of four expeditions to the "New World," exploring various Caribbean islands, the Gulf of Mexico, and the South and Central American mainlands, but he never accomplished his original goal, a western ocean route to the great cities of Asia. Columbus died in Spain in 1506 without realizing the great scope of what he did achieve: He had discovered for Europe the New World, whose riches over the next century would help make Spain the wealthiest and most powerful nation on earth.

[Schmidt Meister]

On October 12, 2000, at 12:15 p.m. local time, a motorized rubber dinghy loaded with explosives blows a 40-by-40-foot hole in the port side of the USS Cole, a U.S. Navy destroyer that was refueling at Aden, Yemen. Seventeen sailors were killed and 38 wounded in the attack, which was carried out by two suicide terrorists alleged to be members of Saudi exile Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda terrorist network.
The Cole had come to Aden at the southern tip of the Arabian peninsula to refuel on its way to join U.S. warships that were enforcing the trade sanctions against Iraq. It was scheduled to remain in the port for just four hours, indicating that the terrorists had precise information about the destroyer’s unannounced visit to the Aden fueling station. The terrorists’ small boat joined a group of harbor ships aiding the Cole moor at a refueling, and they succeeded in reaching the U.S. warship unchallenged. Their dinghy then exploded in a massive explosion that ripped through the Cole’s port side, badly damaging the engine room and adjoining mess and living quarters. Witnesses on the Cole said both terrorists stood up in the moment before the blast.
The explosion caused extensive flooding in the warship, causing the ship to list slightly, but by the evening crew members had managed to stop the flooding and keep the Cole afloat. In the aftermath of the attack, President Bill Clinton ordered American ships in the Persian Gulf to leave port and head to open waters. A large team of U.S. investigators was immediately sent to Aden to investigate the incident, including a group of FBI agents who were focused exclusively on possible links to Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden had been formally charged in the U.S. with masterminding the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people, including 12 Americans.
Six men believed to be involved in the Cole attack were soon arrested in Yemen. Lacking cooperation by Yemeni authorities, the FBI has failed to conclusively link the attack to bin Laden.

[Schmidt Meister]

On October 12, 1964, the Soviet Union launches Voskhod 1 into orbit around Earth, with cosmonauts Vladamir Komarov, Konstantin Feoktistov, and Boris Yegorov aboard. Voskhod 1 was the first spacecraft to carry a multi-person crew, and the two-day mission was also the first flight performed without space suits.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the U.S. space program consistently trailed the Soviet program in space firsts, a pattern that drastically shifted with the triumph of the U.S. lunar program in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

[Schmidt Meister]

On October 12, 1810, Bavarian Crown Prince Louis, later King Louis I of Bavaria, marries Princess Therese von Sachsen-Hildburghausen. The Bavarian royalty invited the citizens of Munich to attend the festivities, held on the fields in front of the city gates. These famous public fields were named Theresienwiese, ”Therese’s fields”, in honor of the crown princess; although locals have since abbreviated the name simply to the “Wies’n.” Horse races in the presence of the royal family concluded the popular event, celebrated in varying forms all across Bavaria.
The decision to repeat the festivities and the horse races in the subsequent year gave rise to the tradition of the annual Oktoberfest, which now begins in late September and lasts until the first Sunday in October.

[Schmidt Meister]

October 12th In Music

1974 - Bay City Rollers went to No. 1 on the US chart with the debut of 'Saturday Night', never a British hit yet a No. 1 smash in America.

1979 - Fleetwood Mac release Tusk, their first album since the wildly successful Rumours in 1977. A double album with less commercial appeal, Mick Fleetwood credits it with keeping the band together, as the band members were free to experiment.

Birthdays:

1935 - Sam Moore. Singer, Sam & Dave, 1967 US No. 2 single 'Soul Man'. Born in Miami, Florida.

1942 - Melvin Franklin. Vocals, The Temptations, 1971 US No. 1 single 'Just My Imagination'. Born in Montgomery, Alabama. He died on 2.23.1995.

