Today In History...

In 1492 Columbus sights the isle of San Salvador.

In 1777 British forces surrender to American troops in Saratoga, NY, in what proved to be a major turning point in the Revolutionary War.

In 1887 Gustav Kirchoff, discoverer of the laws of spectroscopy, dies.

In 1888 Thomas Edison files for a patent for the optical photograph, the first movie.

In 1894 The Ohio National Guard kill 3 lynchers while rescuing a black man.

In 1904 The Bank of Italy (Bank of America) opens its doors.

In 1919 The Radio Corporation Of America (RCA) is created.

In 1931 Chicago mobster Al Capone is convicted of tax evasion and is sentenced to 11 years in prison. (He was released in 1939.)

In 1933 Albert Einstein arrives in the U.S., a refugee from Nazi Germany.

In 1939 Frank Capra's "Mr. Smith Goes To Washington," starring Jean Arthur and Jimmy Stewart premieres in Washington, DC.

In 1941 The U.S. destroyer Kearny is torpedoed by a German submarine off the coast of Iceland, killing eleven.

In 1945 Colonel Juan Peron stages a coup in Buenos Aires, becoming the absolute ruler of Argentina.

In 1957 Britain's Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip visit the White House.

In 1957 French author Albert Camus is awarded the Nobel Prize in literature.

In 1966 TV's "Hollywood Squares" premieres.

In 1973 An Arab oil embargo begins in retaliation for American aid to Israel. It lasts until March, 1974.

In 1977 West German commandos storm hijacked Lufthansa in Mogadishu Somalia freeing all 86 hostages aboard and killing 3 of the 4 hijackers.

In 1978 President Carter signs a bill restoring U.S. citizenship to Confederate President Jefferson Davis who died in 1889.

In 1979 Mother Teresa of India is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her years of work on behalf of the destitute in Calcutta.

In 1983 The EPA issues a report warning of the "Greenhouse Effect."

In 1985 Italian Premier Bettino Craxi resigns in the wake of a dispute concerning his handling of the Achille Lauro hijacking.

In 1985 French author Claude Simon wins the Nobel Prize for literature.

In 1986 The U.S. Senate approves and sends to President Reagan an immigration bill prohibiting the hiring of illegal aliens and offering amnesty to millions of illegal aliens who had entered the
U.S. prior to 1982.

In 1987 The first World Series game in a covered stadium is played at the Minnesota Metrodome.

In 1987 First lady Nancy Reagan undergoes a modified radical mastectomy.

In 1989 A 7.1 earthquake strikes Northern California killing 67 people, injuring 2500 and causing $7 billion in damage.

In 1990 In testimony before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Secretary of State James Baker says that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein "must fail if peace is to succeed."

In 1991 Entertainer Tennessee Ernie Ford dies in Reston, VA, at age 72.

In 1991 The Atlanta Braves win their first National League pennant.

In 1992 Japanese exchange student Yoshi Hattori, 16, is shot and killed by Rodney Peairs in Center, LA, after Hattori and his American host mistakenly knocked on Peairs' door while looking for a Halloween party. (Peairs was acquitted of manslaughter.)

In 1993 In a CBS interview, Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole said he would offer legislation restricting President Clinton's authority to send troops to Haiti.

In 1994 Leaders of Israel and Jordan initial the peace treaty.

In 1994 Negotiators for the Angolan government and rebels agree to a peace treaty to end their 19-year-old civil war.

In 1995 In the first known violent border clash in years, an armed North Korean agent is shot to death just inside South Korea.

In 1995 A bomb explodes on a Paris subway car, wounding 29.

In 1996 Russian President Boris Yeltsin fires security chief Alexander Lebed, one day after the former general was accused by rival of building his own rogue army.

In 1997 The remains of Ernesto "Che" Guevara, who roamed the world as revolutionary, were laid to rest in his adopted Cuba.

In 1998 A pipeline explosion and fire in southwest Nigeria kills some 700 people.

In 1999 Former nurse Orville Lynn Majors is convicted of murdering six patients at a western Indiana hospital. (Majors is now serving a 360-year prison sentence.)

In 2000 Israeli and Palestinian end an emergency summit in Egypt, agreeing to publicly urge an end to the ongoing conflict.

In 2001 Israel's tourism minister, Rehavam Zeevi is shot to death in the first-ever assassination of a serving Cabinet minister by Palestinians.

In 2003 Fire kills six people in a high-rise county building in Chicago.

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