- Smart Is Cool Day
- Make A Difference Day
- National Knee Day
- National Nut Day
- CAPS LOCK DAY
- International Stuttering Awareness Day
- On This Day
- 1746 --- The College of New Jersey was officially chartered. It later became known as Princeton University.
- 1797 --- The first parachute jump of note is made by André-Jacques Garnerin from a hydrogen balloon 3,200 feet above Paris. Leonardo da Vinci conceived the idea of the parachute in his writings, and the Frenchman Louis-Sebastien Lenormand fashioned a kind of parachute out of two umbrellas and jumped from a tree in 1783, but André-Jacques Garnerin was the first to design and test parachutes capable of slowing a man's fall from a high altitude. Garnerin first conceived of the possibility of using air resistance to slow an individual's fall from a high altitude while a prisoner during the French Revolution. Although he never employed a parachute to escape from the high ramparts of the Hungarian prison where he spent three years, Garnerin never lost interest in the concept of the parachute. In 1797, he completed his first parachute, a canopy 23 feet in diameter and attached to a basket with suspension lines. On October 22, 1797, Garnerin attached the parachute to a hydrogen balloon and ascended to an altitude of 3,200 feet. He then clambered into the basket and severed the parachute from the balloon. As he failed to include an air vent at the top of the prototype, Garnerin oscillated wildly in his descent, but he landed shaken but unhurt half a mile from the balloon's takeoff site.
- 1844 --- This day is recognized as "The Great Disappointment" among those who practiced Millerism. According to those who practiced Millerism, the world was to come to an end. A man named William Miller, religious leader and founder of the Adventist church, started the Millerism movement. Some say his followers got rid of all their earthly possessions and climbed to high places so as to be saved when the world ended.
- 1883 --- The New York Horse show opened. The first national horse show was formed by the newly organized National Horse Show Association of America.
- 1883 --- New York City’s nouveau riche built their own opera house on Broadway in Manhattan and staged the first performance. The new socialites now had a theater where they could have opera boxes. Unlike the old Academy of Music, where the box seats were few and the likes of the Vanderbilts were unwelcome, the new structure had three levels of thirty-six boxes ... more than the number of millionaires in New York City, old or new. When the curtains parted on this first night, Italian tenor Italo Campanini and Swedish soprano Christine Nilsson starred in Charles Gounod’s Faust. Orchestra-seat ticket holders paid $6 admission.
- 1904 --- The Russian Baltic Fleet mistook some British fishing trawlers in the North Sea for Japanese Navy forces and fired on them. Three British fishermen were killed, and the incident almost led to war between Britain and Russia.
- 1913 --- A coal mine explosion in Dawson, New Mexico, kills more than 250 workers on this day in 1913. A heroic rescue effort saved 23 others, but also cost two more people their lives. The coal mine, where 284 workers were on duty on October 22, was owned by Phelps, Dodge and Company. At exactly 3 p.m., a tremendous explosion ripped through the Stag Canyon Fuel Company’s number-two mine. The entire town could feel a jolt from the explosion and many immediately rushed to the scene. The cause of the explosion was typical of many early coal-mine disasters—a pocket of methane gas had been ignited by a miner’s lamp. The explosion blocked the mouth of the mine shaft with rocks, timber and other debris so effectively that it took rescuers eight hours to move 100 feet into the shaft. The rescue effort was further complicated when the fans that were bringing fresh air down the shaft broke and took hours to repair. Still, the emergency crews worked feverishly for two days, digging through the coal and debris and finding scores of bodies. Two rescuers died from gas inhalation during the operation.
- 1934 --- Charles "Pretty Boy" Floyd is shot by FBI agents in a cornfield in East Liverpool, Ohio. Floyd, who had been a hotly pursued fugitive for four years, used his last breath to deny his involvement in the infamous Kansas City Massacre, in which four officers were shot to death at a train station. He died shortly thereafter.
- 1939 --- The first televised pro football game was telecast from New York. Brooklyn defeated Philadelphia 23-14.
