On October 10, 1913, the Gamboa Dike in Panama is dynamited. With that blast - triggered by an electrical signal telegraphed from the White House by President Woodrow Wilson himself - the Panama Canal was filled with an unbroken flow of water from the Atlantic to the Pacific. It would be another 10 months before the canal would officially open to commercial traffic. On October 10, 1492, Christopher Columbus negotiates a truce with the near-mutinous crew of the Santa Maria. The carrack (3-or-4 masted ocean going sailing ship) was the largest of Columbus' 3 ship fleet for his attempt to find a shorter passage to the Far East, and, despite legend, was not crewed by criminals. There were 4 convicts aboard who were granted amnesty by the Spanish sovereigns in exchange for volunteering for the expedition, but most of the Santa Maria's crew of about 40 were professional sailors. Nevertheless, a mutiny was afoot on the 10th, five weeks into the voyage and with a prevailing east-to-west wind that made the sailors fear a return home would be impossible. After conferring with the captains of the caravels Nina and Pinta, Columbus convinced his crews to continue west for 3 more days. Two days later, a sailor aboard the Pinta sighted land, the modern day island of San Salvador. The Santa Maria would be run aground by an inexperienced helmsman and sink near Haiti the following December; her wreckage has never been positively located. On October 10, 1933 United Airlines Flight 23 from Newark, NJ to Oakland, CA, explodes in flight near Chesterton, IN. All 4 passengers and the crew of 3 were killed. Lead federal crash investigator Melvin Purvis (who later was instrumental in the killing of John Dillinger) determined that the explosion occurred in the Boeing 247's (example below, not the actual Flight 23 aircraft) midsection and away from engines or fuel tanks. An Indiana crime lab would later conclude that the explosion was due to a bomb onboard, likely using nitroglycerine as the explosive. It is the first proven act of sabotage aboard a commercial flight in aviation history. No suspect or motive for the bombing were ever identified.
On October 11, 1971, Lewis B. "Chesty" Puller, the most decorated Marine in American history, dies at his home in Virginia. He was 73 years old. A veteran of the Central American "Banana Wars", WWII and Korea, Puller earned 5 Navy Crosses and 1 Distinguished Service Cross. Only famed airman Eddie Rickenbacker earned more of America's 2nd highest decoration. Puller also was awarded the Silver Star, the Bronze Star (with "V" Device), 2 Legion of Merits and the Purple Heart. He was one of the highest ranking Marine officers on Guadalcanal during that campaign, and in Korea, led the Marine phase of the landing at Inchon and commanded the 1st Regiment at the immortal Battle of Chosin Reservoir, where he was famously quoted as saying,"We have found the enemy, we are surrounded. That simplifies things." He retired in 1955 as a 3-star general. Puller is a legendary figure in Marine folklore, with his name frequently invoked in Marine march cadences and in physical training. It is common at Marine boot camp for recruits to end their day with the phrase,"Good night, Chesty, wherever you are!" (Puller on Guadalcanal, 1942) On October 11, 1976, Congress passes a joint resolution posthumously promoting George Washington to General of the Armies of the United States. Washington is only the second American general awarded a hypothetical 6th star (the rank General of the Army - a 5-star general - is the highest rank ever awarded a serving officer); General John "Black Jack" Pershing received the rank in 1919, but the Washington resolution would also state that Washington is to forever be considered senior to all American military officers. (Congress authorized President Biden to posthumously promote Ulysses S. Grant to General of the Armies in 2022, but the authorization was never acted upon.) On October 11, 1997, the LSU Tigers beat the defending national champion and number one ranked Florida Gators 28-21. It was the first - and only - time LSU has ever beaten the nation's top-ranked team in Tiger Stadium. The Steve Spurrier-led Gators came into the game with a 25-game SEC win streak and 8 consecutive wins over the Tigers. LSU, on the other hand, was reeling after nearly being upset by Vanderbilt in a game that stud tailback Cecil Collins was lost for the season. QB Herb Tyler would later say the Florida game was won during the week of practice, with Defensive Coordinator Carl Reese installing a "Bandit package" of 4 reserve players for 3rd down situations. The fresh legs contributed to 5 sacks of QB Doug Johnson and 4 interceptions. The Tigers stunned the visiting Gators with a 14-point flurry in the first quarter, then put the game out of reach with a pick six by Cedric Donaldson (his second interception of the game), followed by a forced fumble on the ensuing kickoff that the offense quickly converted to 7 points. The win vaulted LSU to 8th in the AP national poll, their highest ranking of the season. The '97 Tigers would finish 9-3 with an Independence Bowl win over Notre Dame.