[Schmidt Meister]

On October 13, 1792, the cornerstone is laid for a presidential residence in the newly designated capital city of Washington, D.C. In 1800, President John Adams became the first president to reside in the executive mansion, which soon became known as the “White House” because its white-gray Virginia freestone contrasted strikingly with the red brick of nearby buildings.
The city of Washington was created to replace Philadelphia as the nation’s capital because of its geographical position in the center of the existing new republic. The states of Maryland and Virginia ceded land around the Potomac River to form the District of Columbia, and work began on Washington in 1791. French architect Charles L’Enfant designed the area’s radical layout, full of dozens of circles, crisscross avenues, and plentiful parks. In 1792, work began on the neoclassical White House building at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue under the guidance of Irish American architect James Hoban, whose design was influenced by Leinster House in Dublin and by a building sketch in James Gibbs’ Book of Architecture. President George Washington chose the site.
On November 1, President John Adams was welcomed into the executive mansion. His wife, Abigail, wrote about their new home: “I pray heaven to bestow the best of blessings on this house, and on all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but wise men ever rule under this roof!”
In 1814, during the War of 1812, the White House was set on fire along with the U.S. Capitol by British soldiers in retaliation for the burning of government buildings in Canada by U.S. troops. The burned-out building was subsequently rebuilt and enlarged under the direction of James Hoban, who added east and west terraces to the main building, along with a semicircular south portico and a colonnaded north portico. The smoke-stained stone walls were painted white. Work was completed on the White House in the 1820s.
Major restoration occurred during the administration of President Harry Truman, and Truman lived across the street for several years in Blair House. Since 1995, Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and Lafayette Square has been closed to vehicular traffic for security reasons. Today, more than a million tourists visit the White House annually. It is the oldest federal building in the nation’s capital.

[Schmidt Meister]

On October 13, 1775, the Continental Congress authorizes construction and administration of the first American naval force, the precursor to the United States Navy.
Since the outbreak of open hostilities with the British in April, little consideration had been given to protection by sea until Congress received news that a British naval fleet was on its way. In November, the Continental Navy was formally organized, and on December 22, Esek Hopkins was appointed the first commander in chief of the Continental Navy. Congress also named four captains to the new service: Dudley Saltonstall, Abraham Whipple, Nicholas Biddle and John Burroughs Hopkins. Their respective vessels, the 24-gun frigates Alfred and Columbus, the 14-gun brigs Andrew Doria and Cabot, as well as three schooners, the Hornet, the Wasp and the Fly, became the first ships of the Navy’s fleet. Five first lieutenants, including future American hero John Paul Jones, five second lieutenants and three third lieutenants also received their commissions.
Admiral Hopkins, as he was dubbed by George Washington, was first tasked with assessing the feasibility of an attack on British naval forces in the Chesapeake Bay. After sailing south with his meager force of eight ships, Hopkins decided that victory in such an encounter was impossible. He sailed to the Bahamas instead, where he attacked the British port of Nassau, a decision for which he was relieved of his command upon returning to the continent.
During the American Revolution, the Continental Navy successfully preyed on British merchant shipping and won several victories over British warships. This first naval force was disbanded after the war. What is now known as the United States Navy was formally established with the creation of the federal Department of the Navy in April 1798.

[Schmidt Meister]

