Oct. 9
Today in history
Today is Oct. 9. On this date in:
1000: Leif Erikson is believed to have landed in North America, possibly in what is now Newfoundland, Canada.
1635: Roger Williams, founder of the colony of Rhode Island, was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for advocating for religious tolerance and the separation of church and state.
1701: The Collegiate School of Connecticut, later to become Yale University, was chartered in New Haven. Founded by 10 Congregational ministers, it is the third oldest institution of higher education in the United States.
1823: Abolitionist and journalist Mary Ann Shadd was born. She was the first Black woman to become an editor, when she published The Provincial Freemen. Other achievements included
a law degree and the founding of a school for children of all races.
1825: A sloop named Restauration, with 52 Norwegian Quakers on board, landed in New York Harbor in the first organized immigration from Norway to the United States. In commemoration of their journey and predecessor Leif Erickson – arguably the first European to set foot in North America, 825 years earlier – Congress designated this day as National Leif Erickson Day.
1930: Laura Ingalls, the daughter of a wealthy New York family, became the first woman to fly solo across the United States in a nine-stop journey from New York to California. In 1932, Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly solo across the United States nonstop.
1936: The Hoover Dam, located on the border of Arizona and Nevada, began generating and transmitting electricity to Los Angeles. The impressive engineering achievement remains a major source of hydroelectric power for several states.
1940: The White House released a statement which said that government “policy is not to intermingle colored and white enlisted personnel in the same regimental organizations.” That segregation lasted until 1948.
1962: Uganda achieved independence after nearly 70 years of British rule.
1970: Cambodia declared itself the Khmer Republic following the abolishment of the monarchy by the legislature.
1974: German businessman Oskar Schindler, credited with saving 1,200 Jews from the Holocaust, died at the age of 66. According to his wishes, he was buried in Israel at the Catholic cemetery on Mount Zion.
1986: The musical “The Phantom of the Opera” by Andrew Lloyd Webber premiered in London’s West End. The show became the longest-running musical in Broadway history and has been seen by millions worldwide.
1991: London’s Royal Albert Hall hosted the first sumo wrestling tournament ever to be held outside of Japan in the 1,500-year history of the sport.
2003: Conservative talk radio show host Rush Limbaugh announced that he was addicted to prescription painkillers and would be entering a rehabilitation program. The confession followed a widely publicized investigation into his drug use.
2006: North Korea conducted its first nuclear test. The underground test using a plutonium-based device was condemned by the U.N. Security Council. Since then, North Korea has conducted a total of six nuclear tests.
2009: Data from the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) confirmed water on the moon for the first time.
– USA TODAY Network
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Today in history, October 9
