On This Day in History - October 10th - Almanac

Today is Monday, Oct. 10, the 284th day of 2016 with 82 to follow.

The moon is waxing. Morning stars are Neptune, Uranus, Jupiter and Mercury. Evening stars are Venus, Saturn, Mars, Neptune and Uranus.

Those born on this date are under the sign of Libra. They include English chemist-physicist Henry Cavendish, discoverer of hydrogen, in 1731; Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi in 1813; actor Helen Hayes in 1900; jazz musician Thelonious Monk in 1917; writer James Clavell and filmmaker Ed Wood, both in 1924; British playwright and Nobel laureate Harold Pinter in 1930; actor Peter Coyote in 1941 (age 75); singer John Prine and entertainer Ben Vereen, both in 1946 (age 70); actor Jessica Harper in 1949 (age 67); writer Nora Roberts in 1950 (age 66); rocker David Lee Roth in 1954 (age 62); country singer Tanya Tucker in 1958 (age 58); actor Bradley Whitford in 1959 (age 57); slain journalist Daniel Pearl in 1963; football star Brett Favre in 1969 (age 47); actor Mario Lopez in 1973 (age 43); and race car driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. in 1974 (age 42).

On this date in history:

In 1845, the U.S. Naval Academy was formally opened at Fort Severn, Annapolis, Md., with 50 midshipmen in the first class.

In 1886, Griswold Lorillard of Tuxedo Park, N.Y., fashioned the first tuxedo for men.

In 1928, Chiang Kai-shek becomes Chairman of the Republic of China. Following two civil wars, separated by a World War, Chiang Kai-shek and his Kuomintang (KMT) party would head into exile in 1949 following defeat at the hands of the Communists.

In 1933, a United Airlines Boeing 247 is destroyed by sabotage, the first such proven case in the history of commercial aviation.

In 1956, No sign of compromise seen in Suez Canal dispute. Egypt had been pressing for a negotiated solution, "consistent with Egyptian sovereignty," though there were no signs that the Egyptians or the British and French were ready to compromise.

In 1971, having been sold, dismantled and moved to the United States, London Bridge reopens in Lake Havasu City, Arizona.

In 1973, Vice President Spiro Agnew resigns in disgrace after pleading no contest to income tax evasion.

In 1985, movie legend Orson Welles, whose innovative "Citizen Kane" of 1941 was regarded by many as the best American-made film of all time, died of a heart attack at the age of 70.

In 1995, Israel freed about 900 Palestinian prisoners and pulled its troops out of four towns as the second phase of a peace plan was implemented on the West Bank.

In 1997, major tobacco companies agreed to a settlement in a class-action lawsuit by 60,000 flight attendants who said second-hand smoke in planes had caused cancer and other diseases.

In 2003, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Iranian lawyer Shurin Ebadi for her work in promoting democracy and human rights in Iran and beyond. She was the first Muslim woman to win the award.

In 2005, Angela Merkel became the first female chancellor of Germany after her Christian Democrats won the parliamentary election.

In 2008, Connecticut became the third state in the United States to legalize same-sex marriages, following California and Massachusetts.

In 2009, NASA deliberately crashed a hunk of space junk on the surface of the moon to check whether certain lunar craters held significant deposits of water.

In 2013, Scott Carpenter, one of NASA's seven original Mercury astronauts, died in Denver at the age of 88. On May 24, 1962, Carpenter flew the Aurora 7 spacecraft through three revolutions of Earth, becoming the second American (after John Glenn) to make a manned orbital flight.

A thought for the day: "We all should rise above the clouds of ignorance, narrowness and selfishness." -- Booker T. Washington