Today in History - October 4
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1226 Oct 4, St.
Francis of Assisi, founder of the Franciscans and one of history's most
fa-mous nature lovers, died. [see Oct 3]
(MC, 10/4/01)
1289 Oct 4, Louis X, the Stubborn,
king of France (1314-16), was born.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1515 Oct 4, Lucas Cranach
(d.1586), the Younger, German painter, was born.
(WUD, 1994, p.339)(MC, 10/4/01)
1535 Oct 4, The 1st full English
translation of the Bible was printed in Switzerland. Miles Coverdale’s
translation of the Bible into English (from Dutch and Latin) was the
first complete version in English and was dedicated to Henry VIII.
(TL-MB, 1988, p.15)(MC, 10/4/01)
1542 Oct 4, Roberto Bellarmino,
Italian Jesuit theologian, diplomat, saint, was born.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1582 Oct 4, Theresa of Avila
(b.1515), Spanish mystic writer and saint, died. She co-founded with
John of the Cross (1542-1591) the Order of Discalced (barefoot)
Carmelites. "Untilled ground, however rich, will bring forth thistles
and thorns; so also the mind of man."
(CU, 6/87)(WUD, 1994, p.769)(AP, 12/8/97)(MC,
10/4/01)
1589 Oct 4, Francisco de Cuellar,
a Spanish Armada officer from the wrecked galleon Lavia, wrote a letter
from Antwerp to King Philip that was later valued for its descriptions
of Ireland. He had spent 6 months evading English forces to get to
Scotland where after 6 more months he reached the Netherlands.
(ON, 5/02, p.12)
1626 Oct 4, Richard Cromwell
(d.1659), lord protector of England (1658-59), was born.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1636 Oct 4, The Massachusetts
Plymouth Company drafted its 1st law.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1648 Oct 4, Peter Stuyvesant
established America's 1st volunteer firemen.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1669 Oct 4, Rembrandt H. van Rijn
(b.1606), painter and etcher (Steel Masters, Night Watch), died. In
1999 Simon Schama published the biography "Rembrandt's Eyes."
(WSJ, 11/24/99, p.A16)(MC, 10/4/01)
1712 Oct 4, Utrecht banished poor
Jews.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1744 Oct 4, The HMS Victory sank
in the English Channel with at least 900 men aboard. The 175-foot
sailing ship had separated from its fleet during a storm. In 2009
Odyssey Marine Ex-ploration reported finding the vessel about 330 feet
beneath the surface and more than 50 miles from where anybody would
have thought it went down.
(AP, 2/1/09)
1772 Oct 4, Francois-Louis Pierne,
composer, was born.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1777 Oct 4, George Washington's
troops launched an assault on the British at Germantown, Penn.,
resulting in heavy American casualties. British General Sir William
Howe repelled Wash-ington's last attempt to retake Philadelphia,
compelling Washington to spend the winter at Val-ley Forge.
(AP, 10/4/97)(HN, 10/4/98)
1795 Oct 4, General Napoleon
Bonaparte led the rout of counterrevolutionaries in the streets of
Paris, beginning his rise to power. France was in the midst of economic
disaster—a factor that aided royalist counterrevolutionaries in their
attempts to incite rebellion against the young republican government.
Bonaparte, looking for a new command while on half pay in Paris, joined
the defense of the Convention against overwhelming odds.
(HN, 10/4/99)(HNQ, 10/26/00)
1810 Oct 4, Alexander Walewski,
French earl, foreign minister, son of Napoleon I, was born.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1814 Oct 4, Jean Francois Millet
(d.1875), French painter, was born.
(www.artrenewal.org/asp/database/art.asp?aid=745)
1822 Oct 4, Rutherford B. Hayes,
the 19th president (R) of the United States, was born in Delaware,
Ohio. Hayes was a major-general in the Civil War, then an Ohio
congressman, then succeeded Grant as president (1877-81). Hayes won the
Electoral College by a margin of one vote after his opponent won the
popular vote in an election so fraught with charges of vote fraud that
there were even fears of a coup. Hayes refused to seek a second
term.
(AP, 10/4/97)(HN, 10/4/98)(MC, 10/3/01)
1824 Oct 4, Mexico became a
republic. A liberal constitution, established at this time, was later
replaced by Santa Anna.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1832 Oct 4, William Griggs,
inventor (photo chromo lithography), was born.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1854 Oct 4, Abraham Lincoln made
his 1st political speech at Illinois State Fair.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1859 Oct 4, Karl Baedeker
(b.1801), German travel writer and tour guide (Die Schweiz), died.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1861 Oct 4, Frederic Remington
(d.1909), American Western painter and sculptor, was born.
(AAP, 1964)(WUD, 1994, p.1213)(HN, 10/4/00)
1861 Oct 4, The Union ship USS
South Carolina captured two Confederate blockade runners outside of New
Orleans, La.
(HN, 10/4/98)
1862 Oct 4, Edward Stratemeyer,
author, was born. He created the Hardy Boys, Rover Boys, Nancy Drew and
the Bobbsey Twins. The first series of books written/produced by
Stratemeyer was The Rover Boys, written under the pseudonym of Arthur
M. Winfield. There were 30 vol-umes, written between 1899 and 1926. The
Bobbsey Twins series (Laura Lee Hope) was next, and is the oldest
"surviving" series, extending to 72 volumes, written between 1904 and
1979. Tom Swift, attributed to Victor Appleton, began in 1910 and there
were 40 volumes before the series ended in 1941. (There was also a Tom
Swift, Jr. series, by Victor Appleton II.) The Hardy Boys (Franklin W.
Dixon, 85 volumes from 1927 to 1985) and Nancy Drew (Carolyn Keene, 78
volumes from 1930 to 1985) are the other best-known Stratemeyer books.
(HN,
10/4/00)(http://pw2.netcom.com/~drmike99/aboutbobbsey.html)
1862 Oct 4, Battle of Corinth,
Mississippi, ended.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1874 Oct 4, Kiowa leader Santanta,
known as "the Orator of the Plains," surrendered in Dar-lington, Texas.
He was later sent to the state penitentiary, where he committed suicide
October 11, 1878.
(HN, 10/4/98)
1877 Oct 4, Pancho Villa (d.1923),
[Doroteo Arango], Mexican revolutionary rebel, was born. [see Jun 5,
1878]
(MC, 10/4/01)
1879 Oct 4, Edward Murray East,
botanist, was born. His research led to the development of hybrid corn.
(HN, 10/4/00)
1881 Oct 4, [Heinrich AH] Walther
von Brauchitsch, German field marshal, was born.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1883 Oct 4, Orient Express made
its 1st run linking Istanbul, Turkey, to Paris by rail.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1884 Oct 4, Damon Runyon,
journalist and short story writer, was born. “Guys & Dolls” was
based on his writings.
(HN, 10/4/00)(MC, 10/4/01)
1887 Oct 4, The first issue of the
International Herald Tribune was published as the Paris Her-ald
Tribune.
(AP, 10/4/99)
1892 Oct 4, Engelbert Dollfuss,
Austrian Fascist chancellor, was born. He was killed by Nazis in 1934.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1895 Oct 4, Buster Keaton (Joseph
F. Keaton), star of silent film comedies including Sher-lock, Jr. and
The General, was born in Piqua, Kan. He is considered a legendary
presence in the history of cinema. Nicknamed 'The Great Stone Face', he
graduated to full-length films in the 1920s, which featured his amazing
stunts rivaled only by Chaplin.
(AP, 10/4/97)(HN, 10/4/98)(MC, 10/4/01)
1895 Oct 4, Hattie McDaniel,
actress (Gone With the Wind, Academy Award), was born.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1895 Oct 4, Richard Sorge, German
spy for USSR in Tokyo (WW II), was born.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1895 Oct 4, The first U.S. Open
golf tournament was held, at the Newport Country Club in Rhode Island.
At the US Amateur Golf Championship at Newport, R.I., officials ruled
against the prone position use of a pool cue to sink a put.
(AP, 10/4/97)(SFC, 11/29/97, p.C3)
1903 Oct 4, Ernst Kaltenbrunner,
Austrian Nazi (SS/SD) and successor to Reinhard Heydrich, was born. He
was hanged in 1946.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1904 Oct 4, 1st day of NYC subway,
350,000 people rode the 9.1 mile tracks. [see Oct 24, 27]
(MC, 10/4/01)
1904 Oct 4, Frederic Auguste
Bertholdi, French sculptor (Statue of Liberty), died.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1905 Oct 4, Orville Wright piloted
the first flight longer than 30 minutes. The flight lasted 33 minutes,
17 seconds and covered 21 miles.
