Today’s Highlight in History:
On Oct. 9, 2009, President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize for what the Norwegian Nobel Committee called “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”
On this date:
In 1888, the public was first admitted to the Washington Monument.
In 1910, a coal dust explosion at the Starkville Mine in Colorado left 56 miners dead.
In 1936, the first generator at Boulder (later Hoover) Dam began transmitting electricity to Los Angeles.
In 1946, the Eugene O’Neill drama “The Iceman Cometh” opened at the Martin Beck Theater in New York.
In 1962, Uganda won autonomy from British rule.
In 1967, Marxist revolutionary guerrilla leader Che Guevara, 39, was summarily executed by the Bolivian army a day after his capture.
In 1975, Soviet scientist Andrei Sakharov (AHN’-dray SAHK’-ah-rawf) was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
In 1985, the hijackers of the Achille Lauro (ah-KEE’-leh LOW’-roh) cruise liner surrendered two days after seizing the vessel in the Mediterranean and killing passenger Leon Klinghoffer.
In 2001, in the first daylight raids since the start of U.S.-led attacks on Afghanistan, jets bombed the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar.
In 2004, a tour bus from the Chicago area flipped in Arkansas, killing 15 people headed to a Mississippi casino.
In 2006, Google Inc. announced it was snapping up YouTube Inc. for $1.65 billion in a stock deal.
In 2010, Chile’s 33 trapped miners cheered and embraced each other as a drill punched into their underground chamber where they had been stuck for an agonizing 66 days.
In 2012, former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky was sentenced in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, to 30 to 60 years in prison following his conviction on 45 counts of sexual abuse of boys.
In 2018, Taylor Swift captured four honors at the American Music Awards to become the most decorated woman in the show’s history.
In 2022, Nikki Finke, a veteran reporter who became one of Hollywood’s top journalists as founder of the entertainment trade website Deadline.com, died at age 68.