Great post! Chesty is in fact a legend! I watched that LSU game from Korea! If I recall we lost the following week to either Aub or Moo U. Played pitiful the whole night.
On October 14, 1885, George Eastman receives two U.S. patents for his paper-strip photographic film. The New York-born Eastman was working as a bank clerk in the 1870's when he became interested in photography. He soon formed a company that produced the dry plates common to photography at the time, but also began developing his concept for a flexible film roll that could capture multiple images to replace the single image plates. Once he had that process down, he began work on a camera that could use the film. The Kodak (he and his mother invented the name, using the guidelines that the name be short, easy to pronounce, and unlikely to be mistaken for another word, plus George always liked the letter "k" as it seemed "strong and incisive") camera followed in 1888. The first Kodak camera came with a 100-frame roll of film installed; the user would mail the camera along with $10 to Eastman's Rochester, NY plant, where the prints would be developed and the camera reloaded with another roll of film. The Eastman Kodak Co. has remained a world leader in the production of still photography, and remains based in Rochester to this day. On October 14, 1943, prisoners at the Sobibor extermination camp revolt. As opposed to a concentration camp, where the Nazis imprisoned undesirable factions for work and experimentation purposes, Sobibor in eastern Poland was one of four camps that existed strictly as a site for murder. Its estimated as many as 250,000 Polish Jews died there, making it the 4th deadliest Nazi camp. The camp population was roughly 600 in summer, 1943 when rumors began to circulate that the camp would be closed. Knowing that this would only mean hastier deaths, the camp underground began plotting a mass escape, first assigning an assassination team for each of the officers, after which, the prison population would march out under the guise of heading for an assigned work detail outside the fences. The plan was sprung on the afternoon of the 14th, an hour before roll call, but the teams managed to kill only 11 officers. The prisoners grabbed guns and tried to shoot their way out, but only about 300 made it to freedom. The Nazis soon closed the camp as expected. On October 14, 2003, the Chicago Cubs hosted the Florida Marlins in game 6 of the National League Championship Series, needing only one win to advance to their first World Series since 1945. The Cubs led 3-0 with one out in the top of the 8th inning, when the Marlins' Luis Castillo hit a ball into foul territory down the left field line. Left fielder Moises Alou drifted over and had room to make the catch for the second out, but Cubs fan Steve Bartman, sitting in the front row, reached out to catch the foul ball and deflected it away. Despite the furor from Alou and the Wrigley Field fans (manager Dusty Baker's view of the play was blocked), the umpires ruled there was no fan interference, and the Cubs collapsed, allowing 8 runs in the inning to lose 8-3, and then proceded to lose game 7 and miss out on the Series (the game 6 loss came on the anniversary of the Cubs' last World Series title, in 1908). Bartman (in black in the photo) needed a police escort to get out of the stadium after game 6, and was subsequently vilified by Cubs fans for years after, despite his apologies. Most Cubs players accepted the blame for the team's collapse without blaming Bartman, and when the team finally won its long-overdue World Series in 2016, Bartman was among the ancillary figures awarded a championship ring by the club.
On or about October 15, 1966, Huey P. Newton (right) and Bobby Seale, students at Merritt College in Oakland, CA, found the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (the "for Self-Defense" would soon be dropped). The WWII era saw a large migration of black Americans from the South to the West seeking work in the shipyards. The reforms of the Civil Rights Bills-era were slow to reach the West, and from that lag, the Black Panther Party was founded. Although the group did create several beneficial social reform programs, their militant stances, particularly in armed clashes with the police, would soon lead FBI head J.Edgar Hoover to label the Black Panthers "the greatest threat to the internal security of our country." By mid 1969 the Party had a membership of about 5,000 nationwide, but a newspaper they published had a circulation of about a quarter of a million. Newton (a Monroe, LA native) was murdered in 1989 by a member of the rival Black Guerrilla Family. Seale, now 87 years old, has authored several books and speaks in public frequently on social justice issues. The FBI considers the Black Panther Party to have been disbanded in 1982. On October 15, 1888, a London post office postmarks a small package addressed to George Lusk, chairman of the Whitechapel Vigiliance Committee. Lusk received it the next day, finding a letter that read, From hell Mr Lusk, Sor I send you half the Kidne I took from one women prasarved it for you tother piece I fried and ate it was very nise. I may send you the bloody knif that took it out if you only wate a whil longer signed Catch me when you can Mishter Lusk As stated in the letter, the package also contained half a human kidney. Although police would receive hundreds of letters attributed to the Whitechapel Murderer (aka "Jack the Ripper"), the "From Hell" letter is one of the few that even a few criminologists consider authentic. Lusk was among the most prominent civilians who engaged in a futile search for the infamous killer. On October 15, 1910, the French-built airship America launches from Atlantic City, NJ in an attempt to become the first powered aircraft to cross the Atlantic Ocean. The America was built 5 years earlier for journalist Walter Wellman for an unsuccessful attempt to fly to the North Pole. Not discouraged, Wellman immediately began prepping for the trans-Atlantic attempt. The America would develop handling problem almost immediately due to condensation on her skin. The engine failed 38 hours into the flight, and after drifting south for another 33 hours, Wellman and his crew of 5 were spotted off Bermuda by the British steamer Trent (below). The crew boarded a lifeboat and abandoned the America, which drifted off and was never seen again. A U.S. Navy seaplane would complete the first successful powered flight across the Atlantic nine years later.