(HN, 10/4/98)
1909 Oct 4, The Cunard liner
"Lusitania" crossed the Atlantic in four days, 15 hours and 52
minutes.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1910 Oct 4, Scottish surgeon
Joseph Bell died. He was the real-life model for Arthur Conan Doyle's
character Sherlock Holmes.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1911 Oct 4, The 1st public
elevator began service at London's Earl's Court Metro Station.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1912 Oct 4, Gen. Zeledon,
Nicaraguan opponent of US occupation, was executed.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1914 Oct 4, The first German
Zeppelin raided London.
(HN, 10/4/98)
1915 Oct 4, Dinosaur National
Monument in Colorado and Utah was established. Pres. Woodrow Wilson
established Dinosaur National Monument in Jensen, Utah.
(SFEC, 3/14/99, p.T8)(MC, 10/4/01)
1916 Oct 4, The California State
Federation of Labor maintained its policy of banning Japa-nese workers
from joining labor unions.
(SFEC, 12/26/99, p.W5)
1916 Oct 4, National Lead, US
Steel (preferred) and Peoples Gas were removed from the Dow Jones.
AT&T was first added to the DJIA.
(WSJ, 5/28/96, R45,46)(WSJ, 4/2/04, p.C1)
1919 Oct 4, Rene Marques, Puerto
Rican playwright and short story writer, was born.
(HN, 10/4/00)
1921 Oct 4, League of Nations
refused to assist starving Russians.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1923 Oct 4, Charlton Heston III,
American actor, was born. His films included “10 Command-ments,” “Ben
Hur” and “Planet of Apes.”
(HN, 10/4/98)(MC, 10/4/01)
1928 Oct 4, Alvin Toffler, writer
and futurist, was born. His work included “Future Shock” (1970).
(HN, 10/4/00)(NW, 9/16/02, p.34D)
1931 Oct 4, The comic strip "Dick
Tracy," created by Chester Gould (1900-1985), made its debut.
(AP,
10/4/97)(www.internationalhero.co.uk/d/diktracy.htm)
1933 Oct 4, First issue of Esquire
magazine was published.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1931 Oct 4, Aerial circus star
Clyde Pangborn and playboy Hugh Herndon, Jr. set off in Miss Veedol to
complete the first nonstop flight across the Pacific Ocean from
Sabishiro Beach in Misawa City, Japan. A young boy gave Panghorn 5
apples from Misawa City.
(ON, 1/03,
p.10)(www.historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=7495)
1939 Oct 4, Last Polish troops
surrendered to German Wehrmacht.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1940 Oct 4, Adolf Hitler and
Benito Mussolini conferred at Brenner Pass in the Alps, where the Nazi
leader sought Italy's help in fighting the British.
(AP, 10/4/97)
1940 Oct 4, 12 German aircrafts
were shot down above England.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1941 Oct 4, Jackie Collins,
actress, author, was born in London, England. Her books included “The
world Is Full of Married Men (1968), “Stud” (1969), “Bitch” (1979) and
“Deadly Embrace” (2002).
(MC, 10/4/01)(SSFC, 8/4/02, Par p.14)
1941 Oct 4, Anne Rice, novelist,
was born in New Orleans, La. Her books included “Interview with a
Vampire.”
(HN, 10/4/00)(MC, 10/4/01)
1943 Oct 4, German occupiers
forbade the flying of kites. Violation carried a 6 month jail sen-tence.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1946 Oct 4, Susan Sarandon,
American film actress, was born.
(HN, 10/4/00)
1947 Oct 4, Max Karl Ernst Planck
(b.1858), German physicist (Nobel 1918), died.
(WUD, 1994 p.1101)(MC, 10/4/01)
1949 Oct 4, United Nations'
permanent NYC headquarters was dedicated.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1952 Oct 4, Pres. Truman arrived
in SF to campaign for Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson.
(SFC, 10/4/02, p.E4)
1957 Oct 4, The television series
"Leave It to Beaver" premiered on CBS. It ended in 1963 after 6 season.
Joe Connelly (d.2003 at 85), writer-producer, co-created the show.
(AP, 10/4/97)(SFC, 2/15/03, p.A25)
1957 Oct 4, Jimmy Hoffa was
elected president of the Teamsters Union.
(AP, 10/4/07)
1957 Oct 4, The Space Age and
"space race" began as the Soviet Union launched Sputnik (traveler), the
first man-made space satellite. The satellite, built by Valentin
Glushko, weighed 184 pounds and was launched by a converted
Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM). Sputnik, developed under the
chief scientist Sergei Korolyov, orbited the earth every 96 minutes at
a maximum height of 584 miles. The event was timed to celebrate the
40th anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution. In 1958, it reentered the
earth's atmosphere and burned up. It was fol-lowed by 9 other Sputnik
spacecraft.
(WSJ, 10/7/96, p.B4)(SFC, 8/2/97, p.A12)(SFEC,
9/28/97, p.A14)(WSJ, 10/3/97, p.A8)(AP, 10/4/97)(HN, 10/4/98)(AP,
10/1/07)
1958 Oct 4, The first
trans-Atlantic passenger jetliner service was begun by British Overseas
Airways Corporation (BOAC) with flights between London and New York.
(AP, 10/4/97)
1963 Oct 4-1963 Oct 8, Hurricane
Flora, killed some 7-8,000 people in Cuba and Haiti.
(SFC, 11/30/98, p.A2)
1965 Oct 4, Pope Paul VI became
the first reigning pontiff to visit the Western Hemisphere as he
addressed the U.N. General Assembly.
(AP, 10/4/97)
1968 Oct 4, Cambodia admitted that
the Viet Cong used their country for sanctuary.
(www.nationalreview.com/robbins/robbins200408180835.asp)
1970 Oct 4, Janis Joplin (b.1943)
was found dead in a seedy Hollywood motel of a heroin overdose at age
27. Her classic songs included: "Down on Me," "Ball and Chain," and
"Piece of My Heart." In 1992 Laura Joplin authored “Love, Janis.”
(WSJ, 1/9/97, p.A8)(SFEC, 3/16/97, Z1 p.4)(SSFC,
8/21/05, p.F1)
1972 Oct 4, Judge John Sirica
imposed a gag order on the Watergate break-in case.
(www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1791.html)
1974 Oct 4, Anne Sexton (b.1928),
American poet, died in Massachusetts. In 1991 Diane Middlebrook
(1939-2007), authored “Anne Sexton: A Biography.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Sexton)(SSFC,
12/16/07, p.A1)
1974 Oct 4, In Greece the New
Democracy party (ND), was founded. It became the main cen-ter-right
political party.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Democracy_(Greece))
1976 Oct 4, Agriculture secretary
Earl Butz resigned in the wake of a controversy over a joke he'd made
about blacks.
(AP, 10/4/97)
1976 Oct 4, In Gregg v. Georgia,
the U.S. Supreme Court lifted the ban on the death sen-tence in murder
cases. This restored the legality of capital punishment, which had not
been practiced since 1967. The first execution following this ruling
was Gary Gilmore in 1977.
(HN, 10/4/98)
1978 Oct 4, Funeral services were
held at the Vatican for Pope John Paul I.
(AP, 10/4/98)
1980 Oct 4, Some 520 people were
forced to abandon the cruise ship “Prisendam” in the Gulf of Alaska
after the Dutch luxury liner caught fire—no deaths or serious injury
resulted. The ship capsized and sank a week later.
(AP, 10/4/08)
1982 Oct 4, Frank Rosenthal
(1929-2008), Las Vegas casino operator, survived a car bomb when his
Cadillac exploded as he turned the key. He ran the mob-owned Stardust,
Fremont, Hacienda and Marina casinos. In 1995 Martin Scorsese made his
film “Casino,” based on the life of Frank Rosenthal.
(SFC, 10/17/08, p.B8)(Econ, 11/1/08, p.99)
1982 Oct 4, Glenn H. Gould
(b.1932), eccentric Canadian pianist, died in Toronto of a cere-bral
hemorrhage. In 1997 Peter F. Ostwald wrote a biography titled: "Glenn
Gould."
