TODAY IN HISTORY

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Today is Friday, Oct. 8, the 281st day of 2021. There are 84 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On Oct. 8, 1985, the hijackers of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro killed American passenger Leon Klinghoffer, who was in a wheelchair, and threw his body overboard.

On this date:

In 1871, the Great Chicago Fire erupted; fires also broke out in Peshtigo, Wisconsin, and in several communities in Michigan.

In 1918, U.S. Army Cpl. Alvin C. York led an attack that killed 25 German soldiers and resulted in the capture of 132 others in the Argonne Forest in France.

In 1934, Bruno Hauptmann was indicted by a grand jury in New Jersey for murder in the death of the kidnapped son of Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh.

In 1945, President Harry S. Truman told a press conference in Tiptonville, Tennessee, that the secret scientific knowledge behind the atomic bomb would be shared only with Britain and Canada.

In 1956, Don Larsen pitched the only perfect game in a World Series to date as the New York Yankees beat the Brooklyn Dodgers in Game 5, 2-0.

In 1981, at the White House, President Ronald Reagan greeted former Presidents Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon, who were preparing to travel to Egypt for the funeral of Anwar Sadat.

In 1997, scientists reported the Mars Pathfinder had yielded what could be the strongest evidence yet that Mars might once have been hospitable to life.

In 2005, a magnitude 7.6 earthquake flattened villages on the Pakistan-India border, killing an estimated 86,000 people.

In 2010, British aid worker Linda Norgrove, who’d been taken captive in Afghanistan, was killed during a U.S. special forces rescue attempt, apparently by a U.S. grenade.

Today’s Birthdays: Entertainment reporter Rona Barrett is 85. Actor Paul Hogan is 82. Civil rights activist Rev. Jesse Jackson is 80. Comedian Chevy Chase is 78. Author R.L. Stine is 78. Actor Sigourney Weaver is 72. R&B singer Robert “Kool” Bell (Kool & the Gang) is 71. Comedian Darrell Hammond is 66. Actor Stephanie Zimbalist is 65. Actor Kim Wayans is 60. Gospel/R&B singer CeCe Winans is 57. Actor-screenwriter Matt Damon is 51. Singer-songwriter-producer Bruno Mars is 36.

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