October 15

2008-10-15 08:09

Today is Wednesday, October 15, the 289th day of 2008. There are 77 days left in the year.

Highlights in history on this date:

1529 - Suleiman I, Sultan of Turkey, is forced to end siege of Vienna.

1583 - The Gregorian calendar goes into effect in the Papal States by decree of Pope Gregory XIII and is soon adopted in other countries.

1917 - Mata Hari, a Dutch dancer who spied for the Germans, is executed by a firing squad outside Paris.

1928 - German dirigible Graf Zeppelin makes the first commercial flight across the Atlantic Ocean, landing at Lakehurst, New Jersey, in the US.

1945 - The former premier of Vichy France, Pierre Laval, is executed.

1946 - Former head of the Nazi air force, Hermann Goering, sentenced to death as a war criminal, commits suicide by poison hours before his scheduled execution.

1951 - The situation comedy I Love Lucy starring Lucille Ball premieres in the United States on CBS television.

1958 - US Atomic Energy Commission scientists detonate nine nuclear devices at their Nevada test site as they race to complete tests before October 31, when a one-year suspension of US and British atomic tests will be announced.

1964 - Soviet leader Nikita S Khrushchev is removed from office and replaced as premier by Alexei N Kosygin and as Communist Party secretary by Leonid I Brezhnev.

1965 - The first draft card is burned in the United States as an anti-Vietnam War protest.

1966 - US President Lyndon B Johnson signs a bill creating the Department of Transportation.

1968 - Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia sign a treaty allowing Soviet troops to remain in Czechoslovakia.

1969 - Somalia's President Abdirashid Ali Shermarke is assassinated; US peace demonstrators stage activities across the country, including a candlelight march around the White House, as part of a moratorium against the Vietnam War.

1970 - Canadian troops move into Montreal and Quebec City following upsurge of Quebec separatist terrorism.

1974 - Israel denounces as illegal a decision by the UN General Assembly to invite the Palestine Liberation Organization to participate in debate on Palestinian issue.

1978 - Syrian troops agree to withdraw from several key positions in Christian east Beirut under an agreement worked out by seven Arab nations.

1981 - Two US surveillance planes arrive over Egyptian airspace to demonstrate increased US support for Egyptian and Sudanese security against any hostile moves by Libya.

1987 - Fiji's governor general resigns, ending decade of allegiance by the South Pacific island to British crown.

1989 - Thousands of blacks hold "victory marches" in South Africa to celebrate the imminent release of eight political prisoners, including Walter Sisulu.

1990 - Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev is awarded Nobel Peace Prize.

1991 - Clarence Thomas narrowly wins confirmation as a justice of the US Supreme Court, overcoming accusations of sexual harassment.

1992 - Andrei Chikatilo is sentenced to die in Russia after committing at least 52 sadistic murders.

1993 - US scientists report that gene therapy is effective in correcting the underlying molecular defect believed to cause cystic fibrosis.

1994 - Democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide returns to Haiti after US troops landed there in September.

1996 - Italy's highest court orders the retrial of Erich Priebke, a former Nazi officer who was acquitted in World War II slaying of 335 civilians in Rome.

1997 - Rebels, backed by foreign troops, enter Brazzaville in the Republic of Congo, ending President Pascal Lissouba's four-month struggle to remain in power.

1998 - The Yugoslav military signs an accord allowing Nato air surveillance over rebellious Kosovo province.

1999 - Pakistan's army chief, General Pervez Musharraf, declares a state of emergency and names himself chief executive, two days after he and his troops ousted the democratically elected government in a bloodless coup.

2000 - Oil companies evacuate 132 employees from Ecuador's Amazon region after the kidnapping of 10 foreign oil workers.

2006 - Thousands of people are evacuated from their homes in the central German city of Hanover as experts dispose of three freshly unearthed World War II bombs.

2007 - European Union foreign ministers give their final approval to deploy a 3 000-strong EU peacekeeping force for one year to help refugees and displaced people living along the borders of Sudan's Darfur region with Chad and the Central African Republic.

Today's Birthdays:
Virgil, Roman poet (70 BC-19 BC); Evangelista Torricelli, Italian inventor of barometer (1608-1647); Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, German philosopher (1844-1900); P(elham) G(renville) Wodehouse, British-American writer (1881-1975); Richard Carpenter, US singer/drummer (1946--); Penny Marshall, US actress/director (1942--).

Thought For Today:
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are - Theodore Roosevelt, 26th president of the United States (1858-1919).

-Sapa-AP

- SAPA