(WSJ, 8/5/97,
p.A16)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Gould)
1985 Oct 4, Islamic Jihad issued a
statement saying it had killed American hostage William Buckley. Fellow
hostage David Jacobsen, however, later said he believed Buckley had
died (in Lebanon) of torture injuries four months earlier.
(AP, 10/4/97)
1987 Oct 4, National Football
League owners staged their first games since the players union went on
strike, with nonstriking and replacement personnel on the gridiron at
sparsely attended stadiums.
(AP, 10/4/97)
1988 Oct 4, Indian professor
Mithileshwar Singh, freed the day before by his Lebanese kid-nappers,
said his captors had treated him well during his 20 months of
imprisonment, but ac-knowledged "there is no substitute for freedom."
(AP, 10/4/98)
1989 Oct 4, Fawaz Younis, a
Lebanese hijacker convicted of commandeering a Jordanian jetliner in
1985 with two Americans aboard, was sentenced in Washington to 30 years
in prison.
(AP, 10/4/99)
1989 Oct 4, Famed race horse
Secretariat, the 1973 Triple Crown winner, died at Claiborne Farm,
Paris, Ky., at age 19 ½.
(AH, 10/04, p.15)
1990 Oct 4, For the first time in
nearly six decades, German lawmakers met in the Reichstag for the first
meeting of reunified Germany’s parliament.
(AP, 10/4/00)
1991 Oct 4, Pres. Bush signed
Executive Order 12775 which prohibited certain transactions with
respect to Haiti.
(www.archives.gov/federal-register/executive-orders/1991.html#12775)
1991 Oct 4, Leonard C. Odell died
at age 83. He and his older brother Allan (d.1994) wrote some 7,000
Burma Shave poems beginning in 1925 in rural Minnesota. The Burma-Shave
phe-nomenon faded in 1963, when Phillip Morris bought Burma-Vita and
the signs began to come down.
(http://tinyurl.com/f4s8h)(www.two-lane.com/burmashave.html)
1991 Oct 4, In Madrid, Spain, 26
nations, including the United States, signed the Antarctic Treaty,
which imposed a 50-year ban on oil exploration and mining in Antarctica.
(AP, 10/4/01)
1991 Oct 4, Carl Bildt (b.1949),
leader of the Moderates, began serving PM of Sweden and continued to
Oct 7, 1994. His center-right government was blighted by a deep
recession fol-lowed by a huge row over whether to build the Oresund
Bridge to Denmark.
(SFC, 9/20/98, p.A12)(Econ, 9/23/06,
p.60)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Bildt)
1992 Oct 4, In the Netherlands an
Israeli El Al Jumbo Jet transport, enroute from New York to Tel Aviv,
crashed into an Amsterdam apartment complex and killed 43 people. Since
then scores of people complained of unidentified health problems. In
1998 it was revealed that the jet carried 50 gallons of dimethyl
methylphosphonate, a non-poisonous ingredient of sarin nerve gas,
destined for Israel. A report on the crash was released in 1999 and
said that the plane's ballast included carcinogenic depleted uranium.
{Netherlands, Air Crash, Israel, Medical}
(AP, 10/4/97)(WSJ, 4/22/99,
A1)(www.pacificnews.org/jinn/stories/5.03/990211-cargo.html)
1993 Oct 4, In Somalia US troops
blasted their way out of Bakara Market in Mogadishu and left an
estimated 500 Somalis dead. Dozens of cheering, dancing Somalis dragged
the body of an American soldier through the streets of Mogadishu.
(SFC, 5/6/99, p.E4)(AP, 10/4/98)
1993 Oct 4, The Russian White
House was shelled. In Moscow, the occupation of the Rus-sian parliament
building ended as tanks and paratroopers flushed out hard-line
opponents of Boris Yeltsin. Rebel parliamentarians led by Vice
President Alexander Rutskoi and Chairman Ruslan Khasbulatov surrendered
after a total of 10 hours. As many as 150 people were killed.
(HFA, '96, p.40)(AP,
10/4/98)(http://tinyurl.com/8cg4r)
1994 Oct 4, President Clinton
welcomed South African President Nelson Mandela to the White House.
(AP, 10/4/99)
1994 Oct 4, In France Florence Rey
(19), a literature student, participated in a bungled holdup that left
3 police officers, a taxi driver, and her accomplice-lover dead
following a car chase. In 1998 she was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
(SFC, 10/2/98, p.B3)
1994 Oct 4, Exiled Haitian
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide vowed in an address to the U.N.
General Assembly to return to Haiti in 11 days.
(AP, 10/4/99)
1995 Oct 4, Pope John Paul the
Second arrived in the United States for a five-day visit.
(AP, 10/4/00)
1995 Oct 4, Hurricane Opal
battered the Florida panhandle.
(AP, 10/4/05)
1996 Oct 4, A judge in
Philadelphia issued an injunction preventing major-league baseball
umpires from striking for the remainder of the postseason over an
incident in which Roberto Alomar of the Baltimore Orioles spat on
umpire John Hirschbeck.
(AP, 10/4/97)
1996 Oct 4, The Dow Jones hit a
record 5,992.86 on reports of weak employment.
(SFC, 10/5/96, p.A1)
1996 Oct 4, In New Zealand the
government agreed to settle the biggest land claim ever filed by
indigenous Maoris. The Ngai Tahu people would receive land and cash
worth $117 million and regain some fishing rights. The Maoris number
about 12% of the country’s 3.6 million peo-ple.
(SFC, 10/5/96, p.A10)
1997 Oct 4, Some 500,000 people
gathered in Washington DC for the Promise Keepers’ “Sa-cred Assembly of
Men.” It was one of the largest religious gatherings in U.S. history.
(SFEC, 10/5/97, p.A1)(AP, 10/4/98)
1997 Oct 4, US Federal officials
arrested Theresa Marie Squillacote, a former Pentagon law-yer, her
husband Kurt Alan Stand, and James Michael Clark for espionage that
began with the recruitment of Stand in 1972 by the East Germans. He
pleaded guilty to spying for East Ger-many in 1998.
(SFC, 10/7/97, p.A14)(WSJ, 6/3/98, p.A1)
1997 Oct 4, The Chicago Field
Museum of Natural History paid $8,362,500 for the T, rex skull from S.
Dakota at a Sotheby’s auction in New York.
(SFEC, 10/5/97, p.A13)
1997 Oct 4, From Bosnia it was
reported that an Egyptian ship loaded with Soviet-made T-55 tanks was
sitting at anchor in the Croatian port of Ploce. The shipment was
registered with offi-cials of the foreign peace force. An error on the
manifest said the tanks were intended for the Bosnian Army.
(SFC, 10/4/97, p.A8)
1997 Oct 4, From Brazil it was
reported that fires in the Amazon had increased 28% over the past year
and that clouds of smoke were thicker and covered more area than those
due to the burning forests of Indonesia.
(SFC, 10/4/97, p.A17)
1997 Oct 4, In Columbia rebels of
the Revolutionary Armed Forces killed 17 policemen near San Juan de
Arama. The rebels were staging a growing campaign to disrupt municipal
elec-tions. They had already killed 26 candidates and forced more than
1,500 to withdraw.
(SFC, 10/6/97, p.A17)
1997 Oct 4, It was reported that
France banned 20% of all cars from the streets of Paris for one day
last week due to smog.
(SFC, 10/4/97, p.A17)
1997 Oct 4, It was reported that
Greenpeace had found crabs contaminated with twice Europe’s allowed
radiation level near the La Hague nuclear waste reprocessing plant near
Cherbourg in northwestern France.
(SFC, 10/4/97, p.A17)
1997 Oct 4, In Spain Princess
Christina Federica de Borbon y Grecia (32) married Inaki Ur-dangarin
(29), a Basque professional handball team player.
(SFEC, 10/5/97, p.A17)
1998 Oct 4, US and Algerian navies
conducted a small joint search-and-rescue exercise in the Mediterranean.
(SFC, 12/3/98, p.A17)
1998 Oct 4, In Argentina Marcelo
Cattaneo, the younger brother of Pres. Menem’s former deputy chief of
staff, was found hanging by the neck outside Buenos Aires. He had been
named 2 months earlier as the man who tried to bribe former directors
of the Banco de la Na-cion. A newspaper article on the 1994-1995
IBM-Banco de la Nacion bribery scheme was stuffed in his mouth.
