Subscribe | UPI Odd Newsletter Subscribe Today is Oct. 15. It was on this date in 1991 that the Senate confirmed Judge Clarence Thomas as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. He would replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall to become the second African American to sit on the high court. The vote confirming his appointment followed three days of hearings by the Senate Judiciary Committee into allegations of sexual harassment made against Thomas by a former aide, Anita Hill. Which may explain why the vote, 52-48, was the closest confirmation vote in court history. Advertisement The most famous spy of World War I, Gertrude Zelle, better known as Mata Hari, was executed by a firing squad outside Paris on this date in 1917. Legend has it she was a great enchantress -- but a lousy spy. On this date in 1946, Nazi Reichsmarshal Herman Goering -- sentenced to death as a war criminal -- committed suicide in his prison cell rather than face being hanged. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev was ousted and replaced by Alexei Kosygin and Leonid Brezhnev on this date in 1964. The dual leadership was necessary because Khrushchev had not let any single man become powerful enough to challenge him. Eventually, Brezhnev became sole ruler, though. Advertisement And Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide returned to Haiti on this date in 1994 -- three years after being driven into exile by a military coup. The Haitian junta had been "persuaded" to relinquish power by the imminent arrival of a U.S. invasion force the previous month. We now return you to the present, already in progress.
