Today's
highlight in history:
On Oct. 30, 1938, the radio play "The War of the Worlds," starring Orson Welles, aired on CBS. (The live drama, which employed fake breaking news reports, panicked some listeners who thought the portrayal of a Martian invasion was real.)
On this date:
In 1735, the second president of the United States, John Adams, was born in Braintree, Mass.
In 1885, poet Ezra Pound was born in Hailey, Idaho.
In 1944, the Martha Graham ballet "Appalachian Spring," with music by Aaron Copland, premiered at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., with Graham in a leading role.
In 1945, the U.S. government announced the end of shoe rationing, effective at midnight.
In 1961, the Soviet Union tested a hydrogen bomb, the "Tsar Bomba," with a force estimated at about 50 megatons.
In 1961, the Soviet Party Congress unanimously approved a resolution ordering the removal of Josef Stalin's body from Lenin's tomb.
In 1975, the New York Daily News ran the headline "Ford to City: Drop Dead" a day after President Gerald Ford said he would veto any proposed federal bailout of New York City.
In 1979, President Carter announced his choice of federal appeals Judge Shirley Hufstedler to head the newly created Department of Education.
In 1995, by a razor-thin vote of 50.6 percent to 49.4 percent, federalists prevailed over separatists in a Quebec secession referendum.
Ten years ago: A jury in Cambridge, Mass., convicted British au pair Louise Woodward of second-degree murder in the death of 8-month-old Matthew Eappen. (The judge, Hiller B. Zobel, later reduced the verdict to manslaughter and set Woodward free.) Confronting some of his harshest critics, Chinese President Jiang Zemin defended his country's human rights record before members of Congress. Movie director Samuel Fuller died in Hollywood.
