1652 – John Greaves, English mathematician and astronomer (attempted to survey the pyramids) (b. 1602)
1656 – John Georg I, Elector of Saxony (1611-56, Peace of Prague), dies at 71
1895 – Charles Oberthür, German composer and harpist, dies at 76
1967 – Vernon Watkins, Welsh poet (Ballad of Mari Lwyd), dies at 61
1978 – Karl Swenson, American actor (Lars Hanson-Little House on the Prairie), dies of a heart attack at 70
1979 – June Nash, American actress (Strange Cargo, Dynamite), dies at 68
1983 – Joan Hackett, American stage and screen actress (Will Penny; Only When I Laugh; Mourning Becomes Electra),, dies of cancer at 49
1997 – Bertrand Goldberg, American architect (b. 1913)
1997 – Robin Lee, American figure skater, dies at 77
2011 – Antonio Iglesias Álvares, Spanish pianist, composer, educator and critic, dies at 93
Author: gil7
Historical Events for 8th October 2023
1779 – English engraver and poet William Blake begins study at the Royal Academy, Old Somerset House, London
1903 – J M Synge’s play “In the Shadow of the Glen” premieres in Dublin
1939 – Germany annexes Western Poland
1942 – Comedy duo Abbott and Costello launch their weekly radio show
1944 – Samuel Barber’s “Capricorn Concerto” premieres at The Town Hall, NYC, in a performance by Daniel Saidenberg and his Little Symphony
1956 – Yankees pitcher Don Larsen throws a perfect game as New York beats Brooklyn Dodgers, 2-0 in Game 5 of the World Series at Yankee Stadium
1968 – Dutch aircraft carrier Karel Doorman (formerly British HMS Venerable) sold to Argentina
1974 – Franklin National Bank collapses due to fraud and mismanagement; at the time it was the largest bank failure in the history of the United States.
2001 – US President George W. Bush announces the establishment of the Office of Homeland Security
2012 – 35 people are killed by a Nigerian military bomb struck a convoy in Maiduguri
Today in History for 8th October 2023
Historical Events
1625 – English Admiral George Villiers’ fleet sails from Plymouth to Cadiz, Spain
1934 – Bruno Hauptmann is indicted for the murder of Charles Lindbergh’s son
1972 – International music revue “From Israel with Love” closes limited run at Palace Theater, NYC, after 8 performances
1980 – USSR and Syria sign peace treaty
1986 – Mike Scott ties playoff record of 14 strikeouts, beats Mets 1-0
2016 – 140 people are killed in an air strike during a wake in Sanaa, Yemen
Famous Birthdays
1834 – Walter Kittredge, American musician during American Civil War, born in Merrimack, New Hampshire (d. 1905)
1959 – Carlos I. Noriega, Peruvian-American astronaut (STS 84, sk 97), born in Lima, Peru
1961 – Ted Kooshian, American jazz pianist (Hubub!; Standard Orbit Quartet; Clowns Will Be Arriving), born in San Jose, California
1965 – Martin Mayhew, American NFL cornerback (Tampa Bay Bucs), born in Daytona Beach, California
1970 – Anne-Marie Duff, English actress (Shameless), born in London, England
1977 – Erna Siikavirta, Finnish heavy metal keyboardist (Deathlike Silence, 2006-08; Lordi, 1997-2005), born in Espoo, Finland
Famous Deaths
1772 – Jean-Joseph Cassenea de Mondonville, French composer and violinist, dies at 60
1925 – Abraham Pieter Cornelis van Karnebeek, Dutch Foreign Minister (Liberal, 1918-27), dies at 89
1987 – Konstantinos Tsatsos, Greek politician and 2nd President of Greece (1975-1980), dies at 88
1990 – B.J. Wilson, British session and touring rock drummer (Procol Harum, 1967-77; Joe Cocker), dies of a drug overdose complications and pneumonia at 43
1995 – Terry Hawkins, theatre administrator, dies at 45
2008 – Eileen Herlie [Herlihy], Scottish-American actress (All My Children; The Angel with the Trumpet), dies of complications from pneumonia at 90
Famous Deaths for 7th October 2023
1911 – John Hughlings Jackson, English neurologist (b. 1835)
1944 – Helmut Lent, German night-fighter ace in World War II, dies at 26
1951 – Anton Philips, Co-Founder of Royal Philips Electronics N.V., dies at 77