On October 16, 1813, forces of the Sixth Coalition (primarily Russia, Austria, Prussia and Sweden) clash with Napoleon's Grande Armee at Leipzig in the Kingdom of Saxony. Over the next four days, the largest battle of the Napoleonic Wars, and the largest battle on the European continent prior to WWI, is waged. The Battle of Leipzig ends with Napoleon driven from Saxony and driven back to France, having lost nearly 80,000 of the French and Allied troops at his command, including more than 30,000 captured. The Coalition force - more than 360,000 troops by the last day of battle - lost anywhere from 54 to 80,000 of its number. By year's end, the Coalition would invade France and drive Napoleon into exile. On October 16, 1909, two Western Hemisphere leaders narrowly avoid a double assassination. The occasion was the first summit meeting between American and Mexican heads of state, as President William Howard Taft and Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz agreed to meet at the border towns of El Paso/Ciudad Juarez to discuss territorial issues. In order to protect U.S. financial interests in Mexico, Taft had agreed to public support Diaz' in his "campaign" for an 8th term as El Presidente', a decision that generated several death threats. Security for the historic meeting was appropriately tight, with some 4,000 Mexican and U.S. troops brought in to augment the Secret Service detail, Texas Rangers and U.S. Marshals assigned to the task. Nevertheless, a 52-year old Minnesotan named Julius Bergerson infiltrated the crowd with a palm pistol and staked himself out along the pair's parade route in front of the El Paso Chamber of Commerce office, getting within a meter of Taft and Diaz before being set upon by a Texas Ranger and Frederick Burnham, a famed wilderness scout brought in as part of an independent security detail. Bergerson was subsequently declared insane and locked away in a Minnesota asylum. On October 16, 1869, workers digging a well at a farm in Cardiff, NY uncover what appears to be the petrified remains of a man more than 10 feet tall. The farm's owner, William "Stub" Newell, wasted no time setting up a tent and charging admission to view the "Cardiff Giant." Hotel business in Cardiff boomed for four days before a Cornell University administrator raised the first spectre of a hoax in progress. Other skeptics came forward, but not before famed showman P.T. Barnum fashioned a copy of the giant (after failing in a bid to buy it outright) and putting it on display in NYC, claiming the original (it had since been moved to Syracuse for display) as a fake. Two months later, the truth came out: the giant was a hoax perpetrated by Newell and a cousin named George Hull, a Darwin devotee who had been humiliated when he publicly lost a debate on the possibility of Genesis-era giants roaming the Earth. Hull had a stonecutter create his "giant" (in Hull's image) from a huge block of gypsum and buried it on Newell's property the previous November. The Cardiff Giant is now displayed at the Farmer's Museum in Cooperstown. Barnum's copy is in a museum of oddities in Michigan; during its display in NYC, a viewer was quoted by a local newspaper as saying,"There's a sucker born every minute," the famed quote that over the years became attributed to Barnum himself.
