On This Day in History - October 15th - Almanac

Today is Saturday, Oct. 15, the 289th day of 2016 with 77 to follow.

The moon is full. 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 Roman poet Virgil in 70 B.C.; German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche in 1844; boxing champion John L. Sullivan in 1858; English writer and humorist P.G. Wodehouse in 1881; film producer Mervyn LeRoy in 1900; photograph archivist Otto Bettmann in 1903; economist John Kenneth Galbraith in 1908; writer and historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. in 1917; author Mario Puzo ("The Godfather") in 1920; former Chrysler Corp. Chairman Lee Iacocca in 1924 (age 92); singer Barry McGuire in 1935 (age 81); actor Linda Lavin in 1937 (age 79); actor/director Penny Marshall in 1942 (age 74); Nobel Peace Prize recipient David Trimble in 1944 (age 72); baseball Hall of Fame pitcher Jim Palmer in 1945 (age 71); pop singers Richard Carpenter in 1946 (age 70) and Tito Jackson in 1953 (age 63); Sarah, duchess of York, and chef Emeril Lagasse, both in 1959 (age 57); and singer Keyshia Cole in 1981 (age 35).

On this date in history:

In 1894, Alfred Dreyfus was arrested for treason. He was accused of passing sensitive information regarding new advances in military technology to the Germans.

In 1912, John Schrank, a former New York saloonkeeper, sorry his bullet did not kill former president Theodore Roosevelt.

In 1914, Karl H. Von Wiegand, United Press correspondent, is the first newspaper correspondent to reach the battle front in Russian Poland.

In 1917, the most famous spy of World War I, Gertrude Zelle, better known as Mata Hari, was executed by a firing squad outside Paris.

In 1946, Nazi Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering, sentenced to death as a war criminal at the Nuremberg Trials, committed suicide in his prison cell on the eve of his scheduled execution.

In 1951, "I Love Lucy," TV's first long-running sitcom, made its debut.

In 1964, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev was ousted and replaced by Alexei Kosygin as premier and Leonid Brezhnev as first secretary.

In 1966, Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party (originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense) with the goal of harnessing anger within the Black community and channeling it into a political force.

In 1984, astronomers in Pasadena, Calif., displayed the first photographic evidence of another solar system 293 trillion miles from Earth.

In 1989, the Los Angeles Kings' Wayne Gretzky, playing against his former team, the Edmonton Oilers, in the Canadian city, broke Gordie Howe's all-time NHL scoring record with a late-game goal that raised his career regular season points total to 1,851, including 1,669 when he was with the Oilers. (Gretzky retired a decade later with 2,857 regular-season points, one of his many NHL records.)

In 1990, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Muscovites shrugged indifferently and even reacted with hostility over Mikhail Gorbachev's Nobel Peace Prize, noting the empty store shelves and warning he may face a popular uprising.

In 1991, the Senate confirmed Clarence Thomas as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court by a vote of 52-48, the closest confirmation vote in court history.

In 1992, a man who terrorized the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don for more than a decade with a series of more than 50 grisly killings was sentenced to death.

In 1993, the Pentagon censured three U.S. Navy admirals who organized the 1991 Tailhook Association convention during which many women had been subjected to abuse and indignities by junior officers.

In 1994, Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide returned to Haiti three years after being driven into exile by a military coup.

In 1999, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the international group Doctors Without Borders.

In 2003, 11 people were killed and dozens injured when a New York ferry, transporting passengers from Manhattan, slammed into a pier on Staten Island.

In 2010, the U.S. Social Security Administration announced that more than 58 million Americans receiving monthly benefits wouldn't get a cost-of-living adjustment in 2011.

In 2012, Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai, shot in the head by the Taliban for advocating education for girls, arrived at a hospital in Britain. After her release, she continued to promote education, spoke at the United Nations and, in 2014, won the Nobel Peace Prize.

In 2013, U.S. Army Capt. William Swenson, 34, of Seattle, received the Medal of Honor for his heroism during a 2009 battle in Afghanistan. In awarding the medal to Swenson, President Barack Obama said: "He'd rather be off somewhere in the mountains than here. But I think our nation needs this ceremony. Moments like these, Americans like Will, remind us of what we can be at our best."

A thought for the day: "Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." -- Oscar Wilde