- 1962 --- In a dramatic televised address to the American public, President John F. Kennedy announces that the Soviet Union has placed nuclear weapons in Cuba and, in response, the United States will establish a blockade around the island to prevent any other offensive weapons from entering Castro's state. Kennedy also warned the Soviets that any nuclear attack from Cuba would be construed as an act of war, and that the United States would retaliate in kind. Kennedy charged the Soviet Union with subterfuge and outright deception in what he referred to as a "clandestine, reckless, and provocative threat to world peace." He dismissed Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko's claim that the weapons in Cuba were of a purely defensive nature as "false." Harking back to efforts to contain German, Italian, and Japanese aggression in the 1930s, Kennedy argued that war-like behavior, "if allowed to grow unchecked and unchallenged, ultimately leads to war. The president outlined a plan of action that called for a naval blockade to enforce a "strict quarantine on all offensive military equipment under shipment to Cuba." He also issued a warning to the Soviets that the United States would retaliate against them if there was a nuclear attack from Cuba, and placed the U.S. military in the Western Hemisphere on a heightened state of alert.
- 1964 --- Jean-Paul Sartre is awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, which he declines.
- 1965 --- President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Highway Beautification Act, which attempts to limit billboards and other forms of outdoor advertising, as well as with junkyards and other unsightly roadside messes, along America's interstate highways. The act also encouraged "scenic enhancement" by funding local efforts to clean up and landscape the green spaces on either side of the roadways.
- 1966 --- The Supremes rocketed to the top of the pop-album charts with Supremes A’ Go-Go. They were the first all-female vocal group to hit the top of the LP chart.
- 1968 --- Apollo 7 splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean. The spacecraft had orbited the Earth 163 times.
- 1969 --- Led Zeppelin's album "Led Zeppelin II" was released.
- 1972 --- Gene Tenace hit four home runs in the Series, including two in his first two at-bats, and the Oakland A’s pulled out a dramatic seven-game win over the Cincinnati Reds. It was the first of the A’s three consecutive World Series championships and their first since 1930.
1975 --- Air Force Sergeant Leonard Matlovich, a decorated veteran of the Vietnam War, is given a "general" discharge by the air force after publicly declaring his homosexuality. Matlovich, who appeared in his air force uniform on the cover of Time magazine above the headline "I AM A HOMOSEXUAL," was challenging the ban against homosexuals in the U.S. military. In 1979, after winning a much
- publicized case against the air force, his discharge was upgraded to "honorable." In 1988, Matlovich died at the age of 44 of complications from AIDS. He was buried with full military honors at the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C. His tombstone reads, "A gay Vietnam Veteran. When I was in the military they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one."
- 1981 --- The Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization was decertified by the federal government for its strike the previous August.
- 1983 --- Celebrating its 100th anniversary, New York’s Metropolitan Opera featured a daylong concert with some of the world’s greatest opera stars. On stage at the Met were Joan Sutherland, Placido Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti.
- 1986 --- U.S. President Ronald Reagan signed the Tax Reform Act of 1986 on this day, but wrote his last name first. The signing, however, remains legal.
- 1990 --- Scientists report that the Aral Sea has shrunk by 2/3rds, falling more then 45 feet in depth in the past 30 years. Soviet irrigation policies had destroyed what was once the world's 4th largest fresh water sea. In June 2004, scientists predicted the sea would vanish within 15 years.
- 2010 --- The International Space Station set the record (3641 days) for the longest continuous human occupation of space. It had been continously inhabited since November 2, 2000.
- 2012 --- Lance Armstrong is formally stripped of the seven Tour de France titles he won from 1999 to 2005 and banned for life from competitive cycling after being charged with systematically using illicit performance-enhancing drugs and blood transfusions as well as demanding that some of his Tour teammates dope in order to help him win races. It was a dramatic fall from grace for the onetime global cycling icon, who inspired millions of people after surviving cancer then going on to become one of the most dominant riders in the history of the grueling French race, which attracts the planet's top cyclists.
- Birthdays
- Annette Funicello
- Franz Liszt
- Timothy Leary
- Curly Howard
- Joan Fontaine
- Christopher Lloyd
- Patti Davis
- Ichiro Suziki
- Catherine Deneuve
- Jeff Goldblum
- 295th Day of 2014 / 60 Remaining
- Winter Begins in 70 Days
- Sunrise:7:25
- Sunset:6:22
- 10 Hours 57 Minutes
- Moon Rise:6:12am
- Moon Set:5:52pm
- Moon Phase:1%
- Next Full Moon November 6 @ 2:22pm
- Full Beaver Moon
- Full Frosty Moon
This was the time to set beaver traps before the swamps froze, to ensure a supply of warm winter furs. Another interpretation suggests that the name Full Beaver Moon comes from the fact that the beavers are now actively preparing for winter. It is sometimes also referred to as the Frosty Moon.
- Tides:
- High Tide:10:22am/11:10pm
- Low Tide:4:11am/4:50pm