(SFEC, 10/25/98, p.A24)
1998 Oct 4, In Brazil national
elections Fernando Henrique Cardoso won with 50.3% of the vote in early
returns vs. 35.6% for Luiz Inacio da Silva of the Workers Party.
(SFEC, 9/20/98, p.A21)(SFC, 10/5/98, p.A8)
1998 Oct 4, In Iraq a Palestinian
burst into a Baghdad synagogue and sprayed the crowd with gunfire. 2
Jews and 2 Muslims were killed.
(SFC, 10/5/98, p.A9)
1998 Oct 4, In Mexico the Indians
of San Juan Chamula in Chiapas boycotted the elections in protest for
the jailing of 5 men accused of murder. They were jailed a year ago
during a dispute between Catholic and Protestant converts.
(SFC, 10/5/98, p.a10)(SFC, 10/6/98, p.A10)
1998 Oct 4, In Mexico Hector
Teran, governor of Baja California and leader of the opposition
National Action Party, died at age 67.
(SFC, 10/5/98, p.A17)
1998 Oct 4, Russian envoys warned
Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic that NATO might launch
air-strikes unless he took "decisive measures" to end the humanitarian
crisis in the southern province of Kosovo.
(AP, 10/4/99)
1998 Oct 4, Former Swiss Pres.
Jean-Pascal Delamuraz died at age 62. He served his one year rotating
term in 1996 and made headlines that Dec. when he described Jewish
demands for compensation for Holocaust victims as blackmail.
(SFC, 10/5/98, p.A17)
1999 Oct 4, It was reported that
Edmund T. Pratt, an ex-Pfizer executive, planned to donate $35 million
to endow the Duke Univ. School of Engineering.
(SFC, 10/4/99, p.A3)
1999 Oct 4, An Illinois jury
ordered State Farm to pay $456 million to 4.7 million customers in a
lawsuit accusing the nation’s largest car insurer of using inferior
parts for auto body repairs. Four days later, the judge ruled State
Farm had committed fraud, and awarded $730 million in actual and
punitive damages on top of the jury verdict. State Farm appealed.
(SFC, 10/8/99, p.A3)(SFC, 10/9/99, p.A3)(AP, 10/4/00)
1999 Oct 4, MCI WorldCom planned
to acquire Sprint Corp. for over $100 billion. The deal was quashed in
2000.
(SFC, 10/5/99, p.A1)(WSJ, 6/28/00, p.A1)
1999 Oct 4, The UN Security
Council approved a one-time increase in oil sales for Iraq from $5.26
billion to $8.3 billion.
(WSJ, 10/5/99, p.A1)
1999 Oct 4, Israeli PM Ehud Barak
and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat agreed on terms for the first safe
route between the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
(SFC, 10/5/99, p.A11)
1999 Oct 4, In Russia Prime
Minister Putin planned to resettle thousands of Chechens in ar-eas
under Russian control, an indication that Moscow planned to split
Chechnya in two. Che-chen fighters shot down a Russian Sukhoi-24
warplane that was searching for another downed plane.
(SFC, 10/5/99, p.A10)(SFC, 10/6/99, p.A10)
1999 Oct 4, In South Korea
radioactive water leaked inside a nuclear power plant in Wolsung and
exposed 22 workers to small amounts of radiation.
(SFC, 10/6/99, p.A11)
2000 Oct 4, 3Com was expected to
announce plans to join with Harris Interactive for the larg-est
Internet survey to date.
(SFC, 10/4/00, p.D1)
2000 Oct 4, In Indonesia Pres.
Wahid denied clemency to Tommy Suharto and ordered the arrest of a
Timorese militia chief.
(SFC, 10/5/00, p.A12)
2000 Oct 4, In Israel Barak agreed
to withdraw heavy arms from the West Bank and Gaza in a bid to halt
violence. Amid fresh bloodshed in the West Bank and Gaza, Secretary of
State Madeleine Albright brought Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat together for talks in Paris.
(WSJ, 10/5/00, p.A1)(AP, 10/4/01)
2000 Oct 4, In the Ivory Coast a
bus-station bombing killed 4 people and a state of emer-gency was
declared.
(WSJ, 10/6/00, p.A1)
2000 Oct 4, In Serbia the
Constitutional Court set aside part of the Sep 24 voting results in a
move seen to buy time for Pres. Milosevic. Citizens blocked an attempt
by the government to use force against strikers and protesters. Major
protests were planned to force Milosevic from office.
(SFC, 10/5/00, p.A1)
2001 Oct 4, In Texas Barry Bonds
hit his 70th home run to tie Mark McGwire's 1998 record in a 10-2
victory over Houston. Rickey Henderson homered to pass Ty Cobb and
become base-ball's career leader in runs scored with 2,246 during San
Diego's 6-3 win over Los Angeles.
(SFC, 10/5/01, p.A1)(AP, 10/4/02)
2001 Oct 4, The US pledged $320 m
million in aid to Afghanistan refugees.
(SFC, 10/5/01, p.A1)
2001 Oct 4, Reagan National
Airport re-opened.
(SFC, 10/5/01, p.A15)
2001 Oct 4, NYC officials
estimated that the Sep 11 disaster would cost as much as $105 bil-lion
over the next 2 years. Depending on the number of jobs permanently
shifted out of the city, the September 11th attacks could cost New York
City as much as $83-95 billion dollars, though the financial loss could
never compare to the horrendous loss of nearly 3,000 lives.
(SFC, 10/5/01, p.A15)(HNQ, 9/11/02)
2001 Oct 4, Algeria’s Pres.
Bouteflika promised to recognize the Berber language, compen-sate
victims of police brutality and prosecute police involved in brutality.
(WSJ, 10/5/01, p.A1)
2001 Oct 4, The British government
released a 16-page document over the Internet that pre-sented details
on Osama bin Laden’s responsibility for the Sep 11 terrorist attacks.
(SFC, 10/5/01, p.A16)
2001 Oct 4, The EU made a joint
announcement with Spain that the Basque ETA would be put on the list of
terrorist organizations whose assets would be frozen by the EU.
(WSJ, 10/5/01, p.A1)
2001 Oct 4, In Israel PM Sharon
warned the US that it risked appeasing the Arab nations: “Do not try to
appease the Arabs at our expense.” A Palestinian posing as an Israeli
soldier killed 3 Israelis in Afula. A Palestinian was killed during a
2nd day of fighting in Hebron.
(SFC, 10/5/01, p.D4)(WSJ, 10/5/01, p.A1)
2001 Oct 4, Macedonian security
forces, in opposition to external warnings, took control of 3 ethnic
Albanian villages but met with resistance from others.
(SFC, 10/5/01, p.D4)
2001 Oct 4, Pakistan announced
that it sees sufficient grounds for an indictment against Osama bin
Laden.
(WSJ, 10/5/01, p.A1)
2001 Oct 4, In the Philippines
government forces captured 13 members of Abu Sayyaf and killed another
in a southern clash.
(SFC, 10/5/01, p.D6)
2001 Oct 4, A chartered Russian
Tupelov-154 airplane crashed in to the Black Sea and all 78 people
aboard were killed. The Sibir Airlines jet was bound to Novosibirsk
from Tel Aviv. An ac-cidental missile strike from Ukrainian military
forces was suspected but denied by Ukraine offi-cials. Pres. Putin said
terrorists might have been responsible. Later evidence indicated that
flight 1812 was hit by an S-200 missile. On Oct 12 Ukraine and Russia
acknowledged that an errant missile was the probable cause. In 2003
Ukraine agreed to pay $200,000 for each Israeli killed.
(SFC, 10/6/01, p.A11)(WSJ, 11/21/03,
p.A1)(www.ncsj.org/AuxPages/100501crash.shtml)
2001 Oct 4, Swissair resumed
flying following a 2-day shut down propped by a $281 million Swiss
government loan. [see Jan 31, 2002]
(SFC, 10/5/01, p.B4)
2002 Oct 4, Hans Blix, UN weapons
inspector, endorsed a US demand that Iraq make a full declaration of
its weapons program before inspections resume.
(SFC, 10/5/02, p.A7)
2002 Oct 4, John Walker Lindh, the
so-called "American Taliban," received a 20-year sen-tence after a
sobbing, halting plea for forgiveness before a federal judge in
Alexandria, Va.
(AP, 10/4/07)
2002 Oct 4, Richard C. Reid
pleaded guilty to trying to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight with
ex-plosives hidden in his shoes and declared himself a follower of
Osama bin Laden.
