On Oct. 9, 1967, Latin American guerrilla leader Che Guevara was executed in Bolivia while attempting to incite revolution.
On Oct. 9, 1899, Bruce Catton, the American writer and historian known for his books about the Civil War, was born. Following his death on Aug. 28, 1978, his obituary appeared in The Times.
Go to obituary » | Other birthdays »
On Oct. 9, 1940, rock musician and songwriter John Lennon of the Beatles was born in Liverpool, England.
On This Date
| 1635 | Religious dissident Roger Williams was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony. |
|---|---|
| 1701 | The Collegiate School of Connecticut – later Yale University – was chartered in New Haven. |
| 1776 | A group of Spanish missionaries settled in present-day San Francisco. |
| 1888 | The public was first admitted to the Washington Monument. |
| 1930 | Laura Ingalls became the first woman to fly across the United States as she completed a nine-stop journey from Roosevelt Field in New York to Glendale, Calif. |
| 1936 | The first generator at Boulder (later Hoover) Dam began transmitting electricity to Los Angeles. |
| 1946 | The Eugene O'Neill drama "The Iceman Cometh" opened on Broadway. |
| 1958 | Pope Pius XII died at age 82. |
| 1967 | Guerrilla leader Che Guevara was executed in Bolivia while attempting to incite revolution. |
| 1975 | Soviet scientist Andrei Sakharov was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. |
| 1985 | The hijackers of the Achille Lauro cruise liner surrendered after the ship arrived in Port Said, Egypt. |
| 1990 | David Souter was sworn in as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. |
| 2001 | Letters postmarked in Trenton, N.J., that later tested positive for anthrax spores were mailed to Sens. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. |
| 2006 | North Korea announced that it had conducted its first nuclear weapons test. |
| 2006 | Google Inc. announced it was snapping up YouTube Inc. for $1.65 billion in a stock deal. |
| 2007 | The Dow Jones industrial average closed at an all-time high of 14,164.53. |
| 2008 | The Dow Jones industrials fell below 9,000 – to 8,579.19 – for the first time in five years. |
| 2009 | President Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. |
| 2010 | Chile's 33 trapped miners cheered and embraced each other as a drill punched into their underground chamber where they had been stuck for an agonizing 66 days. |
Historic Birthdays
Bruce Catton
10/9/1899 - 8/28/1978
American historian.Go to obituary »
| 72 |
Robert de Sorbon 10/9/1201 - 8/15/1274 French theologian |
|---|---|
| 79 |
King Charles X 10/9/1757 - 11/6/1836 French king (1824-30) |
| 86 |
Camille Saint-Saens 10/9/1835 - 12/16/1921 French composer |
| 66 |
Leonard Wood 10/9/1860 - 8/7/1927 American medical officer and governor general of the Philippines (1921-7) |
| 66 |
Charles R. Walgreen 10/9/1873 - 12/11/1939 American pharmacist |
| 53 |
Aimee Semple McPherson 10/9/1890 - 9/27/1944 Canadian-born American evangelist |
| 75 |
Walter O'Malley 10/9/1903 - 8/9/1979 American lawyer |