Today's
highlight in history:On Oct. 10, 1913, the Panama Canal was effectively completed as President Woodrow Wilson sent a signal from the White House by telegraph, setting off explosives that destroyed a section of the Gamboa dike.
On this date:
In 1813, composer Giuseppe Verdi was born in Le Roncole, Italy.
In 1845, the U.S. Naval Academy was established in Annapolis, Md.
In 1911, revolutionaries under Sun Yat-sen launched their overthrow of China's Manchu dynasty.
In 1935, George Gershwin's opera "Porgy and Bess" opened on Broadway.
In 1938, Nazi Germany completed its annexation of Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland.
In 1943, Chiang Kai-shek took the oath of office as president of China.
In 1967, the Outer Space Treaty, which prohibits the placing of weapons of mass destruction on the moon or elsewhere in space, entered into force.
In 1970, Quebec Labor Minister Pierre Laporte was kidnapped by the Quebec Liberation Front, a militant separatist group. (Laporte's body was found a week later.)
In 1973, Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, accused of accepting bribes, pleaded no contest to one count of federal income tax evasion, and resigned his office.
In 1978, President Jimmy Carter signed a bill authorizing the Susan B. Anthony dollar.
Ten years ago: Portugal's governing Socialist Party was returned to power by a comfortable margin in a general election. Six college students getting out of their cars or walking along a highway on their way to a fraternity party at Texas A&M University were struck and killed by a pickup truck whose driver had fallen asleep.
Five years ago: Christopher Reeve, the "Superman" of celluloid who became a quadriplegic after a May 1995 horse riding accident, died in Mount Kisco, N.Y. at age 52. Ken Caminiti, the National League's 1996 MVP who later admitted using steroids during his major league baseball career, died in New York at age 41.