On October 17, 1781, British Lieutenant General Charles Cornwallis sends an officer under a flag of truce from his positions defending Yorktown into the American lines to request terms of surrender. Cornwallis' forces (about 5,000, plus 3-4,000 Hessians) had endured nearly 3 weeks of siege gunfire from American land-based artillery and French warships. Two days of negotiations followed (the negotiations were handled by field grade officers; none of the principal flag officers in the fight - Washington, Cornwallis or Lafayette - participated) before terms of surrender were reached. (painting depicts George Washington lighting the fuse for the first cannon shot of the siege on Yorktown) On October 17, 1933, Albert Einstein arrives in the U.S., having surrendered his passport and renounced his German citizenship seven months earlier. Einstein had been in the U.S. in February of '33 on a visiting professorship when Adolf Hitler formally came to power. He soon learned that the Gestapo were repeatedly raiding his Berlin apartment, seized his personal sailboat and targeted his work for burning. Einstein returned to Europe one last time, via Antwerp, Belgium, where he immediately went to the German consulate and surrendered his passport. Now a stateless person, Einstein briefly took up residence in Belgium before emigrating to England through his academic contacts, and finally to America permanently. He was granted citizenship (below, with Judge Phillip Forman) in 1940. On October 17, 1860, Prestwick Golf Club in Scotland host the first Open Championship. At the time, professional golfers were strictly as we would see a local club's "pro" today; someone who earned his living by teaching golf, making and selling clubs and balls, and running a club. Allan Robertson was considered the best "pro" in the British Isles, and when he died in 1959, Prestwick founder James Ogilvie Fairly hit on the idea of a competition to determine "the Champion Golfer." Five clubs (including St. Andrews) were invited to send three players each to compete in a 3-round tournament (Prestwick only had 12 holes at the time), and 8 players accepted, with Willie Park, Sr (below) winning by 2 strokes over the legendary Old Tom Morris. He was awarded the Challenge Belt he is seen wearing in the photo. Prestwick quickly decided to make the tournament an annual event, and make it "open" to amateurs as well as professionals. In 1872, Prestwick, the Royal & Ancient (St. Andrews) and Edinburg Golf Club agreed to rotate the hosting of The Open Championship between the three courses, and also to each contribute to the cost of a silver trophy to present to the winner. Made in the form of 19th century jugs that traditionally were used to decant a dry red French wine called claret, the trophy soon became unofficially known as The Claret Jug. The Open Championship (often referred to as The British Open outside the UK) is the world's oldest, and arguably the most prestigious, golf tournament. Its winner is still traditionally referred to as "the Champion Golfer of the Year."
On October 18, 1009, Fatimid caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah orders the complete destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Built in the 4th century by Constantine the Great, the Church stands over what are traditionally believed to be two of the most important locations in Christianity; Calvary, the hill upon which Jesus was crucified, and his nearby tomb. Previous Muslim leaders had respected the sanctity of the Church even as they battled Jews for control of Jerusalem. Little of the Church remained after Al-Hakim finished with it, and the reaction throughout Europe was outrage. Following Al-Hakim's death in 1028, his son and successor, Ali as-Zahir, allowed the church to be rebuilt. (diagram shows a silhouette of the Church over the presumed sites of the crucifixion and burial) On October 18, 1954, Texas Instruments introduces the Regency TR-1, the first transistor radio. Despite the cliche that every successful effort at making technology smaller came from the Japanese, the first transistor radio was an all-American effort; it was Bell Labs that invented the transistor in 1947, and Texas Instruments - to that point a producer of technology for the oil industry - that took on the challenge of marketing a commercially viable transistor radio. Several radio companies rejected the chance to partner on the project with T.I. until Industrial Development Engineering Associates accepted. Despite the cost ($49.95, more than $500 in eqivalent dollars today), about 100,000 units were sold the first year. But within the year, a small Japanese company that would eventually rename itself Sony produced its first transistor radio and soon cornered the market. On October 18, 1851, The Whale, a novel by American author Herman Melville, is published for the first time in the U.K. Melville drew on personal experiences as crewman on a whaling vessel, and a few other real-life incidents in crafting his epic sea tale. Among them was a hunt in the Pacific Ocean for a docile but elusive albino whale that came to be known as Mocha Dick. In his story, Melville changed the name of the whale from Mocha Dick to Moby Dick; even Melville biographers don't know how he came up with that particular name. A month after The Whale's initial publication, it premiered in America, re-titled Moby Dick. It was a commercial failure and Melville saw little income from its publication. But on the 100th anniversary of Melville's birth (1919), author William Faulkner declared he wished he'd written it, while D.H. Lawrence labelled it "the greatest book of the sea ever written." Moby Dick is now considered one of the Great American Novels. (illustration from a 1902 edition)
