October 6 is the traditional date commemorating the martyrdom of William Tyndale, in 1536. Tyndale translated the New Testament and much of the Old into the English of his day, and in the process added more new words into the English language than any other single writer, with the possible exception of Shakespeare. He also laid the ground for the later, and more famous, King James Edition of the Bible.
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 the Ansari X Prize for private spaceflight.
On October 3, 1919, James M. Buchanan was born. Buchanan would go on to an illustrious career in economics, developing the theory of “Public Choice,” and receiving the 1986 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work. His books include “Cost and Choice,” “The Calculus of Consent” (with Gordon Tullock), and “The Limits of Liberty: Between Anarchy and Leviathan.”
In 1925, on this date, Gore Vidal was born. Vidal would go on to become one of the leading post-WWII liberal essayists as well as a major novelist and screenwriter. His most famous novels include “Burr,” “1876,” and “Lincoln,” part of his American history series; his collection of essays, “The United States,” was one of his many bestsellers.
On October 2, 1789, George Washington sent the proposed Constitutional amendments (the United States 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, cattily 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 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 Wilson’s “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 would build some 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.
On September 30, 1943, Franz Oppenheimer — a German-Jewish sociologist and political economist, who most famously published on the fundamental sociology of the state — died.
September 30 has served as Blasphemy Rights Day since 2009, when it was initiated by the Center for Inquiry.
Botswanans celebrate their independence from Great Britain with an official day on September 30.
On September 27, 1821, Mexico gained its independence from Spain.
On August 12, 30 BC, Queen Cleopatra VII committed suicide, ending the Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt and providing grist for literary works such as Shakespeare’s great tragedy, Antony and Cleopatra.
On this day in 1898, an Armistice ended the Spanish-American War, a war commemorated best by sociologist and economist William Graham Sumner in his classic essay “The Conquest of the United States by Spain.”
On August 7, 1782, George Washington instituted the Badge of Military Merit to honor soldiers wounded in battle, an award later renamed “the Purple Heart.”