(AP, 10/4/02)
2002 Oct 4, US federal agents
arrested 4 suspected al Qaeda terrorists, 3 in Portland and 1 in
Detroit. 2 other suspected cell members were overseas.
(SFC, 10/5/02, p.A1)
2002 Oct 4, A jury in Los Angeles
awarded former smoker Betty Bullock (64) $28 billion in pu-nitive
damages against Philip Morris.
(SFC, 10/5/02, p.A2)
2002 Oct 4, The DJIA fell 188 to
7,528. Nasdaq fell 25 to 1,139.
(SFC, 10/5/02, p.B1)
2002 Oct 4, In Barbados
delegations from Russia, Cuba, South Africa, Colombia and France's
overseas territories abandoned an anti-racism conference that voted to
exclude whites saying they'll have no part in discrimination. The
walkout, on the fourth day of the six-day Afri-can and African
Descendants World Conference Against Racism, came after a day of
negotia-tions failed. Some 200 delegates had voted Wednesday for whites
and Asians to leave the de-liberations, saying slavery was too painful
a subject to discuss in front of non-Africans.
(AP, 10/5/02)
2002 Oct 4, Foreign ministers from
six Pacific nations arrived in Java's ancient royal capital of
Yogyakarta for a day of talks that Indonesia said would tackle the
thorny issue of terrorism.
(AP, 10/4/02)
2002 Oct 4, Lawmakers from rival
Iraqi Kurdish factions met for the first time in 8 years, in a rare
show of political unity ahead of a possible U.S. attack on Iraq.
(AP, 10/4/02)
2002 Oct 4, In Nepal King
Gyanendra stunned the country when he announced he was firing Prime
Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, postponing November elections and assuming
direct power for the first time since absolute rule by the monarchy was
abolished in 1990.
(Reuters, 10/5/02)
2002 Oct 4, North Korean officials
told a visiting US delegation that the country has a second covert
nuclear weapons program.
(AP, 4/24/03)
2002 Oct 4, Pakistan said it
successfully test-fired a medium-range surface-to-surface ballistic
missile. It was named Hatf-IV (Shaheen-1) and had a range of 700 km
(430 miles).
(AP, 10/4/02)
2002 Oct 4, In central Somalia
heavy fighting between the Sa'ad subclan and the Majerten clan killed
at least 10 people and injured 25 others.
(AP, 10/5/02)
2002 Oct 4, Regional mediators
said the Sudanese government and southern rebels have agreed to a
cessation of hostilities and the resumption of peace talks to end the
country's 15-year civil war.
(AP, 10/4/02)
2003 Oct 4, A U.S. military source
said Polish troops had discovered and destroyed French-made
anti-aircraft missiles in Iraq. France swiftly denied selling any
weapons to Iraq in violation of a U.N. arms embargo and had stopped
making the Roland missiles 15 years ago.
(AP, 10/4/03)
2003 Oct 4, Sid McMath (91),
former 2-term governor of Arkansas, died.
(WSJ, 10/6/03, p.A1)
2003 Oct 4, In southwest Brazil a
small airplane carrying congressman Rep. Jose Carlos Mar-tinez and
three others went missing. All 4 were found dead the next day.
(AP, 10/4/03)(AP, 10/5/03)
2003 Oct 4, In London James
Forlong (44), a former Sky News television correspondent who resigned
after he admitted faking parts of a report on the war in Iraq, was
found dead at his home in a possible suicide.
(AP, 10/6/03)
2003 Oct 4, Eight Indonesian
soldiers plummeted into the ocean and were presumed dead after a
helicopter crew cut the ropes carrying them during rehearsal of a
mid-air stunt.
(AP, 10/4/03)
2003 Oct 4, In Haifa, Israel,
Hanadi Taysser Darajat (29), a female Palestinian lawyer, blew herself
up in a crowded Mediterranean beach restaurant, killing 21 people
including 4 children. A brother and cousin, Jihad terrorists, had been
killed in June. Her suicide inspired a piece of installation art in
2004 at the Stockholm Museum titled "Snow White and the Madness of
Truth."
(SFC, 10/11/03, p.A7)(WSJ, 1/22/04, p.D6)(AP,
10/4/04)(LSA, Fall/06, p.32)
2003 Oct 4, In Italy
anti-globalization demonstrators set fire to an employment agency,
smashed cars and windows and hurled insults at government headquarters
in Rome.
(AP, 10/4/03)
2003 Oct 4, A shipment of
uranium-enriching centrifuge gear was seized at the Italian port of
Taranto in 2003, forcing Libya to admit and eventually renounce its
efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. In 2009 Urs Tinner, suspected of
involvement in the world's biggest nuclear smug-gling ring, said in a
Swiss TV documentary that he tipped off US intelligence about a
delivery of centrifuge parts meant for Libya's nuclear weapons program.
(http://articles.latimes.com/2004/nov/28/world/fg-network28)(WSJ,
12/31/03, p.A1)(AP, 1/22/09)
2004 Oct 4, Americans Dr. Richard
Axel (58) of Columbia Univ. and Linda Buck (57) of the Fred Hutchinson
Cancer Center in Seattle won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for their 1991
dis-covery of how people recognize odors. In 2008 Linda Buck and her
co-authors retracted their 2001 paper on smell due to inconsistencies
on data.
(SFC, 10/5/04, p.A5)(SFC, 3/7/08, p.A6)
2004 Oct 4, Pres. Bush signed an
extension of middle-class tax cuts.
(WSJ, 10/5/04, p.A1)
2004 Oct 4, Mike Melvill piloted
SpaceShipOne, designed by Burt Rutan, climbed to 367,442 feet in a 2nd
leg and captured the $10 million Ansari X Prize. The single pilot was
accompanied by the weight of 2 others to meet a 3-person requirement.
(SFC, 10/5/04, p.A1)(Econ, 10/9/04, p.75)
2004 Oct 4, Gordon Cooper
(b.1927), US astronaut in the Mercury program, died in Ventura, Ca. He
piloted Faith 7 around Earth on May 15-16, 1963.
(SFC, 10/5/04, p.B7)
2004 Oct 4, Cambodia's legislature
approved a long-delayed agreement to put surviving Khmer Rouge leaders
on trial for atrocities that claimed nearly two million lives during
their murderous rule in the late 1970s.
(AP, 10/4/04)
2004 Oct 4, The Denmark Science
Ministry said it aims to show the North Pole belongs to Denmark and is
sending an expedition to try to prove that the seabed there is a
natural con-tinuation of Danish territory.
(AP, 10/4/04)
2004 Oct 4, Officials in Haiti
said they have found hundreds more bodies, raising the death toll from
Tropical Storm Jeanne to nearly 2,000 people. Later estimates put the
death toll at 3,000.
(AP, 10/4/04)(AP, 11/1/07)
2004 Oct 4, Suspected separatist
rebels attacked sleeping villagers in northeastern India, kill-ing six
in a third day of explosions and gun attacks that have left at least 63
people dead.
(AP, 10/4/04)
2004 Oct 4, Retired general Susilo
Bambang Yudhoyono was confirmed as Indonesia's next leader as final
counting from the country's first direct presidential polls gave him a
landslide vic-tory over his predecessor.
(AFP, 10/4/04)
2004 Oct 4, Iranian President
Mohammad Khatami arrived in Khartoum to start a three-day visit to
Sudan.
(AP, 10/4/04)
2004 Oct 4, Insurgents unleashed a
pair of powerful car bombs near the symbol of U.S. au-thority in Iraq,
the Green Zone, where the U.S. Embassy and key government offices are
lo-cated as well as hotels occupied by hundreds of foreigners. Two
other explosions brought the day's bombing toll to at least 26 dead and
more than 100 wounded.
(AP, 10/4/04)(SFC, 10/5/04, p.A3)
2004 Oct 4, Six separatist rebels
were killed in a clash between separatist rebels and security forces in
a thickly forested area in Jammu and Kashmir.
(AP, 10/4/04)
2004 Oct 4, Palestinian militants
fired off two more rockets at the Israeli town of Sderot, lightly
wounding one person, according to rescue workers. Ongoing violence in
northern Gaza killed at least seven Palestinians, including a teenager.
(AP, 10/4/04)
2004 Oct 4, Syrian President
Bashar Assad replaced about one-third of his Cabinet, bringing new
faces to the key interior and information ministries.
