Subscribe | UPI Odd Newsletter Subscribe Today is Oct. 9. The U.S. launched heavy air strikes against the Taliban garrisons and troop encampments in Afghanistan on this date in 2001. The Pentagon reported the destruction of seven terrorist training camps iand claimed control of the skies over Afghanistan. Advertisement It was on this date in 1975 that Andrei Sakharov, the father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb turned human rights activist, became the first Soviet citizen to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Sakharov was exiled to Gorky, Russia, in 1980 after he denounced the shortcomings of his country's government, but allowed to return to Moscow in 1986. He was named to the Soviet Congress of Peoples Deputies eight months before his death in Dec. 1989. In 1974, German businessman Oskar Schindler, credited with saving 1,200 Jews from the Holocaust, died at the age of 66. Nineteen years later, Steven Spielberg brought the fascinating story to the American public in the award-winning film "Schindler's List." James Watt, facing Senate condemnation for a racially insensitive remark he'd made, resigned as President Reagan's interior secretary on this date in 1983. It was on this date in 1995 that a newly acquitted O.J. Simpson -- newly acquitted of charges he'd murdered his ex-wife and her friend -- agreed to a live one-hour interview with NBC News. Two days later, he'd change his mind -- saying he feared he was being "set up." Advertisement The Soviet news agency Tass, under Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of increasing openness in society, reported on this date in 1989 that a flying saucer had visited the Soviet Union. We now return you to the present, already in progress.
