 Today's highlight in history:On Oct. 15, 1917, Dutch dancer Mata Hari, convicted of spying for the Germans, was executed by a French firing squad outside Paris.
On this date:
In 1860, 11-year-old Grace Bedell of Westfield, N.Y., wrote a letter to presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln, suggesting he could improve his appearance by growing a beard.
In 1914, the Clayton Antitrust Act was signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson.
In 1928, the German dirigible Graf Zeppelin landed in Lakehurst, N.J., completing its first commercial flight across the Atlantic.
In 1937, the Ernest Hemingway novel "To Have and Have Not" was first published.
In 1945, the former premier of Vichy, France, Pierre Laval, was executed for treason.
In 1946, Nazi war criminal Hermann Goering fatally poisoned himself hours before he was to have been executed.
In 1964, it was announced that Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev had been removed from office.
In 1969, peace demonstrators staged activities across the country, including a candlelight march around the White House, as part of a moratorium against the Vietnam War.
In 1976, in the first debate of its kind between vice-presidential nominees, Democrat Walter F. Mondale and Republican Bob Dole faced off in Houston.
In 2003, 11 people were killed when a Staten Island ferry slammed into a maintenance pier. (The ferry's pilot, who'd blacked out at the controls, later pleaded guilty to manslaughter.)
Ten years ago: British Royal Air Force pilot Andy Green twice drove a jet-powered car in the Nevada desert faster than the speed of sound, officially shattering the world's land-speed record. NASA's plutonium-powered Cassini spacecraft rocketed flawlessly toward Saturn. Six scientists, three of them American, won Nobel Prizes in chemistry and physics for cellular and atomic research. The Cleveland Indians won the American League championship, defeating the Baltimore Orioles 1-0 in Game 6.
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 Five years ago: ImClone Systems founder Sam Waksal pleaded guilty in New York in the biotech company's insider trading scandal. (He was later sentenced to more than seven years in prison.) Iraqis turned out for a national referendum on whether Saddam Hussein should remain their president for another seven years; Saddam won with a reported 100 percent of the votes cast. Five Japanese kidnapping victims who'd been abducted in their youth by North Korean spies finally returned home, tearfully hugging their aging parents for the first time in nearly a quarter century.
One year ago: A strong earthquake struck the Big Island of Hawaii, damaging buildings and roads. Three members of Duke University's lacrosse team appeared on CBS' "60 Minutes" to deny raping a woman who had been hired to perform as a stripper (Collin Finnerty, Reade Seligmann and David Evans were later exonerated). Pope Benedict XVI named four new saints.
Today's birthdays: Jazz musician Freddy Cole is 76. Singer Barry McGuire is 72. Actress Linda Lavin is 70. Actress-director Penny Marshall is 65. Rock musician Don Stevenson (Moby Grape) is 65. Singer-musician Richard Carpenter is 61. Actor Victor Banerjee is 61. Tennis player Roscoe Tanner is 56. Singer Tito Jackson is 54. Actor Jere Burns is 53. Actress Tanya Roberts is 52. Britain's Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson, is 48. Chef Emeril Lagasse is 48. Rock musician Mark Reznicek is 45. Actor Dominic West is 38. Singer Eric Benet is 37. Rhythm-and-blues singer Ginuwine is 37. Rhythm-and-blues singer Keyshia Cole is 26. Actor Vincent Martella ("Everybody Hates Chris") is 15.
Thought for today: "Do what you can, with what you have, where you are."
-- Theodore Roosevelt, 26th president of the United States (1858-1919).
[Associated
Press]
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