(AP, 10/4/04)
2004 Oct 4, It was reported that
Vietnam had embarked on a major overhaul of its debt-laden companies as
it opens up its economy.
(WSJ, 10/4/04, p.A15)
2005 Oct 4, President Bush
defended his Supreme Court nominee, Harriet Miers, from sug-gestions by
some skeptical Republicans that she was not conservative enough, and
insisted Miers shared his strict-constructionist views. Miers ended up
withdrawing.
(AP, 10/4/06)
2005 Oct 4, Americans John L. Hall
and Roy J. Glauber and German Theodor W. Haensch won the 2005 Nobel
Prize in physics for work that could lead to better long-distance
communi-cation and more precise navigation worldwide and in space.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, The US Mint unveiled
the design for a new Jefferson nickel called the Jefferson 1800,
designed by Jamie Franki. It will begin circulating in 2006.
(SFC, 10/5/05, p.A7)
2005 Oct 4, The DJIA fell 94.37 to
10,441.11.
(SFC, 10/5/05, p.C1)
2005 Oct 4, Insurance claims for
Hurricane Katrina were estimated at $34.4 billion in personal and
commercial property loss claims.
(SFC, 10/5/05, p.C1)
2005 Oct 4, Hurricane Stan slammed
into Mexico’s Gulf coast.
(AP, 10/4/06)
2005 Oct 4, Philadelphia selected
EarthLink to run its municipal wireless system.
(SFC, 10/5/05, p.C1)
2005 Oct 4, According to the IMF
major oil producers were now a bigger source of funds for financial
markets and US creditors than China, Japan and the rest of Asia.
(WSJ, 10/4/05, p.A1)
2005 Oct 4, Google and Sun
Microsystems announced an alliance to promote each other’s products.
(SFC, 10/5/05, p.A1)
2005 Oct 4, It was reported that
phthalate chemicals, used in a wide variety of products from toys to
cosmetics, had been found to block the action of fetal androgens in
rodents. Androgen hormones are critical in developing males.
(WSJ, 10/4/05, p.A1)
2005 Oct 4, In Afghanistan a bomb
exploded near a key crossing point on the Afghan-Pakistan border,
killing three people and wounding 20. Authorities blamed Taliban
insurgents.
(AP, 10/5/05)
2005 Oct 4, In London Russia’s
Pres. Putin met with EU leaders for talks on expanding coop-eration in
the fight against crime, including terrorism, and strengthening trade
ties.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, A Bosnian Serb panel
said it identified more than 17,000 people with varying lev-els of
blood on their hands for abetting the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.
(WSJ, 10/5/05, p.A1)
2005 Oct 4-2005 Oct 5, In Canada
Toronto's chief medical officer said 4 more residents of a nursing home
for the elderly have died of an unknown respiratory illness, bringing
the number fatally infected by the disease to 10. Officials said
Legionnaires’ disease was the likely cause as the deaths rose to 16.
(AP, 10/5/05)(SFC, 10/7/05, p.A3)
2005 Oct 4, China’s state media
reported that raging floodwaters spawned by Typhoon Longwang along the
southeastern coast swept away 59 paramilitary police officers and
washed away two buildings at a military training school.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, In Colombia a judge
ordered the re-arrest of a man in a wheelchair who hijacked a Colombian
airliner, but said he could remain under house arrest due to his
failing health.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, Colombia granted
political asylum to former Ecuadorian President Lucio Gutierrez, who
has said he faces treason charges in his homeland.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, Croatia began delayed
EU membership talks, after UN chief war crimes prosecu-tor Carla del
Ponte endorsed Zagreb's cooperation with her court.
(AFP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, French President
Jacques Chirac said that Turkey would need to undergo a "ma-jor
cultural revolution" before entering the EU, and he reiterated that
France would hold a refer-endum on admitting Ankara to the bloc.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, It was reported that
French Attorney Jean-Marc Goldnadel had launched classac-tion.fr, a
French Web site that lets users sign up to lawsuits online for as
little as 12 euros ($14.50). President Jacques Chirac had
announced the introduction of class action suits earlier in the year.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, In India's northeast
11 people, including five villagers hacked to death by rival tribesmen,
were reported killed. Separatist insurgencies have raged in Manipur and
Assam states for the past two decades.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, Indonesia’s central
bank raised interest rates for the 3rd time in 5 weeks one point to 11%
in an effort to keep a lid on inflation.
(WSJ, 10/5/05, p.A18)
2005 Oct 4, The 1st day of Ramadan
began for Muslims.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, Iraqi lawmakers
approved the death penalty for anyone financing or "provoking"
terrorism.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, A suicide car bomb
exploded at a checkpoint at the main entrance of Baghdad's Green Zone,
killing two Iraqi policemen and wounding one.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, In western Iraq some
2,500 U.S. troops along with Iraqi forces launched their second major
offensive in a week, sweeping into three towns to take them back from
insurgents who had killed Marines there last month.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, Japan's Cabinet
endorsed a one-year extension of the country's naval mission to support
U.S.-led troops in Afghanistan, citing renewed concerns about terrorism
after the recent bombings in Indonesia.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, In Nigeria at least 3
civilians were killed in crossfire and a Lagos police headquar-ters was
burned down after a dispute between armed police and soldiers erupted
in street fight-ing. Witnesses said that brawling broke out after an
army officer tried to prevent a police patrol extorting an illegal 20
naira (seven cent) toll from a motorcycle taxi driver.
(AP, 10/5/05)
2005 Oct 4, Jim Gray (43), one of
Northern Ireland's most high-profile Protestant militants was shot to
death outside his home in east Belfast, more than six months after he
was ousted by his outlawed group.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, Pakistani security
forces arrested Abdul Latif Hakimi, the chief spokesman of
Af-ghanistan's ousted Taliban regime, describing his capture as a major
blow to the Islamic militia.
(AFP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, A Palestinian woman
brandishing a knife stabbed and wounded an Israeli soldier at a
checkpoint outside the West Bank city of Nablus before other soldiers
shot and killed her.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, In Peru Maritza
Garrido Lecca, a former ballet teacher who used her dance studio to
hide Shining Path founder Abimael Guzman, was sentenced to 20 years in
prison after a three-month civilian retrial. Nicholas Shakespeare used
the story as inspiration for his novel "The Dancer Upstairs" (1995),
which John Malkovich turned into a 2002 movie of the same name,
starring Javier Bardem.
(AP, 10/5/05)
2005 Oct 4, A Philippine
provincial government filed a lawsuit in Nevada accusing Canadian
mining giant Placer Dome Inc. of damaging the environment and health of
residents of an is-land about 100 miles south of Manila. Placer Dome
was blamed for a March 1996 environ-mental accident that sent millions
of tons of open-pit copper mine waste down a river to the Marinduque
capital, Boac.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, Spain said it will
build a third high-security fence between its Melilla enclave and
Morocco after undocumented immigrants repeatedly stormed two existing
barriers.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, UN peacekeepers
preparing to pull out of Sierra Leone said they have completed the
mission they began six years ago but warn the country still has a long
way to go before it recovers from one of Africa's most brutal wars.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, Sudan's government and
rebels from Darfur met for a 2nd day of talks in Nigeria. The visiting
Dutch PM urged all parties to reach a power-sharing deal by the end of
the year.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, A new Syrian TV series
began broadcasting around the Middle East. It tells the story of Arabs
living in residential compounds in Saudi Arabia and the militant
Islamists who want to blow them up so they can collect their rewards in
heaven, 72 beautiful virgins.
(AP, 10/10/05)
2005 Oct 4, The UAE Labor Ministry
announced that company executives will find their names on a sheet of
shame published by the government if they don't start paying wages to
their la-borers.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, The UN Security
Council warned Ethiopia and Eritrea against reigniting their bor-der
war and urged Eritrea to immediately reverse its ban on all helicopter
flights by UN peace-keepers.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, Venezuela said it has
reduced its holdings of US Treasury securities and moved some foreign
exchange reserves into European investments.
(SFC, 10/5/05, p.A18)
2005 Oct 4-2005 Oct 9, The World
Golf Championships took place at Harding Park Golf Course along Lake
Merced in SF, Ca.
(SFCM, 10/2/05, p.6)
2006 Oct 4, A US federal court
awarded $143 million to 3 closed nuclear power plants be-cause the
government failed to remove spent fuel rods. The 3 Yankee company
reactors were located in Connecticut, Maine, and Massachusetts.
