On October 31st...

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Halloween

1345 King Fernando I of Portugal was born.

1517 Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of a church at Wittenberg.

1632 Painter Jan Vermeer was born.

1705 Pope Clement XIV was born.

1740 William Paca, signer of the Declaration of Independence, was born.

1754 King's College (now Columbia University) was founded.

1769 An expedition led by Don Gaspar de Portolá became the first Europeans to see the Golden Gate from land.

1795 Poet John Keats was born.

1815 Sir Humphry Davy patented the miner's safety lamp.

1834 Industralist E.I. Du Pont died.

1835 Chemist Adolf von Baeyer was born.

1846 The Donner Party set up a winter camp.

1848 Stephen Watts Kearny, hero of the Mexican-American War, died.

1860 Juliette Gordon Low, the founder of the American Girl Scout movement, was born.

1864 Nevada became the 36th state.

1879 Union Army General Thomas Hooker died.

1887 Chiang Kai-Shek, President of Nationalist China, was born.

1888 John Boyd Dunlop patented the pneumatic bicycle tire.
1888 Australian explorer Hubert Wilkins was born.

1892 Arthur Conan Doyle published The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

1893 Edward Sorin, the founder of the University of Notre Dame, died.

1896 Singer Ethel Walters was born.

1912 Singer Dale Evans was born.

1913 The Lincoln Highway was completed, making the first paved coast-to-coast highway in the United States.

1917 The Battle of Beersheba, "the last successful cavalry charge in history," was fought.

1922 Actress Barbara Bel Geddes was born.
1922 King Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia was born.

1926 Magician-escape artist Harry Houdini died.

1930 Astronaut Michael Collins was born.

1931 Television journalist Tom Brokaw was born.

1933 The Century of Progress International Exposition closed.

1936 Actor Michael Landon was born.

1939 The New York World's Fair ended its first season.

1940 The Battle of Britain ended.

1941 Mount Rushmore was dedicated.

1942 Actor David Ogden Stiers was born.

1943 An F4U Corsair accomplished the first successful radar-guided interception.
1943 Football player Brian Piccolo was born.

1950 Actor John Candy was born.
1950 Television news commentator Jane Pauley was born.

1952 The world's first thermonuclear bomb was detonated at Marshall Islands.

1954 Actor Ken Wahl was born.

1960 Reza Cyrus Ali Pahlavi, the first son of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi of Iran, was born.

1963 Comedian Rob Schneider was born.

1967 The San Mateo-Hayward Bridge across lower San Francisco Bay was opened to traffic.
1967 Race car driver Buddy Lazier was born.

1968 President Lyndon Johnson ordered a halt to all bombing of North Vietnam.

1984 Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated.

1988 Actor John Houseman died.

1993 Actor River Phoenix died.

2006 P.W. Botha, former President of South Africa, died.

2008 Author Studs Terkel died.

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This page was last updated on April 08, 2018.