Category: Today

On October 5, 1910, the Portuguese monarchy was overthrown and a republic declared.

On October 4, 2004, SpaceShipOne became the first private craft to fly into space, thereby winning for Mojave Aerospace Ventures the Ansari X Prize for private spaceflight.

On October 3, 1789, George Washington proclaimed Thursday November 26, 1789, a Thanksgiving Day. On the same date in 1863, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln declared the last Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day.

On October 2, 1789, George Washington sent the proposed Constitutional amendments (the United States’ Constitution’s Bill of Rights) to the States for ratification.

On the same date in 1919, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson suffered a massive stroke, leaving him partially paralyzed, preventing him from reacting to the economic downturn following the Great War in a Progressive fashion — making his response de facto laissez faire. One insider, and skeptic of Progressive hubris, archly referred to Wilson’s incapacitation as “a stroke of luck.”

His successor in office, President Warren G. Harding, would go on to massively cut spending as well as taxes, and take on regulation as well. He also released Woodrow Wilson’s domestic war prisoners — ranging from journalists, ordinary folk to socialist presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs — who had dissented from Wilson’s involvement in the war.

The Depression of the early 1920s, though as deep as the early 1930s, proved remarkably brief, thanks to Harding … and a “stroke of luck.”

On October 1, 1908, Ford produced the first Model T at a plant in Detroit. The auto could travel 40 miles per hour and ran on gasoline or hemp-​based fuel. (As oil prices fell, Ford phased out the hemp option.) The Model T was the first car designed for a mass market, rather than as a luxury item. By 1927, Ford had built 15 million Model T cars — the longest production run of any car model until the Volkswagen Beetle surpassed it in 1972.

On October 1, 1918, Lawrence of Arabia (T. E. Lawrence) helped lead a combined Arab and British force that captured Damascus from the Turks during World War I.

Thomas Edison’s first commercial hydroelectric power plant began operation on September 30, 1882. Dubbed the Vulcan Street Plant, it was established on the Fox River in Appleton, Wisconsin, and was housed in the Appleton Paper and Pulp Company building, which burned to the ground in 1891.