This Week in History
by Dianne Hermann
“The secret to happiness is freedom.
The secret to freedom is courage.” Carrie Jones
Oct 27-Nov 2, 2025
October 27
1838 – Missouri governor Lilburn Boggs issues the Executive Order 44, which orders all Mormons to leave the state or be exterminated. It was signed in the aftermath of the Battle of Crooked River, a clash between Mormons and a unit of the Missouri State Guard in northern Ray County, Missouri, that resulted in four fatalities.
1871 – Boss Tweed (William Magear Tweed), New York State Senator/ U.S. Representative (D-NY), and Tammany Hall leader, is arrested after the New York Times and cartoonist Thomas Nast expose his corruption. Tweed was convicted on 204 of the 220 corruption counts, fined, and sentenced to 12 years in prison (later reduced to one year). After his release, the state of New York filed civil suit to recover $6 million in embezzled funds. Jailed again, Tweed escaped and fled to Spain, was arrested and imprisoned again. Tweed agreed to testify about his corruption ring in exchange for his release, but Gov. Tilden refused to honor the agreement. Tweed died in prison in 1878 at age 55.
1904 – On the first day of operation of the New York City subway, 350,000 people ride the 9.1-mile track. It was the world’s first subway and the fare was 5 cents. A NYC subway single-ride ticket costs $3.25, up 50 cents from last year.
1938 – DuPont announces its new synthetic fiber will be called “nylon.” It was patented in 1935. Wallace Carothers, its inventor, died in 1937 at age 41. Nylon stockings went on sale for the first time on October 24, 1939, in Wilmington, Delaware.
1954 – Walt Disney’s first television program, “The Disneyland Story,” premieres on TV. The show was renamed “Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color” and aired until 1992. Watch the opening credits and a history of Disney.
1969 – Ralph Nader sets up a consumer organization known as Nader’s Raiders. The former presidential candidate (1972, 1992, 1996, and 2000) is 91 years old.
1988 – Investigators learn that Larry Flynt, Hustler Magazine publisher, paid a hit man $1 million in 1983 to kill Hugh Hefner, Bob Guccione, Walter Annenberg, and Frank Sinatra. The alleged hit man, mercenary and former OSS operative Mitchell WerBell III, died in 1983 after of an apparent heart attack. A defendant in an unrelated murder case accused Flynt of poisoning him. Flynt, who died in February, was shot and paralyzed in 1978. The confessed shooter, Joseph Franklin, was never charged.
1997 – Microsoft argues it retains “unfettered liberty to design its products to meet customer demand free from government interference.” The Justice Department’s antitrust department petitioned U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson to find Microsoft in contempt of a 1995 consent decree to desist from unfair practices.
2018 – A gunman shoots and kills 11 people and injures 6 in an anti-Semitic attack at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. Robert Bowers, the 46-year-old gunman, was shot multiple times by police before he was arrested. Bowers, held without bond, stood trial on federal and state charges in 2023. He was sentenced to death and transferred to death row at the U.S. Penitentiary in Indiana.
October 28
1636 – Harvard University is founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts, making it the oldest university in America.
1858 – Macy’s Department store opens in New York City. Rowland Macy opened the store after his first seven business ventures failed. Macy died in 1877 at age 54.
1886 – The Statue of Liberty is dedicated by President Grover Cleveland. The event was celebrated by the first confetti (ticker tape) parade in New York City. The inscription, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses …” is part of the poem “The New Colossus” written by Emma Lazarus in 1883 to raise funds for the statue’s pedestal. A plaque, with the entire poem, was added to the pedestal in 1903.
1904 – The St. Louis Police Department is the first to try a new investigation method when they test for fingerprints.
1919 – Congress passes the Volstead Act over President Wilson’s veto, which starts Prohibition. It lasted 13 years, until the 21st amendment repealed it.
1962 – Soviet leader Khrushchev agrees to remove missiles from Cuba, ending the 13-day Cuban Missile Crisis.
1965 – The Gateway Arch along the waterfront in St. Louis, Missouri, is completed. It is the world’s tallest arch at 630 feet, and the tallest man-made monument in the Northern Hemisphere. Take a brief tour of the arch.
1985 – John A. Walker Jr. and his 22-year-old son Michael Lance Walker plead guilty to charges of spying for the Soviet Union. John A. Walker Jr. was sentenced to life in prison and died in 2014 at age 77. Michael Lance Walker was released from prison in 2000 after serving 15 years of his 25-year sentence.
2005 – Lewis Libby, Vice-president Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, is indicted in the Valerie Plame/CIA case. Libby resigned later that day. Libby, who had nothing to do with the release of Plame’s name as a CIA agent, was convicted of perjury and sentenced to 30 months in prison. President Bush commuted Libby’s sentence, but did not pardon him.
October 29
1929 – On what is known as “Black Tuesday” the stock market crashes, triggering “The Great Depression.” This is not to be confused with the “Depression of 1893,” which was caused by the Panic of 1893 after the dramatic drop in wheat prices and the receivership of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad.
1940 – The first peacetime military draft begins in the U.S.
1960 – Eighteen-year-old Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali) wins his first professional fight, beating Tunney Hunsaker by decision in 6 rounds. Ali died in 2016 at age 74. Watch part of the bout (no sound).
1966 – The National Organization of Women (NOW) is founded by Shirley Chisholm, Betty Friedan, and Muriel Fox.
1998 – The Space Shuttle Discovery blasts off on Mission STS-95 with 77-year old John Glenn on board, making Glenn the oldest person to go into space. Glenn was the first American is space in 1962. Glenn died in 2016 at age 95.
