Today in History

1555		The Protestant martyrs Bishop Hugh Latimer and Bishop Nicholas Ridley are burned at the stake for heresy in England.
1701		Yale University is founded as The Collegiate School of Killingworth, Connecticut by Congregationalists who consider Harvard too liberal.
1793		Queen Marie Antoinette is beheaded by guillotine during the French Revolution.
1846		Ether is first administered in public at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston by Dr. William Thomas Green Morton during an operation performed by Dr. John Collins Warren.
1859		Abolitionist John Brown, with 21 men, seizes the U.S. Armory at Harpers Ferry, Va. U.S. Marines capture the raiders, killing several. John Brown is later hanged in Virginia for treason.
1901		President Theodore Roosevelt incites controversy by inviting black leader Booker T. Washington to the White House.
1908		The first airplane flight in England is made at Farnborough, by Samuel Cody, a U.S. citizen.
1934		Mao Tse-tung decides to abandon his base in Jiangxi due to attacks from Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists. With his pregnant wife and about 30,000 Red Army troops, he sets out on the “Long March.”
1938		Billy the Kid, a ballet by Aaron Copland, opens in Chicago.
1940		Benjamin O. Davis becomes the U.S. Army’s first African American Brigadier General.
1946		Ten Nazi war criminals are hanged in Nuremberg, Germany.
1969		The New York Mets win the World Series four games to one over the heavily-favored Baltimore Orioles.
1973		Israeli General Ariel Sharon crosses the Suez Canal and begins to encircle two Egyptian armies.
1978		The college of cardinals elects 58-year-old Karol Cardinal Wojtyla, a Pole, the first non-Italian Pope since 1523.
1984		A baboon heart is transplanted into 15-day-old Baby Fae–the first transplant of the kind–at Loma Linda University Medical Center, California. Baby Fae lives until November 15.
1995		The Million Man March for ‘A Day of Atonement’ takes place in Washington, D.C.
1995		Skye Bridge opens over Loch Alsh, Scotland
1998		General Augusto Pinochet, former dictator of Chile, arrested in London for extradition on murder charges
2002		Inaugural opening of Bibliotheca Alexandria in Alexandria, Egypt., a modern library and cultural center commemorating the famed Library of Alexandria that was lost in antiquity