The Week in History (October 25-October 31)
October 25, 1854 – During the Crimean War, the Charge of the Light Brigade occurred as Lord Cardigan led the British cavalry against the Russians at Balaclava. Of 673 British cavalrymen taking part in the charge, 272 were killed. It was later immortalized in the poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson.
October 25, 1924 – Charles Evans Hughes, secretary of state and future Supreme Court justice, gives a speech in which he praises President Calvin Coolidge and condemns corrupt politicians, in front of a crowd of 10,000 in St. Paul.
October 25-29, 1983 – The Caribbean island of Grenada was liberated by the U.S. under orders from President Ronald Reagan to restore order and free American students. Over 2,000 Marines and Army Rangers seized control after a bloody political coup the previous week by Cuban terrorists who had made the island a Soviet-Cuban prison colony. In just four days the successful combat operations ceased. Over 500 Americans were rescued, and the socialist coup leaders were captured and imprisoned by a Grenadian tribunal. Grenada held free elections the following year.
October 25, 1987 – In the seventh game of the World Series, the Minnesota Twins beat the St. Louis Cardinals with a score of 4-2, winning their first World Series championship, 4 games to 3.
October 25, 1988 – President Ronald Reagan signs the act creating the Department of Veterans Affairs.
October 26, 1492 – Lead (graphite) pencils are first used.
October 26, 1633: The Puritan congregation at Newton (now Cambridge), MA, chooses Thomas Hooker as its pastor. Hooker, like many Dissenters, had earlier fled persecution in England by traveling to Holland. He then sailed to America with preachers John Cotton and Samuel Stone, leading grateful Puritans in Boston to quip that they now had “Cotton for their clothing, Hooker for their fishing, and Stone for their building.”
October 26, 1881 – The legendary Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, AZ. Lawmen Wyatt Earp, two of his brothers, and “Doc” Holliday out-gunned members of the outlaw Cowboy gang, which included the Ike Clanton clan and McLaurys in a fight that lasted only thirty seconds.
October 26, 1950 – Mother Teresa founds the first Mission of Charity in Calcutta, India.
October 26, 1951 – Winston Churchill became Britain’s prime minister for a second time at the age of 76, following his Conservative Party’s narrow victory in general elections. In his first term from 1940-45 he had guided Britain through its World War II struggle into victory over Nazi Germany.
October 26, 1954 – Chevrolet unveils the V-8 engine.
October 26, 1960 – Calvin Griffith decides to move his Washington Senators to Minnesota, where the baseball team is renamed the Minnesota Twins.
October 26, 2012 – While Hurricane Sandy dominated the news, Democrat President Barack Obama quietly signed an executive order “Establishing the White House Homeland Security Partnership Council” unconstitutionally consolidating power by imposing Homeland Security priorities over all 19 departments in the Executive Branch.
October 26, 2019 – The Death of ISIS: President Donald Trump orders a raid by U.S. Special Forces killing ISIS (Islamic State) founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in Syria. However, the group has reappeared under Democrat President Joe Biden’s watch as he has directed funding to various radical Islamic organizations, such as Hamas, and to Iran, which acts as broker to Islamic terror groups.
October 27, 1746 – Scottish Presbyterian pastor and theologian William Tennant obtains a charter for the College of New Jersey, which is now Princeton. He had founded the school in 1726 as a seminary to train his sons and others for ministry. Presidents of the college later included Aaron Burr, Jonathan Edwards, and Reverend John Witherspoon, who led the school to national prominence.
October 27, 1775 – The U.S. Navy forms as the Continental Navy.
October 27, 1787 – The first of 85 Federalist Papers appeared in print in a New York newspaper. The essays argued for the adoption of the new U.S. Constitution. They were written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay.
October 27, 1938 – DuPont announces its new synthetic polyamide fiber will be called “nylon.”
October 27, 1978 – Democrat President Jimmy Carter signs Hawkins-Humphrey full employment bill…but it causes the unemployment rate to spike to 7.5%.
October 27, 1991 – Considered by many as the most thrilling World Series ever, the Minnesota Twins beat Atlanta Braves 1-0 in Game 7. MVP: Twins pitcher Jack Morris, who pitched the entire 10-inning shutout.
October 28, 1636 – Harvard University, the oldest institution of higher learning in America, was founded in Cambridge, MA, and named after John Harvard, a Puritan who donated his library and half of his estate.
October 28, 1646 – At Nonantum, MA, missionary John Eliot preaches the first worship service for Native Americans in their native language.
