Today in history: Oct. 15
In the first debate of its kind between vice-presidential nominees, Democrat Walter F. Mondale and Republican Bob Dole faced off in Houston, and more events that happened on this day in history.
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1815: Napoleon Bonaparte
In 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte, the deposed Emperor of the French, arrived on the British-ruled South Atlantic island of St. Helena, where he spent the last 5 1/2 years of his life in exile.
1917: Mata Hari
In 1917, Dutch exotic dancer Mata Hari (Margaretha ZelleGeertruida MacLeod), 41, convicted by a French military court of spying for the Germans, was executed by a firing squad outside Paris. (Maintaining her innocence to the end, Mata Hari refused a blindfold and blew a kiss to her executioners.)
1940: "The Great Dictator"
In 1940, Charles Chaplin’s first all-talking comedy, “The Great Dictator,” a lampoon of Adolf Hitler, opened in New York.
1945: Pierre Laval
In 1945, the former premier of Vichy France, Pierre Laval, was executed for treason.
1946: Hermann Goering
In 1946, Nazi war criminal Hermann Goering (GEH’-reeng) fatally poisoned himself hours before he was to have been executed.
1954: Hurricane Hazel
In 1954, Hurricane Hazel made landfall on the Carolina coast as a Category 4 storm; Hazel was blamed for some 1,000 deaths in the Caribbean, 95 in the U.S. and 81 in Canada.
1966: The Black Panther Party
In 1966, the revolutionary Black Panther Party was founded by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale in Oakland, California.
1969: Vietnam War
In 1969, peace demonstrators staged activities across the country as part of a “moratorium” against the Vietnam War.
1976: Vice-Presidential Debate
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.
1991: Clarence Thomas
In 1991, despite sexual harassment allegations by Anita Hill, the Senate narrowly confirmed the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court, 52-48.
2003: The Staten Island Ferry
In 2003, eleven 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 eleven counts of manslaughter.)
2010: Gotthard Base Tunnel
Ten years ago: Workers hugged, cheered and set off fireworks as a huge drill broke through a last stretch of rock deep in the Swiss Alps for construction of the 35.4-mile Gotthard Base Tunnel; the railway tunnel would go into operation in 2016.
2015: Barack Obama
Five years ago: President Barack Obama abandoned his pledge to end America’s longest war, announcing plans to keep at least 5,500 U.S. troops in Afghanistan at the end of his term in 2017 and hand the conflict off to his successor.
2015: Ken Taylor
Five years ago: Ken Taylor, Canada’s ambassador to Iran who’d sheltered Americans at his residence during the 1979 Iran hostage crisis, died in New York at age 81.
2017: #MeToo
In 2017, actress and activist Alyssa Milano tweeted that women who had been sexually harassed or assaulted should write “Me too” as a status; within hours, tens of thousands had taken up the #MeToo hashtag (using a phrase that had been introduced 10 years earlier by social activist Tarana Burke.)
2019: Democratic Presidential Debate
One year ago: Elizabeth Warren, carrying a new status as a front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, came under attack from rivals at a debate in Ohio; they accused her of ducking questions about the cost of Medicare for All and her signature wealth tax plan.
2019: Felicity Huffman
One year ago: Actor Felicity Huffman reported to a federal prison in California to start a two-week sentence for paying a college admissions consultant to have a proctor correct her daughter’s SAT answers. (She was released two days before the end of the sentence.)
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