On October 13, 1943, the government of Italy declares war on its former Axis partner Germany and joins the battle on the side of the Allies.
With Mussolini deposed from power and the collapse of the fascist government in July, Gen. Pietro Badoglio, Mussolini’s former chief of staff and the man who had assumed power in the Duce’s stead by request of King Victor Emanuel, began negotiating with General Eisenhower regarding a conditional surrender of Italy to the Allies. It became a fact on September 8, with the new Italian government allowing the Allies to land in Salerno, in southern Italy, in its quest to beat the Germans back up the peninsula.
The Germans too snapped into action. Ever since Mussolini began to falter, Hitler had been making plans to invade Italy to keep the Allies from gaining a foothold that would situate them within easy reach of the German-occupied Balkans. On the day of Italy’s surrender, Hitler launched Operation Axis, the occupation of Italy. As German troops entered Rome, General Badoglio and the royal family fled to Brindisi, in southeastern Italy, to set up a new antifascist government.
On October 13, Badoglio set into motion the next stage of his agreement with Eisenhower, the full cooperation of Italian troops in the Allied operation to capture Rome from the Germans. It was extremely slow going, described by one British general as “slogging up Italy.” Bad weather, the miscalculation of starting the operation from so far south in the peninsula, and the practice of “consolidation,” establishing a firm base of operations and conjoining divisions every time a new region was captured, made the race for Rome more of a crawl. But when it was over, and Rome was once again free, General Badoglio would take yet one more step in freeing Italy from its fascist past-he would step down from office.

[Schmidt Meister]

October 13th In Music

1973 - The Rolling Stones started a four week run at No. 1 on the US album chart with 'Goats Head Soup' the group's fourth US No. 1.

Birthdays:

1941 - Paul Simon. Singer, songwriter with Simon and Garfunkel. He meets his longtime music partner, Art Garfunkel, when they both perform in a school production of Alice in Wonderland for their sixth grade graduation. They would become Simon & Garfunkel. Born in Newark, New Jersey.

1944 - Robert Lamm. American keyboardist, singer and songwriter with Chicago, who had the 1976 US No. 1 single 'If You Leave Me Now'. The band formed in 1967 in Chicago, Illinois as The Chicago Transit Authority before shortening the name in 1970. Lamm wrote many of the band's biggest hits, including 'Questions 67 & 68', 'Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?', '25 or 6 to 4', and 'Harry Truman'. Born in Brooklyn, New York.

1947 - Sammy Hagar. American rock vocalist, guitarist, songwriter who came to prominence in the 1970s with the hard rock band Montrose. He replaced David Lee Roth of Van Halen in 1985 and left the band in 1996. Born in Salinas, California.

1948 - John Ford Coley. England Dan & John Ford Coley, 1976 US No. 2 single, 'I'd Really Love To See You Tonight.’ Born in Dallas, Texas.

 

[Schmidt Meister]

On October 14, 1947, U.S. Air Force Captain Chuck Yeager becomes the first person to fly faster than the speed of sound.
Yeager, born in Myra, West Virginia, in 1923, was a combat fighter during World War II and flew 64 missions over Europe. He shot down 13 German planes and was himself shot down over France, but he escaped capture with the assistance of the French Underground. After the war, he was among several volunteers chosen to test fly the experimental X-1 rocket plane, built by the Bell Aircraft Company to explore the possibility of supersonic flight.
For years, many aviators believed that man was not meant to fly faster than the speed of sound, theorizing that transonic drag rise would tear any aircraft apart. All that changed on October 14, 1947, when Yeager flew the X-1 over Rogers Dry Lake in Southern California. The X-1 was lifted to an altitude of 25,000 feet by a B-29 aircraft and then released through the bomb bay, rocketing to 40,000 feet and exceeding 662 miles per hour (the sound barrier at that altitude). The rocket plane, nicknamed “Glamorous Glennis” (after Yeager's wife), was designed with thin, unswept wings and a streamlined fuselage modeled after a .50-caliber bullet.
Because of the secrecy of the project, Bell and Yeager’s achievement was not announced until June 1948. Yeager continued to serve as a test pilot, and in 1953 he flew 1,650 miles per hour in an X-1A rocket plane. He retired from the U.S. Air Force in 1975 with the rank of brigadier general.

