Today's Highlight in History:
On Oct. 6, 1927, the era of talking pictures arrived with the opening of "The Jazz Singer," a movie starring Al Jolson which featured both silent and sound-synchronized scenes.
On this date:
In 1536, English theologian and scholar William Tyndale, who was the first to translate the Bible into Early Modern English, was executed for heresy.
In 1683, 13 families from Krefeld, Germany, arrived in Philadelphia to begin Germantown, one of America's oldest settlements.
In 1884, the Naval War College was established in Newport, R.I.
In 1889, the Moulin Rouge in Paris first opened its doors to the public.
In 1949, President Truman signed the Mutual Defense Assistance Act, totaling $1.3 billion in military aid to NATO countries.
In 1949, American-born Iva Toguri D'Aquino, convicted of treason for being Japanese wartime broadcaster "Tokyo Rose," was sentenced in San Francisco to 10 years in prison and fined $10,000. (She ended up serving more than six years.)
In 1973, war erupted in the Middle East as Egypt and Syria attacked Israel during the Yom Kippur holiday.
In 1976, in his second debate with Jimmy Carter, President Ford asserted there was "no Soviet domination of eastern Europe." (Ford later conceded he'd misspoken.)
In 1981, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was shot to death by extremists while reviewing a military parade.
In 1989, actress Bette Davis died in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, at age 81.
Ten years ago: In a blow to both Democrats and Republicans, President Clinton used his line-item veto to kill 38 military construction projects. The space shuttle Atlantis returned to Earth, bringing home American astronaut Michael Foale after a tumultuous 4 1/2 months aboard Mir. American biology professor Stanley B. Prusiner won the Nobel Prize for medicine for discovering "prions," described as "an entirely new genre of disease-causing agents."
