On This Day:
Saturday October 4, 2014 This is the 277th day of the year, with 88 days remaining in 2014. Fact of the Day: windmills Like waterwheels, windmills were among the original prime movers that replaced human beings as a source of power; the earliest known reference to windmills date to c 900 AD Persia. Persian millwrights were taken prisoner by the forces of Genghis Khan and sent to China to instruct in the building of windmills.
Holidays Lesotho: National Day.
Feast day of St. Petronius of Bologna, St. Francis of Assisi, and St. Ammon.
Events 1636 - The General Court of the Plymouth Colony instituted a legal code, the first composed in North America.
1777 - George Washington's troops launched an assault on the British at Germantown, Pennsylvania. British General Sir William Howe repels George Washington's last attempt to retake Philadelphia, compelling George Washington to spend the winter at Valley Forge.
1795 - General Napoleon Bonaparte led the rout of counterrevolutionaries in the streets of Paris.
1853 - Turkey declared war on Russia.
1887 - The first issue of the "International Herald Tribune" was published as the "Paris Herald Tribune."
1895 - The first U.S. Open golf tournament was held, at the Newport Country Club in Rhode Island.
1905 - Orville Wright became the first to fly an aircraft for over 33 minutes.
1957 - The Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first manmade satellite, officially beginning the Space Age.
1957 - "Leave It to Beaver" premiered on TV.
1958 - The first transatlantic passenger jet service was begun by British Overseas Airways Corporation (now British Airways) with flights between London and New York.
1959 - Luna 3 was launched by the USSR and became the first satellite to photograph the Moon's distant side.
1965 - Pope Paul VI arrived at Kennedy International Airport in New York City on the first visit by a pope to the United States. He visited to address the United Nations.
1972 - Judge John Sirca imposed a gag order on the Watergate break-in case.
1976 - In Gregg v. Georgia, the Supreme Court lifted the ban on the death sentence in murder cases, restoring capital punishment, which had not been practiced since 1967.
1992 - The Mozambique government signed a cease-fire with leaders of the Mozambican National Resistance, ending a 16-year civil war.
1993 - Rebel parliamentarians led by Russian Vice President Alexander Rutskoi and Chairman Ruslan Khasbulatov surrendered to president Boris Yeltsin after a 10-hour tank siege of the Russian White House parliament building.
2001 - Authorities confirmed that an editor at the tabloid "The Sun" in Boca Raton, Florida, had contracted the inhaled form of anthrax; he died the following day.
2004 - Scaled Composites' SpaceShipOne rocket plane reached 100 kilometers in altitude twice within a two-week period to capture the $10-million Ansari X Prize.
2004 - John Walker Lindh, the dubbed "American Taliban," received a 20-year sentence before a federal judge in Alexandria, Virginia.
Births 1814 - Jean François Millet, French painter.
1822 - Rutherford B. Hayes, 19th President of the United States of America (1877-1881).
1862 - Edward Stratemeyer, American author, creator of the characters the Hardy Boys, Rover Boys, Nancy Drew and the Bobbsey Twins.
1884 - Damon Runyan, American journalist, storywriter.
1895 - Buster Keaton, American actor.
1924 - Charleton Heston (Charles Carter), American Academy Award-winning actor.
1928 - Alvin Toffler, American author, futurist.
1941 - Anne Rice, best-selling American author of gothic and later religious themed books.
1946 - Susan Sarandon (born Susan Abigail Tomalin in New York City), American actress.
1976 - Alicia Silverstone, American actress, born in San Francisco, California .
2005 - Prince Emmanuel of Belgium (born Emmanuel Leopold Guillaume François Marie).
Deaths 1669 - Rembrandt, Dutch painter.
1970 - Janis Joplin, American rock singer.
1989 - Graham Chapman, an English comedian, actor, and writer, and one of the six members of the Monty Python comedy troupe.
2004 - Gordon Cooper, American astronaut, born in Shawnee, Oklahoma.
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