On Oct. 12, 1492 (Julian calendar; Oct. 21 Gregorian), Christopher Columbus arrived with his expedition in the present-day Bahamas.
In 1942, during World War II, Attorney General Francis Biddle announced that Italian nationals in the United States would no longer be considered enemy aliens. No such amnesty was provided to the American citizens of Japanese ancestry, interred in prison camps for the duration. See also The Road to Heart Mountain.
In 1964, the Soviet Union launched a Voskhod space capsule with a three-man crew on the first manned mission involving more than one crew member.
In 1973, President Nixon nominated House minority leader Gerald R. Ford of Michigan to succeed Spiro T. Agnew as vice president. The fix was in. Ford would become Chairman of the National Space Council as Vice President. He would also pardon Nixon after Nixon resigned. Agnew had refused to accept that obligation, and was therefore forced to resign on charges largely unrelated to the Watergate matter.
In 1986, the superpower meeting in Reykjavik, Iceland, ended in stalemate, with President 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. The magic of the Strategic Defense Initiative was beginning to work. Also that year, Space Commerce Corporation sent an early team of negotiators to begin identifying Russian space technology for sale to the West.
In 1988, Federal prosecutors announced that Sundstrand Corp. had agreed to plead guilty to fraud charges and pay a $115 million settlement for overbilling the Pentagon for airplane parts over five years.
In 1993, hundreds of militant right-wingers in Haiti cheered as an American warship retreated in a major setback for a U.N. mission to "restore democracy."
In 1997, singer John Denver was killed in the crash of his privately built aircraft in Monterey Bay, Calif.; he was 53. He had once considered an offer by the Soviet space agency to fly to Mir for a week; he was unwilling to pay the $10 million fee requested.
Thought for Today: "Create ships and sails, capable of navigating the celestial atmosphere. Then you will find men to man them, men not afraid of the vast emptiness of space."
-- Johannes Kepler in a letter to Galileo (circa 1610).