[Schmidt Meister]

On October 14, 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis begins, bringing the United States and the Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear conflict. Photographs taken by a high-altitude U-2 spy plane offered incontrovertible evidence that Soviet-made medium-range missiles in Cuba, capable of carrying nuclear warheads, were now stationed 90 miles off the American coastline.
Tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union over Cuba had been steadily increasing since the failed April 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, in which Cuban refugees, armed and trained by the United States, landed in Cuba and attempted to overthrow the government of Fidel Castro. Though the invasion did not succeed, Castro was convinced that the United States would try again, and set out to get more military assistance from the Soviet Union. During the next year, the number of Soviet advisors in Cuba rose to more than 20,000.
Rumors began that Russia was also moving missiles and strategic bombers onto the island. Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev may have decided to so dramatically up the stakes in the Cold War for several reasons. He may have believed that the United States was indeed going to invade Cuba and provided the weapons as a deterrent. Facing criticism at home from more hard-line members of the Soviet communist hierarchy, he may have thought a tough stand might win him support. Khrushchev also had always resented that U.S. nuclear missiles were stationed near the Soviet Union (in Turkey, for example), and putting missiles in Cuba might have been his way of redressing the imbalance. Two days after the pictures were taken, after being developed and analyzed by intelligence officers, they were presented to President Kennedy. During the next two weeks, the United States and the Soviet Union would come as close to nuclear war as they ever had, and a fearful world awaited the outcome.

Anti-Aircraft Hawk Missiles Deployed By US Army On Florida Beach In Key West, Florida Straits, During Cuban Missile Crisis - Photo Taken October 27, 1962

[Schmidt Meister]

October 14th In Music

1957 - Although it was banned by some US radio stations for its suggestive lyrics, The Everly Brothers had their first No. 1 on the US singles chart with 'Wake Up Little Susie’.

Birthdays:

1945 - Colin Hodgkinson. Bass, Whitesnake, 1987 US No. 1 single 'Here I Go Again'. Born in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, England.

1946 - Dan McCafferty. From Scottish hard rock band Nazareth, who had the 1976 US No. 8 single, 'Love Hurts'. Born in Dunfermline, Scotland.

1946 - Justin Hayward. Songwriter, lead singer, and guitarist with English rock band The Moody Blues who had the US No. 10 single 'Go Now' and the hit singles including 'Go Now', 'Nights in White Satin' and 'Question'. Born in Swindon, Wiltshire, England.

1972 - Nick Fyffe. English bassist who has worked with with Jamiroquai, The Shapeshifters, Robert Plant, Deep Purple and Bruce Dickinson.

[Schmidt Meister]

On October 15, 1863, the H.L. Hunley, the world’s first successful combat submarine, sinks during a test run, killing its inventor and seven crew members.
Horace Lawson Hunley developed the 40-foot submarine from a cylinder boiler. It was operated by a crew of eight, one person steered while the other seven turned a crank that drove the ship’s propeller. The Hunley could dive, but it required calm seas for safe operations. It was tested successfully in Alabama’s Mobile Bay in the summer of 1863, and Confederate commander General Pierre G.T. Beauregard recognized that the vessel might be useful to ram Union ships and break the blockade of Charleston Harbor. The Hunley was placed on a railcar and shipped to South Carolina.
The submarine experienced problems upon its arrival. During a test run, a crew-member became tangled in part of the craft’s machinery and the craft dove with its hatch open; only two men survived the accident. The ship was raised and repaired, but it was difficult to find another crew that was willing to assume the risk of operating the submarine. Its inventor and namesake stepped forward to restore confidence in his creation. On October 15, he took the submarine into Charleston Harbor for another test. In front of a crowd of spectators, the Hunley slipped below the surface and did not reappear. Horace Hunley and his entire crew perished.
Another willing crew was assembled and the Hunley went back into the water. On February 17, 1864, the ship headed out of Charleston Harbor and approached the U.S.S. Housatanic. The Hunley struck a torpedo into the Yankee ship and then backed away before the explosion. The Housatanic sank in shallow water, and the Hunley became the first submarine to sink a ship in battle. However, its first successful mission was also its last, the Hunley sank before it returned to Charleston, taking yet another crew down with it. The vessel was raised in 2000, and is now on exhibit in Charleston.