(WSJ, 10/5/06, p.A6)
2006 Oct 4, Ousted Hewlett-Packard
Chairwoman Patricia Dunn, a company officer and three investigators
were charged with violating California privacy laws in a corporate
spying scandal. The charges were later dropped, with a judge calling
their conduct a "betrayal of trust and honor" that nonetheless did not
rise to the level of criminal activity.
(AP, 10/4/07)
2006 Oct 4, American Roger D.
Kornberg, whose father won a Nobel Prize a half-century ago, was
awarded the prize in chemistry for his studies of how cells take
information from genes to produce proteins.
(AP, 10/4/06)
2006 Oct 4, A Philadelphia jury
awarded a woman $1 million and her husband $500,000 in compensatory
damages after finding that Wyeth's hormone replacement drug Prempro was
a cause of her breast cancer. In the first federal Prempro trial, a
jury last month in Little Rock, Ar-kansas found Wyeth was not negligent
and had adequately warned patients and doctors of the cancer risk
associated with the drug. Wyeth faced some 5,000 lawsuits involving its
hormone replacement drugs.
(Reuters, 10/4/06)
2006 Oct 4, The DJIA rose 123.27
to 11,850.61, to close at record high for the 2nd day in a row. Nasdaq
rose 47.30 to 2,290.
(SFC, 10/5/06, p.C1)
2006 Oct 4, In Berkeley, Ca., the
new 2,002-acre Eastshore State Park was dedicated. The 8.5 mile strip
ran north along the East Bay from the Bay Bridge to Richmond.
(SFC, 10/5/06, p.B1)
2006 Oct 4, Scientists reported
that the Hubble Space Telescope had revealed 16 objects about the size
of Jupiter near the center of the Milky Way and that the discovery gave
strong evidence that planets are abundant in other parts of the galaxy.
(SFC, 10/5/06, p.A4)
2006 Oct 4, New York Times
correspondent R.W. Apple Jr. died in Washington at age 71.
(AP, 10/4/07)
2006 Oct 4, Afghanistan's
intelligence agency said security agents have arrested 17 people
allegedly trained in Pakistan who they believe planned to launch
suicide attacks in three Afghan provinces. In southern Afghanistan
suspected Taliban militants attacked a police checkpoint, and the
ensuing clash left six militants dead and three wounded.
(AP, 10/4/06)(AP, 10/5/06)
2006 Oct 4, In Sao Paulo, Brazil,
court officials said 14 workers at a juvenile detention center were
convicted and sentenced to up to 87 years in prison for beating inmates
with iron bars and wood to find out who organized an escape attempt in
2000.
(AP, 10/4/06)
2006 Oct 4, British PM Tony Blair
said the Irish Republican Army's violent campaign in North-ern Ireland
is over, following a report into paramilitary activity that raised
hopes of reviving self-rule.
(AP, 10/4/06)
2006 Oct 4, In Britain a
Muslim-owned business, which reportedly housed a makeshift mosque, was
petrol-bombed following three nights of clashes between white and south
Asian youths on the London outskirts.
(AFP, 10/5/06)
2006 Oct 4, In Chile government
officials announced plans to build a 62-mile highway through Pumalin
Park, a nature reserve created by Douglas Tompkins of SF. The
government also sig-naled that it will push ahead with the proposed $4
billion hydroelectric complex to dam the Baker and Pasqua rivers south
of Pumalin.
(SSFC, 10/8/06, p.A1)
2006 Oct 4, Professor Eugene
Polzik and his team at the Niels Bohr Institute at Copenhagen
University in Denmark reported a breakthrough in teleportation by using
both light and matter.
(Reuters, 10/4/06)
2006 Oct 4, The world's biggest
book fair opened in Frankfurt, Germany, with Indian authors taking
center stage and a new scheme to protect writers' copyrights from
Internet piracy creat-ing a buzz.
(AFP, 10/4/06)
2006 Oct 4, Iraqi authorities took
a brigade of up to 700 policemen out of service and put members under
investigation for "possible complicity" with death squads following a
mass kid-napping earlier this week. A series of bombs went off in rapid
succession in a shopping district in a mainly Christian neighborhood of
Baghdad, killing 16 people and wounding 87. The dead were among 26
people killed in attacks across Iraq. A suicide bomber attacked an
Iraqi police base in the town of Ramadi, but guards shot at the
explosives-packed vehicle and detonated it before it could hit the base.
(AP, 10/4/06)(AP, 10/5/06)
2006 Oct 4, In Malawi pop singer
Madonna traveled to a village 12 miles outside the capital Lilongwe,
where she is funding the construction of a center to feed and educate
about 1,000 orphans.
(Reuters, 10/5/06)
2006 Oct 4, In Nicaragua defense
ministers from across the Americas agreed to create an international
land-mine removal center and many called for joint military missions
for disaster relief and peacekeeping worldwide.
(AP, 10/4/06)
2006 Oct 4, In Nigeria militants
freed around 25 kidnapped oil workers but five abducted ex-patriates
were still missing in another part of the Niger Delta.
(AP, 10/4/06)
2006 Oct 4, Masked men killed a
local Hamas political activist as he set out for morning prayers before
dawn in the northern West Bank.
(AP, 10/4/06)
2006 Oct 4, Sri Lanka's air force
bombed separatist rebel positions in the embattled north, a day after
the insurgents agreed to peace talks with the government.
(AP, 10/4/06)
2006 Oct 4, Sources said fresh
inter-rebel fighting in Sudan has forced 10,000 Darfuris to seek refuge
near a camp of African Union forces monitoring a widely-ignored truce.
(AP, 10/4/06)
2007 Oct 4, US marshals posing as
supporters arrested convicted tax-evaders Ed and Elaine Brown at their
rural, fortress-like home in New Hampshire. They were convicted in
January of scheming to avoid federal income taxes by hiding $1.9
million of income between 1996 and 2003 and were sentenced in April.
(AP, 10/5/07)
2007 Oct 4, The recording industry
won a major fight in its effort to stop illegal music downloading with
a US jury decision to impose $222,000 damages against a Minnesota woman
who used a Web service to share music.
(Reuters, 10/5/07)
2007 Oct 4, Idaho Sen. Larry Craig
defiantly vowed to serve out his term in office despite los-ing a court
attempt to rescind his guilty plea in a men's room sex sting.
(AP, 10/4/08)
2007 Oct 4, Former city
maintenance worker John Ashley shot five people in a law office in
Alexandria, La., killing two of them; Ashley was shot and killed by
police following a standoff.
(AP, 10/4/08)
2007 Oct 4, In Philadelphia
Mustafa Ali (36), a convicted bank robber, shot and killed two ar-mored
car guards servicing an ATM outside a bank. Several schools were locked
down amid a massive manhunt for the gunman, who was arrested the next
day.
(AP, 10/4/07)(AP, 10/6/07)
2007 Oct 4, Microsoft outlined its
vision, dubbed HealthVault, in which a person can view, from one place,
their complete health records.
(Econ, 10/6/07, p.74)(http://tinyurl.com/2fop6p)
2007 Oct 4, A British soldier was
killed in an explosion about 19 miles west of Kandahar city. 82 British
personnel, including 57 soldiers, have been killed in Afghanistan since
operations be-gan there in November 2001.
(AP, 10/5/07)
2007 Oct 4, The Australian
government approved plans for a controversial multi-billion-dollar pulp
mill in Tasmania despite objections it could ruin one of the country's
most pristine environ-ments.
(AFP, 10/4/07)
2007 Oct 4, Canada’s PM Stephen
Harper vowed to crack down on illegal drugs, saying the Conservative
government would propose mandatory prison time for serious drug
offenses.
(Reuters, 10/4/07)
2007 Oct 4, Health Canada said
that it has stopped the sale of Novartis Pharmaceuticals
anti-inflammatory drug Prexige and will cancel its market authorization
due to the risk for serious liver-related effects including hepatitis.
(AP, 10/4/07)
2007 Oct 4, Canada became the
first country to notify the World Trade Organization that it has agreed
to allow a Canadian company to make generic medicines for export to
Rwanda.
(AFP, 10/7/07)
2007 Oct 4, In Chile the widow and
five children of Gen. Augusto Pinochet were among 23 people indicted on
charges of corruption related to the dictator's US bank accounts.
