Subscribe | UPI Odd Newsletter Subscribe Today is Oct. 12. It was on this date in 1492 that Christopher Columbus discovered America -- making his first landing in the New World on San Salvador, one of the islands of the Bahamas. Columbus believed he had reached India --- one of the goals of his voyage, financed by Spain, was to find a new route to that country --- which is why the natives he met, living peacefully and productively, were dubbed "Indians." Advertisement The American destroyer U.S.S. Cole was badly damaged on this date in 2000 in an explosion described by President Clinton as a terrorist attack. 17 sailors were killed. The finger of blame was pointed at Saudi fugitive Osama bin Laden, whose shadowy organization was accused in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in eastern Africa. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher escaped injury in the bombing of a hotel in Brighton, England, on this date in 1984. But four other people were not so lucky --- they died in the attack, which was blamed on the Irish Republican Army. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev often had interesting ways of making a point. One of the most famous took place on this date in 1960, when --- during a speech before the United Nations in New York City --- the Soviet leader removed one of his shoes and pounded it on his desk. Advertisement President Nixon, on this date in 1973, nominated Rep. Gerald Ford, R-Mich., the House Minority Leader, for the vice presidency to replace Spiro Agnew, who'd resigned in disgrace two days earlier. When Nixon resigned in August 1974, Ford became president. One of his first acts was to pardon Richard Nixon. When elections came up again in 1976, Ford was summarily voted out. And it was on this date in 1998 that University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard died -- five days after he was being beaten, robbed and left tied to a fence. The 21-year-old man had been targeted because he was gay. His attackers were later convicted in his murder.