October 28, 1793 – Eli Whitney applies for a patent on the cotton gin, a machine that pulls cotton fibers from the cotton seed, reducing the cost of manufacturing cloth.
October 28, 1886 – The Statue of Liberty was dedicated on Bedloe’s Island in New York Harbor. It was a gift from France commemorating the French-American alliance during the American Revolutionary War.
October 28, 1914 – Dr. Jonas Salk was born in NYC. In 1952, he developed a vaccine for polio (poliomyelitis). His vaccine reduced deaths from polio in the U.S. by 95%.
October 28, 1922 – “Blackshirts” began their March on Rome from Naples which resulted in the formation of a dictatorship under fascism’s founder, Benito Mussolini.
October 28, 1949 – Jim Elliot, missionary to Ecuador’s Auca Indians, writes in his journal the most famous of his sayings: “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”
October 29, 1562 – George Abbot, translator of the Gospels, Acts, and Revelation for the King James Bible, was born.
October 29, 1929 – The stock market crashed as over 16 million shares were dumped amid tumbling prices. The Great Depression followed, lasting over 15 years. Economists now say the Depression should have ended at least 7 years earlier had it not been for President Roosevelt’s New Deal, which expanded the government through added social programs, anti-competition measures, and wage and price controls which, by extension, reduced employment and demand for goods and services.
October 29, 1945 – First ballpoint pen goes on sale, manufactured by Reynolds in the U.S.
October 30, 1735 – John Adams, our second President, was born in Braintree, MA. He served from 1797 to 1801. He was George Washington’s vice president, and father to John Quincy Adams, the 6th President. He died on July 4, 1826, the same day as Thomas Jefferson, on the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
October 30, 1882 – Admiral William “Bull” Halsey was born in Elizabeth, NJ. The American fleet commander during World War II in the Pacific, he played a leading role in the defeat of the Japanese. In 1942, he launched the Doolittle Raid, the first air raid on Japan. From 1942-44, he coordinated successful attacks on the Solomon Islands and New Guinea. In 1944, he led the U.S. fleet to victory at the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the largest naval battle in history.
October 30, 1883 – Bob Jones, Sr. was born. One of the most renowned evangelists and founder of Bob Jones University which is distinguished by its academic excellence and refined standards of behavior.
October 30, 1905 – To counter the spread of the revolution in Russia, Czar Nicholas II took a step toward constitutional government by allowing for an elected parliament (Duma) with legislative powers and guaranteed civil liberties. But socialists would have none of that, and eventually overthrew the government, imposing totalitarian communism with no civil liberties.
October 30, 1938 – The War of the Worlds radio broadcast panicked millions of Americans. Actor Orson Welles and the Mercury Players dramatized the story by H.G. Wells depicting a Martian invasion of New Jersey. Their script utilized simulated radio news bulletins which many listeners thought were real.
October 31st – Halloween or All Hallow’s Eve, a celebration combining the Christians’ All Saints Day with Pagan autumn festivals. Anoka, MN, aka the “Halloween Capital of the World,” was the first city in America to hold a Halloween celebration. The practice of costumed children going house to house saying “Trick or Treat” did not come about until the mid-1940s.
October 31, 1517 – Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of Wittenberg’s palace church, denouncing the selling of papal indulgences and questioning various ecclesiastical practices, marking the beginning of the Protestant Reformation in Germany, and the world.
October 31, 1825 – George Muller converted to Christianity at a Moravian mission, later founding orphanages, housing more than 10,000 orphans by his death in 1898.
October 31, 1887 – Chinese soldier and statesman Chiang Kai-shek was born in Chekiang. Educated at the Wampoa Military Academy, he led KMT (nationalist) forces against the Communist army led by Mao Zedong.
October 31, 1940 – The Battle of Britain concluded. Beginning July 10, 1940, German bombers and fighters had attacked coastal targets, airfields, London, and other cities, a prelude to a failed Nazi invasion of England. British pilots in Spitfires and Hurricanes shot down over 1,700 German aircraft while losing 915 fighters. “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few,” declared Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
October 31, 1941 – Mount Rushmore National Memorial was completed after 14 years of work. It contains 60-foot-tall sculptures of the heads of Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, representing America’s founding, political philosophy, preservation, and expansion and conservation.
October 31, 1991 – The “Halloween Blizzard” began. A record snowfall of 24-36 inches blanketed Minnesota from the Iron Range to the Twin Cities.