The Regency TR-1 - the world's first transistor radio - is introduced, 1954.

 oldslabsides wrote: 



and it almost took me that much time to read it.

 oldslabsides wrote: 

He piled upon the whale’s white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart’s shell upon it.

1851: Herman Melville's Moby Dick is published for the first time.

 Proclivities wrote: 
It's easy to see why she graced WWII bombers and her pics were in barracks everywhere.

October 17, 1918, Margarita Carmen Cansino (later known as Rita Hayworth) born.

1091 - London is stuck by a tornado

Today in 1977, NASA unveils a photo from the Viking probe, sent to Mars (and famously including a lander that photographed the surface landscape of Mars) to do intensive surveying.
 Obviously looking at this photo it’s easy to see why this attracted so many people’s attention, considering there’s a face right there!
The image is certainly compelling, and some people, such as Richard Hoagland  appear to have based most of their careers off of
promoting this image as evidence of life on Mars.  Who’s to say, really, although later and better photos seem to conclusively show
that this is a natural rock formation that only coincidentally appears to be a face.  

p.s if  Mr. Hoagland  would have only taken this shot 100 km to the west
 he would have "snapped" my Jr. High School! 
Better luck next time, I guess.  

JFK first learned that Russian nukes were in Cuba.

 oldslabsides wrote: 
Was that the same Prince Ludwig who assembled the first drum kit?

 oldslabsides wrote: 
lots of beer, pork and cabbage?

i'm in

1810: First Oktoberfest is held when Bavarian royalty invites the citizens of Munich to join the celebration of the marriage of Crown Prince Ludwig of Bavaria to Princess Therese von Sachsen-Hildburghausen.

 bokey wrote: 
Federal employees work on flex time, which means they can start and finish their 8 hour day at the time they choose. My daughter works for the gov, and as far as I can tell, she works a full day, from 7:30-4(:30?) 

 hippiechick wrote: 
That was the year Joe DiMaggio debuted. Timing is everything. Maybe if FDR had run in 1946 Joe's Day would be a Federal Holiday.

Well, actually everyday is a Holiday for Federal workers. Those brutal 30 hour work weeks take their toll. In DC the traffic is gridlocked by 2PM on Fridays due to all the Feds sneaking out of work.
 

Great Chicago Fire 1871: The Second City Goes Up In Flames, 141 Years Ago (PHOTOS)

 hippiechick wrote: 
Right.... and it also came to pass that we don't live in Vespucciland.

Today we honor a man who ruthlessly murdered 1000s of indigenous people because in 1936 FDR needed to give Italian-Americans a reason to vote for him.

Oct 6 1945 - A goat and its owner make an appearance at Wrigley Field for Game 4 of the World Series. The pair is told to leave before the game ends, angering the owner. The Chicago Cubs lose to the Detroit Tigers, 4 - 1. Detroit will go on to win the Series in seven games and the Cubs won't win another National League championship for the rest of the 20th century. A belief that the Cubs were cursed by the goat will eventually develop.

         This crap started on the road I live on less than 10 miles away. Geez, back then I even had a girlfriend who worried about me going to the store.

Doug Duncan recalls 'three weeks of daily terror'
Wednesday - 10/3/2012, 7:31am  ET
During the 2002 terror attacks, then-Montgomery County Executive Doug Duncan briefed victims' families on developments in the investigation. (AP)

 WASHINGTON - The call came when he was attending a conference in Chicago. His police chief wanted to talk to him.

 Former Montgomery County Executive Doug Duncan said that raised a red flag.

 Chief Charles Moose didn't typically call Duncan when the county executive was out of town — unless it was important.

 It was Oct. 3, 2002 when Duncan received he call. He was told there had been one murder the night before and two more that morning.

Duncan immediately cut short his trip and raced back to a county in crisis.

 "On my way back to the hotel, I got another call saying someone else had been murdered, " he recalls.

 By the time Duncan got to the airport, there had been another shooting.

 "The whole flight home I sort of prayed that no one else had been killed, " he says.

 In less than 24 hours, five people had been killed in Montgomery County.
It would be the sniper shootings that would thrust Duncan, the man often referred to as the "Mayor of Montgomery County, " into the glare of the national media.