2004 – The Arabic news network Al Jazeera broadcasts an excerpt from a video of Osama bin Laden in which the terrorist leader first admits direct responsibility for the September 11, 2001, attacks and references the 2004 U.S. presidential election.
October 30
1873 – The P. T. Barnum’s circus debuts in New York City. In 1919, the Barnum & Bailey Circus merged with Ringling Brothers to become “The Greatest Show on Earth.” The circus closed in May 2017 citing lower attendance and higher operating costs. Watch a CBS This Morning report on the end of an American institution.
1900 – The first-ever major U.S. auto show opens in Madison Square Garden in New York City. The cars ranged in price from $280 to $4,000. None of the 66 automakers whose cars were on display exist today, including the Electric Vehicle Company, Columbia Automobile Company, Winton Motor Carriage Company, Stanley Motor Carriage Company, Locomobile Company of America, and Oldsmobile. The car show has been held annually in New York since 1900.
1938 – Orson Welles creates a national panic with his radio broadcast of “War of the Worlds.” The radio drama was an adaptation of the 1897 novel “The War of the Worlds” by H.G. Wells. Announcements were made four times during the broadcast that it was an adaptation of a work of fiction. Orson Welles and H.G. Wells met in October 1940 for a radio interview two years after the broadcast. H.G. Wells died in 1946 at age 79 and Orson Welles died in 1985 at age 70.
1945 – Branch Rickey signs Jackie Robinson to the Montreal Royals baseball team to break the major league color barrier.
1974 – California Angels pitcher Nolan Ryan throws the fastest recorded baseball pitch at 100.9 MPH. On September 24, 2010, San Diego Padres pitcher Aroldis Chapman bested that by throwing a 105.1 MPH pitch.
2012 – Walt Disney purchases Lucasfilm Ltd. and its rights for Star Wars and Indiana Jones for $4.05 billion.
October 31
1846 – The Donner party, unable to cross the Sierra Nevada pass, constructs a winter camp. Only 48 of the 90 people who left Illinois arrived in California the following spring after three rescue attempts. Some of them resorted to cannibalism to survive.
1913 – The first U.S. paved coast-to-coast highway, the Lincoln Highway, is dedicated. It ran from Lincoln Park, California, to New York City, New York, and spanned 3,389 miles.
1941 – Mount Rushmore in South Dakota is declared complete after 14 years of work. It shows the 60-foot busts of U.S. Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.
1950 – Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola of Puerto Rico attempt to kill President Truman at his Blair House residence in Washington, DC. Torresola shot and mortally wounded police guard Leslie Coffelt, but not before the officer shot and killed Torresola. Collazo was captured, tried, and sentenced to death. His sentence was later commuted to life in prison. In 1979, President Carter reduced his sentence to time served (27 years) and Collazo was released. He died in Puerto Rico in 1994 at age 80.
1959 – Lee Harvey Oswald announces from Moscow that he will never return to the United States. Oswald returned to the U.S. and then assassinated President Kennedy on November 22, 1963.
1968 – President Lyndon B. Johnson orders a halt to all U.S. bombing of North Vietnam, which started in June of 1965.
2003 – Bethany Hamilton, age 14, has her arm bitten off by a shark while surfing in Hawaii. Her story was the basis for the 2011 inspirational movie “Soul Surfer.” Hamilton is now 35 years old. Watch Bethany tell her own story.
November 1
1765 – The Stamp Act goes into effect in the American colonies. The law passed by the British Parliament was a new tax on every piece of printed paper used by the American colonists.
1800 – John Adams becomes the first president to live in the White House. Construction began in October of 1792.
1938 – Seabiscuit beats War Admiral in a match race at Pimlico horse racing track. President FDR paused a cabinet meeting to listen to the race on the radio. Watch the original footage of the exciting race.
1968 – The movie rating system of G, M, R, X, PG-13 and NC-17 goes into effect.
1982 – Honda becomes the first Asian automobile company to produce cars in the U.S. when its factory opens in Marysville, Ohio.
1994 – The Amazon.com domain name is registered. Amazon is now the 2nd largest retailer in the world (after Walmart).
2012 – American scientists detect evidence of light from the universe’s first stars, predicted to have formed 500 million years after the Big Bang.
November 2
1783 – General George Washington bids farewell to his troops at Fraunces Tavern in New York City after winning the American Revolutionary War. He ordered the Continental Army disbanded the following day. Washington was elected president in 1789.
1947 – Howard Hughes flies his H-4 Hercules “Spruce Goose,” a large wooden flying boat aircraft of his own design, on its first and only flight. Only one was ever built by Hughes. It was made of birch, not spruce. Watch the silent video of the flight.
1948 – President Harry Truman is re-elected in an upset over Republican Thomas Dewey. Newspapers had already been printed with “Dewey defeats Truman” as the headline.
1954 – Strom Thurmond (D-SC) is the first Senator elected by write-in vote. State Democrat leaders blocked him from receiving the party’s nomination. Thurmond switched to the Republican Party in 1964. Thurmond died in 2003 at age 100 as the oldest person to serve in Congress.
1959 – Contestant Charles Van Doren confesses that the popular TV quiz show “21” is fixed. Van Doren died in 2019 at age 93. The scandal resulted in the passage of laws regulating game shows.
1984 – Velma Barfield becomes the first woman executed in the U.S. since 1962 after her conviction of murder. She was convicted for one murder but admitted to six. She was the first woman executed by lethal injection. Since the Supreme Court lifted the moratorium on capital punishment in 1976, eighteen women have been executed.
2000 – The first crew arrives at the International Space Station. One American and two Russians stayed on board the ISS for 136 days. Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub hold the record with 374 days on the ISS.
Images from: nytimes.com