1985 – Cemal Reşit Rey, Turkish composer, dies at 81
1986 – Cheryl Crawford, American actress and producer (Touch of Venus, Brigadoon), dies at 84
1994 – Paul Swift, American actor (Egg Man in Pink Flamingo), dies of AIDS at 60
1994 – Niels Kaj Jerne, Danish immunologist (Nobel prize 1984), dies at 82
1995 – Ariston Muguranayanga Chambati, politician/businessman, dies at 59
1995 – Louis Meyer, Indie 500 racer (3 wins), dies at 91
2010 – Antonie Kamerling, Dutch actor (b. 1966)
Historical Events for 7th October 2023
1806 – Carbon paper patented in London by inventor Ralph Wedgwood
1826 – Granite Railway (1st chartered railway in US) begins operations
1864 – -Oct 13th) Battle of Darbytown Road, Virginia
1950 – US forces invade North Korea by crossing 38th parallel
1952 – First “Bandstand” broadcast in Philadelphia on WFIL-TV (Dick Clark joins in 1955 as a substitute-host)
1955 – Aircraft carrier USS Saratoga launched at Brooklyn
1975 – MLB National League Championship: Cincinnati Reds beat Pittsburgh Pirates, 3 games to 0
2001 – Crude oil resumes flowing through the trans-Alaska pipeline after workers welded shut a bullet hole that caused 260,000 US gallons of oil to spill out
2012 – ICC Men’s Cricket T20 World Cup, Colombo: West Indies beat Sri Lanka by 36 runs for first title; Player of the Series: Australian all-rounder Shane Watson (249 runs • 11 wickets)
2016 – Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos wins the Nobel Peace Prize for attempts to end armed conflict with FARC
Today in History for 7th October 2023
Historical Events
1763 – George III of Great Britain issues Proclamation of 1763, closing lands in North America north and west of Alleghenies to white settlement
1919 – KLM, Royal Dutch Airlines, established (oldest existing airline)
1943 – Weill, Perelman and Nash’ musical “One Touch of Venus” premieres in NYC
2010 – Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature “for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt, and defeat”
2018 – Romanian referendum to ban same sex marriage fails with only 20.4% voting
2019 – Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology awarded to Peter Ratcliffe, William Kaelin and Gregg Semenza for discovering how cells sense oxygen
Famous Birthdays
1881 – Mikhail Drozdovsky, Russian general (d. 1918)
1916 – Walt Rostow, American economist and political theorist (The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto), born in NYC, New York (d. 2003)
1951 – John Mellencamp, American rock singer-songwriter (“Jack and Diane”; “Small Town”; “Pink Houses”), co-founder of Farm Aid, and actor (Falling From Grace), born in Seymour, Indiana
1955 – Yo-Yo Ma, Chinese-American cellist (2001 National Medal of Arts, 2011 Presidential Medal of Freedom), born in Paris, France
1973 – Dida, Brazilian footballer, born in Bahia, Brazil
1982 – Madjid Bougherra, Algerian footballer, born in Longvic, France
Famous Deaths
1555 – Louis of Praet, Habsburg diplomat (b. 1488)
1925 – Hubert Main, American hymn composer, dies at 86
1999 – Deryck Guyler, British actor (Please Sir!; Sykes), dies at 85
2005 – Doug Young, American national and world powerlifting champion, dies of a heart attack at 61
2008 – Leslie Hardman, Jewish Orthodox rabbi (b. 1913)
2016 – Johnny Gleeson, Australian cricket spin bowler (29 Tests, 93 wickets, BB 5/61; NSW CA), dies at 78
Famous Deaths for 6th October 2023
1868 – Léon Kreutzer, French composer and music critic, dies at 51
1919 – Ricardo Palma, Peruvian writer and poet (Tradiciones Peruanas), dies at 86
1924 – Jacques Oppenheim, Dutch lawyer and jurist, dies at 75
1951 – Henry Gurney, British high commissioner to Malaya, assassinated
1970 – Julian Przybos, Polish poet (Sruby), dies at 69
1981 – Anwar Sadat, 3rd President of Egypt (1970-81, Nobel 1978), assassinated by fundamentalist army officers at 62
1991 – Wendell Phillips, dies at 83 [or 10/13]
