- 1492: Christopher Columbus missed Florida when he changed course
                  due to a false cry of "Land ho!"
                - 1542: Explorer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo became the first Euorpean to
                  visit Santa Catalina Island off the California coast.
                - 1763: George III of Great Britain issued the Proclamation of 1763,
                  closing lands in North America north and west of the Alleghenies
                  to white settlement.
                - 1765: A Stamp Act Congress began sitting in New York to protest
                  the British Stamp Act. It adopted the Declaration of Rights that
                  opposed taxation without representation.
                - 1777: The second Battle of Saratoga began in the Revolutionary
                  War.
                - 1780: In the Revolutionary War, 1,100 British soldiers under Maj.
                  Patrick Ferguson were surrounded and heavily defeated by American
                  militia in the battle of King's Mountain in western Carolina.
                - 1806: Carbon paper was patented in London by inventor Ralph
                  Wedgewood.
                - 1849: Edgar Allan Poe, writer of mysterious and macabre stories,
                  died mysteriously at age 40.
                - 1856: Cyrus Chambers Jr. patented a folding machine that folded
                  book and newspaper sheets.
                - 1913: Henry Ford instituted a moving assembly line.
                - 1919: KLM, the national airline of the Netherlands, was established.
                  It is the oldest existing airline.
                - 1959: The far side of the moon was photographed for the first
                  time by the Soviet Union's Luna 3 spacecraft.
                - 1963: President Kennedy signed the ratification for a nuclear
                  test ban treaty.
                - 1981: Hosni Mubarak became acting president of Egypt following
                  the assassination of Anwar Sadat Oct. 6.
                - 1985: Palestinian guerrillas seized the Achille Lauro, an Italian
                  passenger ship carrying about 440 people, and threatened to blow
                  it up if Israel did not free 50 Palestinian prisoners. Leon
                  Klinghoffer, an elderly wheelchair-bound American, was killed.

                *Happy Birthday*
                ----------------
                - June Allyson, 81, actress
                - Toni Braxton, 31, singer
                - Al Martino, 71, singer
                - John Mellencamp, 47, singer/guitarist/songwriter/actor
                - Ollie North, 55, ex-presidential aide, radio talk show
                - Jayne Torvil, 41, figure skater, with Christopher Dean won four
                  world ice dancing titles, won Olympic gold in 1988
                - Desmond Tutu, 67, Nobel Prize-winning South African archbishop