Today is Wednesday, Oct. 14, the 288th day of 2020. There are 78 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On Oct. 14, 1964, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was named winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

On this date:

In 1890, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 34th president of the United States, was born in Denison, Texas.

In 1939, a German U-boat torpedoed and sank the HMS Royal Oak, a British battleship anchored at Scapa Flow in Scotland’s Orkney Islands; 833 of the more than 1,200 men aboard were killed.

In 1944, German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel took his own life rather than face trial and certain execution for allegedly conspiring against Adolf Hitler.

In 1947, U.S. Air Force Capt. Charles E. (“Chuck”) Yeager became the first test pilot to break the sound barrier as he flew the experimental Bell XS-1 (later X-1) rocket plane over Muroc Dry Lake in California.

In 1960, the idea of a Peace Corps was suggested by Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kennedy to an audience of students at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

In 1964, Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev was toppled from power; he was succeeded by Leonid Brezhnev as First Secretary and by Alexei Kosygin as Premier.

In 2001, as U.S. jets opened a second week of raids in Afghanistan, President George W. Bush sternly rejected a Taliban offer to discuss handing over Osama bin Laden to a third country.

In 2017, a truck bombing in Somalia’s capital killed more than 500 people in one of the world’s deadliest attacks in years.

Today’s Birthdays: Former White House counsel John W. Dean III is 82. Fashion designer Ralph Lauren is 81. Singer Sir Cliff Richard is 80. Singer-musician Justin Hayward (The Moody Blues) is 74. Actor Greg Evigan is 67. TV personality Arleen Sorkin is 65. World Golf Hall of Famer Beth Daniel is 64. Actor Steve Coogan is 55. Singer Karyn White is 55. Actor Edward Kerr is 54.