On This Day in History - October 26th - Almanac

Today is Friday, Oct. 26, the 299th day of 2018 with 66 to follow.

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

Those born on this date are under the sign of Scorpio. They include cereal foods entrepreneur C.W. Post in 1854; baseball Hall of Fame member Judy Johnson in 1900; boxing champion Primo Carnera in 1906; Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last shah of Iran, in 1919; actor Bob Hoskins in 1942; author Pat Conroy in 1945; TV personality Pat Sajak in 1946 (age 72); actor Jaclyn Smith in 1945 (age 73); former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 1947 (age 71); rock musician Keith Strickland in 1953 (age 65); actor James Pickens Jr. in 1954 (age 64); Bolivian President Evo Morales in 1959 (age 59); actor Dylan McDermott in 1961 (age 57); Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta in 1961 (age 57); actor Cary Elwes in 1962 (age 56); actor Tom Cavanagh in 1963 (age 55); singer Natalie Merchant in 1963 (age 55); country singer Keith Urban in 1967 (age 51); actor Seth MacFarlane in 1973 (age 45); actor Jon Heder in 1977 (age 41); wrestler CM Punk, born Phillip Jack Brooks, in 1978 (age 40); actor Julian Dennison in 2002 (age 16).

On this date in history:

In 1825, the Erie Canal, America's first man-made waterway, was opened, linking the Great Lakes and Atlantic Ocean via the Hudson River.

In 1881, the storied gunfight at the O.K. Corral occurred in Tombstone, Ariz.

In 1920, the lord mayor of Cork, Ireland, Terence McSwiney, demanding independence for Ireland, died after a 2 1/2-month hunger strike in a British prison cell.

In 1942, Allied troops moving through the Egyptian front captured 1,450 Axis prisoners, routed Nazi tanks in the armored clash and pulverized the enemy line.

In 1944, after four days of furious fighting, the World War II battle of Leyte Gulf, largest air-naval clash in history, ended with a decisive U.S. victory over the Japanese.

In 1951, British voters placed Winston Churchill's Conservative Party at the helm of government today after six years of socialism.

In 1979, South Korean President Park Chung-hee was assassinated by the director of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency.

In 1984, doctors in California performed the first baboon-to-human heart transplant in a 14-day-old girl, known as Baby Fae. The baby died of heart failure Nov. 15.

In 1990, District of Columbia Mayor Marion Barry was sentenced to six months in prison and fined $5,000 for his conviction on misdemeanor drug charges. Barry became mayor again in 1995.

In 1994, Israel and Jordan signed a peace treaty at a desert site along the Israeli-Jordanian border.

In 1995, Islamic Jihad leader co-founder, Fathi Shaqaqi (Fathi ash-Shiqaqi), was assassinated by Mossad agents at his hotel in Malta.

In 1998, the presidents of Ecuador and Peru signed a peace treaty, ending a decades-long border dispute.

In 2002, a four-day Moscow hostage crisis came to a bloody end after Russian soldiers stormed a theater where Chechen rebels had held 700 people for ransom. Ninety hostages and 50 rebels were killed.

In 2010, GlaxoSmithKline, the British drug manufacturer, agreed to settle criminal and civil complaints for $750 million, stemming from accusations of knowingly selling drugs with questionable safety standards.

In 2015, a 7.5-magnitude earthquake struck northeastern Afghanistan, killing nearly 400 people there and in India and Pakistan.

In 2017, President Donald Trump declared the opioid crisis a national public health emergency.

A thought for the day: President Theodore Roosevelt said, "Far better... to dare mighty things... even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat."