Today’s Highlight in History:
On Oct. 7, 1991, University of Oklahoma law professor Anita Hill publicly accused Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of making sexually inappropriate comments when she worked for him; Thomas denied Hill’s allegations and would go on to win Senate confirmation.
On this date:
In 1765, the Stamp Act Congress convened in New York to draw up colonial grievances against England.
In 1916, in the most lopsided victory in college football history, Georgia Tech defeated Cumberland University 222-0 in Atlanta.
In 1949, the Republic of East Germany was formed.
In 1982, the Andrew Lloyd Webber-Tim Rice musical “Cats” opened on Broadway, the first of what would become a record 7,485 performances in an 18-year run.
In 1985, Palestinian gunmen hijacked the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro (ah-KEE’-leh LOW’-roh) in the Mediterranean Sea. (The hijackers shot and killed Leon Klinghoffer, a Jewish-American tourist in a wheelchair, and pushed him overboard, before surrendering on Oct. 9.)
In 1989, Hungary’s Communist Party renounced Marxism in favor of democratic socialism during a party congress in Budapest.
In 1992, trade representatives of the United States, Canada and Mexico initialed the North American Free Trade Agreement during a ceremony in San Antonio, Texas, in the presence of President George H.W. Bush, Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari.
In 1996, Fox News Channel made its debut.
In 1998, Matthew Shepard, a gay college student, was beaten and left tied to a wooden fencepost outside of Laramie, Wyoming; he died five days later. (Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney are serving life sentences for Shepard’s murder.)
In 2001, the war in Afghanistan started as the United States and Britain launched air attacks against military targets and Osama bin Laden’s training camps in the wake of the September 11 attacks.
In 2003, California voters recalled Gov. Gray Davis and elected Arnold Schwarzenegger their new governor.
In 2012, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez won re-election for the third time. (Chavez died five months later.)
In 2017, country music star Jason Aldean, who had been on stage at an outdoor concert in Las Vegas less than a week earlier when a gunman opened fire on the crowd, paid tribute to the victims and to the recently deceased Tom Petty by opening “Saturday Night Live” with Petty’s song, “I Won’t Back Down.”