Today is Friday, Oct. 23, the 297th day of 2020. There are 69 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
- On Oct. 23, 1941, the Walt Disney animated feature “Dumbo,” about a young circus elephant who learns how to fly, premiered in New York.
On this date:
- In 1864, forces led by Union Maj. Gen. Samuel R. Curtis repelled Confederate Maj. Gen. Sterling Price’s army in the Civil War Battle of Westport in Missouri.
- In 1910, Blanche S. Scott became the first woman to make a public solo airplane flight, reaching an altitude of 12 feet at a park in Fort Wayne, Ind.
- In 1915, tens of thousands of women paraded up Fifth Avenue in New York City, demanding the right to vote.
- In 1944, the World War II Battle of Leyte Gulf began, resulting in a major Allied victory against Japanese forces.
- In 1956, a student-sparked revolt against Hungary’s Communist rule began; as the revolution spread, Soviet forces started entering the country, and the uprising was put down within weeks.
- In 1973, President Richard Nixon agreed to turn over White House tape recordings subpoenaed by the Watergate special prosecutor to Judge John J. Sirica.
- In 1983, 241 U.S. service members, most of them Marines, were killed in a suicide truck-bombing at Beirut International Airport in Lebanon; a near-simultaneous attack on French forces killed 58 paratroopers.
- In 1987, the U.S. Senate rejected, 58-42, the Supreme Court nomination of Robert H. Bork.
- In 1995, a jury in Houston convicted Yolanda Saldivar of murdering Tejano singing star Selena. (Saldivar is serving a life prison sentence.)
- In 2001, the nation’s anthrax scare hit the White House with the discovery of a small concentration of spores at an offsite mail processing center.
- In 2009, President Barack Obama declared the swine flu outbreak a national emergency, giving his health chief the power to let hospitals move emergency rooms offsite to speed treatment and protect non-infected patients.
- In 2014, officials announced that an emergency room doctor who’d recently returned to New York City after treating Ebola patients in West Africa tested positive for the virus, becoming the first case in the city and the fourth in the nation. (Dr. Craig Spencer later recovered.)
Today’s Birthdays:
Soccer great Pele is 80. Community activist Martin Luther King III is 63. Movie director Sam Raimi is 61. Parodist “Weird Al” Yankovic is 61. Rock musician Robert Trujillo (Metallica) is 56. Christian/jazz singer David Thomas (Take 6) is 54. Movie director Chris Weitz is 51. CNN medical reporter Dr. Sanjay Gupta is 51. Bluegrass musician Eric Gibson (The Gibson Brothers) is 50. Country singer Jimmy Wayne is 48. Actor Vivian Bang is 47. Rock musician Eric Bass (Shinedown) is 46. TV personality and host Cat Deeley is 44. Actor Ryan Reynolds is 44. Actor Saycon Sengbloh is 43. Rock singer Matthew Shultz (Cage the Elephant) is 37. TV personality Meghan McCain (“The View”) is 36. Rhythm-and-blues singer Miguel is 35. Actor Masiela Lusha is 35. Actor Emilia Clarke is 34. Actor Briana Evigan is 34. Actor Inbar Lavi is 34. Actor Jessica Stroup is 34. Neo-soul musician Allen Branstetter (St. Paul & the Broken Bones) is 30. Actor Taylor Spreitler is 27. Actor Margaret Qualley is 26. Actor Amandla Stenberg is 22.