On Oct. 12, 1492 (Old Style calendar; Oct. 21st New Style), Christopher Columbus arrived with his expedition in the present-day Bahamas.
On this date:
In 1870, Gen. Robert E. Lee died in Lexington, Va., at age 63.
In 1899, the Boers of the Transvaal and Orange Free State in southern Africa declared war on the British. The Boer War was ended May 31, 1902, by the Treaty of Vereeniging.
In 1915, English nurse Edith Cavell was executed by the Germans in occupied Belgium during World War I.
In 1918, the Cloquet Fire erupted in Minnesota, claiming some 450 lives.
In 1933, bank robber John Dillinger escaped from a jail in Allen County, Ohio, with the help of his gang, who killed the sheriff, Jess Sarber.
In 1949, Eugenie Anderson was nominated by President Harry S. Truman to be the U.S. ambassador to Denmark; she became the first American woman to hold an ambassadorship.
In 1960, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev disrupted a U.N. General Assembly session by pounding his desk with a shoe when a speaker criticized his country.
In 1964, the Soviet Union launched Voskhod 1 into orbit around Earth, with three cosmonauts aboard. It 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 1968, the Summer Games of the 19th Olympiad officially opened in Mexico City. Equatorial Guinea became independent of Spain.
In 1973, President Richard M. Nixon nominated House Minority Leader Gerald R. Ford, R-Mich., to succeed Spiro T. Agnew as vice president.
In 1984, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher escaped an attempt on her life when an Irish Republican Army bomb exploded at a hotel in Brighton, England, killing five people.
In 1986, superpower talks in Reykjavik, Iceland, ended in stalemate, with President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev unable to agree on arms control or a date for a full-fledged summit in the United States.
In 1998, Matthew Shepard, a gay student at University of Wyoming, died five days after he was beaten, robbed and left tied to a wooden fence post outside of Laramie.
In 1999, Pakistan's military overthrew the democratically elected government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Ahmed H. Zewail of the California Institute of Technology won the Nobel Prize for chemistry; Dutch scientists Gerardus 't Hooft and Martinus J.G. Veltman won the Nobel Prize for physics. NBA Hall-of-Famer Wilt Chamberlain died at his Los Angeles home at age 63.
In 2000, 17 sailors were killed in a suicide bomb attack on the U.S. destroyer Cole in Yemen.
In 2002, a bomb blamed on Islamic militants destroyed a nightclub on the Indonesian island of Bali, killing 202 people, many of them foreign tourists. The terror continued for Washington area residents as the weeklong death toll from a mysterious sniper reached eight.
In 2004, a jury in Baton Rouge, La., took 80 minutes to find suspected serial killer Derrick Todd Lee guilty of first-degree murder in the death of 22-year-old Charlotte Murray Pace. (Lee was later sentenced to death for Pace's killing.) The Seattle Storm won their first WNBA title with a 74-60 victory over the Connecticut Sun. A report of the CIA's top weapons investigator said Saddam Hussein thought U.S. officials knew he had no weapons of mass destruction before the invasion.
In 2005, newly released documents charged that the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Los Angeles allegedly shielded priests accused of sexual abuse by moving them from one parish to another.
In 2006, a London man admitted helping plan terrorist attacks in Britain and the United States, including at the New York Stock Exchange.
In 2007, former Vice President Al Gore and the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change won the Nobel Peace Prize for sounding the alarm over global warming.
In 2008, global finance ministers meeting in Washington kept searching for ways to tackle the unfolding financial crisis; in Paris, nations in Europe's single-currency zone agreed to temporarily guarantee bank refinancing and pledged to prevent bank failures. North Korea said it would resume dismantling its main nuclear facilities, hours after the United States removed the communist country from a list of states that sponsored terrorism. A Soyuz spacecraft carrying Richard Garriott, the sixth paying space traveler, along with another American and a Russian crew member, lifted off from Kazakhstan for the international space station. The Arizona Cardinals became the first team in NFL history to block a punt to score the winning TD in overtime in their 30-24 victory over the Dallas Cowboys.
Today's Birthdays: Actress Antonia Rey is 82. Comedian-activist Dick Gregory is 77. Former Sen. Jake Garn, R-Utah, is 77. Singer Sam Moore (formerly of Sam and Dave) is 74. Broadcast journalist Chris Wallace is 62. Actress-singer Susan Anton is 59. Rock singer-musician Pat DiNizio (The Smithereens) is 54. Actor Carlos Bernard is 47. Jazz musician Chris Botti is 47. R&B singer Claude McKnight (Take 6) is 47. Rock singer Bob Schneider is 44. [Who the fuck? — Ed.] Actor Hugh Jackman is 41. Actor Adam Rich is 41. R&B singer Garfield Bright (Shai) is 40. Country musician Martie Maguire (The Dixie Chicks) is 40. Actor Kirk Cameron is 39. Champion skier Bode Miller is 32. Arizona Cardinals safety Adrian Wilson is 30.
Today In Entertainment History October 12
In 1935, Opera singer Luciano Pavarotti was born in Modena, Italy.
In 1957, Little Richard announced that he was giving up rock and roll for religion. He later was ordained as a minister, but eventually went back to playing rock and roll.
In 1971, "Jesus Christ Superstar," a rock opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, opened on Broadway.
In 1975, Rod Stewart and The Faces played their last show together at a concert on Long Island, N.Y.
In 1978, Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols was arrested in New York in connection with the stabbing death of his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen.
In 1979, Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull was injured when a fan threw a rose on stage and a thorn pierced his eye. The band was forced to cancel two shows.
In 1971, singer Gene Vincent died in Los Angeles of a seizure brought on by a bleeding ulcer. He was 36.
In 1996, the film documentary "The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus" was released. It had been filmed in December 1968 but was shelved for nearly 28 years because the Stones reportedly were afraid that The Who upstaged them in the film.
In 1997, singer John Denver was killed when his experimental plane crashed into Monterey Bay in California. He was 53. Janet Jackson's album "The Velvet Rope" was banned in Singapore because of songs about abuse, sexuality and homosexuality.
In 2006, country singer Sara Evans quit "Dancing with the Stars" and filed for divorce from her husband of 13 years.
Thought for Today: "If Columbus had an advisory committee he would probably still be at the dock." — Arthur J. Goldberg, American jurist and statesman (1908-1990).
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