(AP, 10/5/07)
2007 Oct 4, In Congo a cargo plane
crashed in a residential neighborhood near the main air-port in
Kinshasa, plowing into homes and killing at least 52 people. The next
day Congolese President Joseph Kabila sacked Transport Minister Remy
Henri Kuseyo Gatanga.
(AP, 10/4/07)(Reuters, 10/5/07)
2007 Oct 4, Egypt sent a
high-level protest to dozens of European nations expressing
"aston-ishment and regret" at their refusal to endorse Cairo's call for
a Middle East nuclear free zone at a conference last month. At last
month's IAEA session, 25 of the 27 EU nations abstained as did other
countries hoping to join the union. In all, 47 nations abstained.
Israeli objections forced a vote in which 53 countries, Muslim states
and their supporters from the developing world, backed the proposal.
(AP, 10/17/07)
2007 Oct 4, Ethiopia pledged 5,000
troops to a future UN-African Union peacekeeping mis-sion for Darfur.
(AP, 10/4/07)
2007 Oct 4, In northeast France
dozens of hooded youths attacked two police vehicles with metal bars,
set fire to more than a dozen parked cars and torched a community
center in Saint-Dizier.
(AP, 10/5/07)
2007 Oct 4, Siemens, one of the
world’s biggest electrical engineering firms, accepted a $285 million
fine imposed by a court in Munich for bribery by its communications
division. CEO Peter Loscher announced a re-organization that included
reducing its 9 divisions to three and down-sizing the 11-man executive
board. The ruling named officials in Nigeria, Libya and Russia as
recipients of 77 bribes totaling some $17.5 million.
(Econ, 10/13/07, p.70)(WSJ, 11/16/07, p.A1)
2007 Oct 4, The Wai Wai, an
indigenous group in Guyana, backed by government decree and a US-based
conservation organization, said it has banned miners and loggers from
its sec-tion of the Amazon jungle and pledged to pursue an economic
strategy based on ecotourism, research and traditional crafts.
(AP, 10/5/07)
2007 Oct 4, Iranian state
television reported that Iran and Syria have signed an agreement for
Tehran to export a billion dollars worth of gas every year to its chief
regional ally.
(AP, 10/4/07)
2007 Oct 4, President Jalal
Talabani said Iraq has ordered light military equipment from China
worth $100 million because the United States is unable to meet
Baghdad's requirements. A government minister said the official Iraqi
investigation into the Blackwater shooting last month recommended that
the security guards face trial in Iraqi courts and that the company
compen-sate the victims. Abbas Hassan Hamza, the mayor of the
religiously mixed town of Iskandari-yah, was killed along with four of
his guards in a roadside bomb attack. Hamza belonged to Iraqi PM Nouri
al-Maliki's Dawa party. In Baghdad, a car bomb exploded near people on
line at a gas station, killing four civilians and wounding eight
others. 3 civilians were shot by American troops near a checkpoint in
Abu Lukah set up by Iraqis who have joined forces against extrem-ists.
A US soldier was killed by small-arms fire during operations in a
southern section of Bagh-dad.
(Reuters, 10/4/07)(AP, 10/4/07)(AP, 10/5/07)
2007 Oct 4, It was reported that
in Kuwait the nomadic Bedouin, Arabic for "without," num-bered about
100,000 people and have been refused what they feel is their
birthright: citizenship.
(AP, 10/4/07)
2007 Oct 4, Dutch authorities said
their customs officers had found 100 dead beetles stuffed with cocaine
whilst examining a parcel from Peru.
(Reuters, 10/4/07)
2007 Oct 4, Officials said the
Nigerian central bank has raised its benchmark interest rate MPR from
eight to nine percent because of rising inflation.
(AFP, 10/4/07)
2007 Oct 4, South Korean President
Roh Moo-hyun and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il pledged to seek a
peace treaty to replace the Korean War's 1953 cease-fire and expand
pro-jects to reduce tension across the world's last Cold War frontier.
(AP, 10/4/07)
2007 Oct 4, Militants holding some
230 Pakistani troops killed three of the captive soldiers before dawn
in apparent retaliation for army raids on guerrilla hide-outs near the
Afghan border.
(AP, 10/4/07)
2007 Oct 4, Philippine President
Gloria Arroyo called for increased trade with India at the start of a
three-day visit.
(AP, 10/4/07)
2007 Oct 4, The government of
Somalia announced a crackdown on Islamic militants.
(WSJ, 10/6/07, p.A1)
2007 Oct 4, The head of South
Africa's main union body stood down from his office pending the outcome
of an investigation into the disappearance of a large cash donation.
(AFP, 10/5/07)
2007 Oct 4, Spanish police
arrested almost the entire leadership of Batasuna as the banned party
held a meeting in the Basque town of Segura. The operation confirmed
the hard line against ETA by the Socialist government of PM Jose Luis
Rodriguez Zapatero since the armed group officially ended a
15-month-old ceasefire in June.
(AP, 10/5/07)
2007 Oct 4, Prominent world
figures led by former President Carter and Desmond Tutu of South Africa
said they were shocked by the suffering in Darfur and criticized
Sudan's govern-ment in exceptionally harsh terms.
(AP, 10/4/07)
2007 Oct 4, A union official said
Zimbabwean teachers have called off a strike for better wages after
reaching a deal with the government.
(AFP, 10/4/07)
2008 Oct 4, The fight over control
of Wachovia intensified, as a judge temporarily agreed to block the
sale of the bank to Wells Fargo, Citigroup announced in a news release.
The next day the battle for control of Wachovia tilted toward Wells
Fargo as a state appeals court blocked a lower court ruling that had
favored rival bidder Citigroup.
(AP, 10/5/08)(AP, 10/6/08)
2008 Oct 4, In SF the 8th annual
Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, backed by financier Warren Hellman,
continued or its 2nd day in Goldengate Park with an audience of some
40,000. The next day the festival drew some 100,000 fans. SF also
celebrated its annual LoveFest, begun in 2004, with a downtown parade
that drew tens of thousands of spectators.
(SSFC, 10/5/08, p.B1,B3)(SFC, 10/6/08, p.E1)
2008 Oct 4, In the Porter Ranch
area of Los Angeles County Karthik Rajaram (45), an unemployed
financial adviser despondent over his troubles, shot and killed his
wife (39), mother-in-law (69), and 3 sons (7,12,19), before taking his
own life.
(SFC, 10/7/08, p.A6)
2008 Oct 4, The US coalition says
its forces have killed five militants in two operations targeting
al-Qaida and Taliban insurgents in eastern Afghanistan.
(AP, 10/4/08)
2008 Oct 4, The leaders of
Britain, France, Germany and Italy began meeting in Paris at a summit
on the world financial crisis threatening banks, growth and jobs across
the continent. They vowed to do all they could to prevent Wall Street's
turmoil from destabilizing their banking systems. Germany's No. 2
commercial property lender, Hypo Real Estate Holding AG, said its $48
billion rescue plan had unraveled when private banks pulled out.
(AP, 10/5/08)
2008 Oct 4, A ceremony in
Diwaniyah marked the departure of Polish troops from Iraq. Po-land sent
combat troops into Iraq as part of the US-led coalition and had 2,500
troops deployed there at its peak. The last 900 were being pulled out
this month. Two US helicopters collided while landing at a base in
Baghdad. One Iraqi soldier was killed.
(AP, 10/4/08)(AP, 10/5/08)
2008 Oct 4, In Mexico gunmen
killed Salvador Vegara, the mayor of Ixtapan de la Sal, a re-sort town
southwest of Mexico City. Vegara was in a car with two other people
when the gun-men opened fire from another vehicle. The bodies of 5 men
were found asphyxiated in a car in the eastern part of Tijuana. The men
were beaten and had their hands bound. The bodies of two beheaded men
were found wrapped in blankets on a road elsewhere in the city. The
heads were in black plastic bags nearby.
(AP, 10/4/08)
2008 Oct 4, In Sri Lanka heavy
fighting near the rebels' administrative capital of Kilinochchi left 20
guerrillas and 4 soldiers dead. Soldiers overran five rebel bunkers in
the Mullaitivu dis-trict, killing 5 rebels. 4 rebels and a soldier were
killed in clashes in the Vavuniya and Welioya regions.
(AP, 10/5/08)
2008 Oct 4, Taiwan's president
welcomed a US decision to sell the island up to $6.5 billion in
advanced weaponry, while China warned the move would damage relations
between Beijing and Washington.
(AP, 10/4/08)
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