2010 – Colette Renard, French actress and singer (b. 1924)
2020 – Johnny Nash, American pop-reggae-soul singer-songwriter and record producer (I Can See Clearly Now), dies at 80
2022 – Judy Tenuta, American stand-up comedienne and accordion player, dies of ovarian cancer at 72
Historical Events for 6th October 2023
1683 – 13 Mennonite families from Germany found Germantown, Philadelphia
1917 – Battle of Passchendaele: Canadian troops capture the village of Passchendaele in the Third Battle of Ypres, after 250,000 casualties on both sides
1925 – Greek premier Papanastasiou orders gen Pangulos arrested
1948 – Paleoanthropologist Mary Leakey finds the first partial fossil skull of Proconsul africanus, an ancestor of apes and humans on Rusinga Island, Kenya
1958 – US nuclear sub USS Seawolf remains a record 60 days under the north pole
1978 – Terrence Malick’s “Days of Heaven” film premieres starring Richard Gere
1988 – Oakland A’s sweep Boston Red Sox in 4 games for AL pennant
1996 – Lois and Clark (fictional characters) wed
2002 – Pope John Paul II canonizes Opus Dei founder Josemaría Escrivá as a Catholic saint
2015 – Nobel prize for Physics awarded to Takaaki Kajita (Japan) and Arthur McDonald (Canada) for work on neutrinos
Today in History for 6th October 2023
Historical Events
1866 – 1st train robbery in US (Reno Brothers take $13,000)
1908 – Tigers beat White Sox, 7-0 to win AL pennant
1962 – US performs atmospheric nuclear test at Johnston Island
1966 – LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) is first declared illegal in state of California, other states follow
1995 – BPAA US Women’s Open won by Cheryl Daniels
2018 – Brett Kavanaugh is confirmed and sworn onto the US Supreme Court amid protests and after an FBI investigation
Famous Birthdays
1820 – Jenny Lind, Swedish soprano known as the ‘Swedish Nightingale’, born in Stockholm, Sweden (d. 1887)
1927 – Alice Bauer, American golfer (co-founder LPGA), born in Eureka, South Dakota (d. 2002)
1946 – Tony Greig, English cricket captain, all-rounder (1972-77) and commentator, born in Queenstown, South Africa (d. 2012)
1962 – Rich Yett, baseball player
1970 – Amy Jo Johnson, American actress and singer
1982 – MC Lars [Andrew Nielsen], American hip-hop artist (iGeneration)
Famous Deaths
1017 – Wang Dan, Chinese politician in the Song dynasty and grand councilor (1006-17), dies at 59 or 60
1874 – Thomas Tellefsen, Norwegian pianist and composer, dies at 50
1893 – Ford Madox Brown, British painter, dies at 72
1973 – Dennis Price, English actor (Kind Hearts and Coronets, Separate Tables), dies at 58 (b. 1915)
2001 – Arne Harris, American television sports director, dies at 67
2022 – Judy Tenuta, American stand-up comedienne and accordion player, dies of ovarian cancer at 72
Famous Deaths for 5th October 2023
1606 – Philippe Desportes, French poet (b. 1546)
1707 – Daniel Speer, German composer, dies at 71
1933 – Nikolai Nikolayevich Yudenich, Russian WWI general, dies at 71
1954 – Oscar Charleston, American Baseball HOF CF (NgL Triple Crown 1921 St. Louis Giants, 1924, 25 Harrisburg Giants) and manager (NgL WS 1933, 35, 36 Pittsburgh Crawfords), dies of a stroke at 57
1992 – Paul Acket, Dutch publisher (Music Express) and impresario (North Sea Jazz Festival), dies of lung cancer at 69
1995 – Dick Henry Jurgen, American swing bandleader, and songwriter (“Elmer’s Tune”), dies of cancer at 85
1997 – Andrew Keir, Scottish character actor (Rob Roy, Absolution, Blood Hunt, Catholics), dies at 71
2000 – Sidney R. Yates, American politician (Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Illinois), dies at 91
2004 – Maurice Wilkins, New Zealand-born English physicist (Nobel 1962-X-ray diffraction studies of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) proved crucial to the determination of DNA’s molecular structure by James D. Watson and Francis Crick), dies at 87
2012 – Keith H.S. Campbell, British biologist, dies at 58