Oct. 4
Today in history
Today is Oct. 4. On this date in:
1636: The first legal code in North America was composed by the General Court of the Plymouth Colony. It guaranteed the colony’s Pilgrim citizens a trial by jury and stipulated that all laws were to be made with the consent of the freemen of the colony.
1830:
Belgium gained its independence, after having been a part of the Netherlands since 1815.1864: New Orleans Tribune, the first Black daily newspaper, was founded by Dr. Louis C. Roudanez. The newspaper, published in English and French, started as a tri-weekly but soon became an influential daily.
1901: The first motorized vacuum cleaner, called the “Puffing Billy,” was patented by British engineer Hubert Cecil Booth. The machine, pulled
by a horse, was too big to enter buildings – instead, only its tubes were inserted through the windows.
1926: The U.S. Department of Agriculture launched the radio program “Housekeeper’s Chats” featuring “Aunt Sammy,” sister of Uncle Sam.
1927: Sculptor Gutzon Borglum began working on Mount Rushmore, an iconic American landmark featuring the faces of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln carved into a South Dakota mountainside. The project was completed in October 1941.
1931: American aviator Clyde “Upside-Down” Pangborn became the first person to fly nonstop across the Pacific Ocean, departing from Misawa, Japan, and landing in Wenatchee, Washington.
1954: The first temperature-controlled railway car, developed by the New York Central Railroad, was tested between New York City and Chicago.
1957: The Soviet Union’s Sputnik 1 blasted into space, the first man-made object ever to leave the Earth’s atmosphere. The satellite’s launch marked the beginning of the Space Age – and a race between the U.S. and the USSR to be the first to reach the moon.
1958: The first trans-Atlantic passenger jet service was established by British Overseas Airways Corporation, flying from Heathrow Airport in London to Idlewild (now John F. Kennedy International Airport) in New York.
1959: USSR probe Luna 3 took the first photographs of the far side of the moon, leading to new discoveries about lunar geology.
1965: Pope Paul VI arrived in New York City on a mission to address the United Nations, becoming the first pope to visit the United States.
1976: Barbara Walters became the first female coanchor of the evening news, starting a three-year tenure on "ABC Evening News."
1992: An Israeli El Al airline Boeing 747 cargo plane crashed into an apartment building in the outskirts of Amsterdam, killing 43 people and injuring 26.
2006: WikiLeaks, an international nonprofit organization that published secret information, news leaks and highly classified material – including U.S. military field reports from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – from anonymous sources, was launched in Iceland by Australian computer hacker-turned-activist Julian Assange.
– USA TODAY Network
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Today in history, October 4
