TODAY IN HISTORY

 

Chuck Yeager breaks the sound barrier

U.S. Air Force Captain Chuck Yeager becomes the first person to fly faster than the speed of sound.

Yeager, born in Myra, West Virginia, in 1923, was a combat fighter during World War II and flew 64 missions over Europe. He shot down 13 German planes and was himself shot down over France, but he escaped capture with the assistance of the French Underground. After the war, he was among several volunteers chosen to test-fly the experimental X-1 rocket plane, built by the Bell Aircraft Company to explore the possibility of supersonic flight.

For years, many aviators believed that man was not meant to fly faster than the speed of sound, theorizing that transonic drag rise would tear any aircraft apart. All that changed on October 14, 1947, when Yeager flew the X-1 over Rogers Dry Lake in Southern California. The X-1 was lifted to an altitude of 25,000 feet by a B-29 aircraft and then released through the bomb bay, rocketing to 40,000 feet and exceeding 662 miles per hour (the sound barrier at that altitude). The rocket plane, nicknamed “Glamorous Glennis” (after Yeager's wife), was designed with thin, unswept wings and a streamlined fuselage modeled after a .50-caliber bullet.

Because of the secrecy of the project, Bell and Yeager’s achievement was not announced until June 1948. Yeager continued to serve as a test pilot, and in 1953 he flew 1,650 miles per hour in an X-1A rocket plane. He retired from the U.S. Air Force in 1975 with the rank of brigadier general. Yeager died on December 7, 2020, at age 97. 

ART, LITERATURE, AND FILM HISTORY

1957

“Wake Up Little Susie” becomes the Everly Brothers’ first #1 hit

Harmony singing was a part of rock and roll right from the beginning, but the three- and four-part harmonies of doo-wop, derived from black gospel and blues traditions, would never have given us Simon and Garfunkel, the Beatles or the Byrds. 

U.S. PRESIDENTS

1912

Theodore Roosevelt shot in Milwaukee

Before a campaign speech in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, presidential candidate Theodore Roosevelt is shot at close range by saloonkeeper John Schrank while greeting the public in front of the Gilpatrick Hotel. Schrank’s .32-caliber bullet, aimed directly at Roosevelt’s heart, failed to mortally wound the former president because its force was slowed by a glasses case and a bundle of manuscript in the breast pocket of Roosevelt’s heavy coat—a manuscript containing Roosevelt’s evening speech. Schrank was immediately detained and reportedly offered as his motive that “any man looking for a third term ought to be shot.”

GREAT BRITAIN

1066

The Battle of Hastings

King Harold II of England is defeated by the Norman forces of William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings, fought on Senlac Hill, seven miles from Hastings, England. At the end of the bloody, all-day battle, Harold was killed–shot in the eye with an arrow, according to legend–and his forces were destroyed. He was the last Anglo-Saxon king of England.

BLACK HISTORY

1964

Martin Luther King Jr. wins Nobel Peace Prize

African American civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his nonviolent resistance to racial prejudice in America. At 35 years of age, the Georgia-born minister was the youngest person ever to receive the award. 

VIETNAM WAR

1968

U.S. servicemen sent to Vietnam for second tours

U.S. Defense Department officials announce that the Army and Marines will be sending about 24,000 men back to Vietnam for involuntary second tours because of the length of the war, high turnover of personnel resulting from the one year of duty, and the tight supply of experienced soldiers. This decision had an extremely negative impact on troop morale and the combat readiness of U.S. forces elsewhere in the world as troops were transferred to meet the increased personnel requirements in Vietnam.

COLD WAR

1964

Nikita Khrushchev ousted as premier of Soviet Union

In the midst of the conflict in Vietnam, Nikita Khrushchev is ousted as both premier of the Soviet Union and chief of the Communist Party after 10 years in power. He left office the next day, October 15, 1964. He was succeeded as head of the Communist Party by his former protégé Leonid Brezhnev, who would eventually become the chief of state as well. 

U.S. PRESIDENTS

1890

Dwight D. Eisenhower is born

Future president Dwight D. Eisenhower is born in Denison, Texas on October 14, 1890. After graduating from West Point in 1915, Eisenhower embarked on a stellar military career–he would eventually become the supreme commander of Allied forces in Europe during World War II and the leader of the invasion of Normandy in June 1944. Following the war, “Ike,” as he was affectionately called, served as president of Columbia University until 1951, when he became supreme commander of NATO forces in Europe. The next year, Eisenhower beat out Democrat Adlai Stevenson to become president of the United States.

ART, LITERATURE, AND FILM HISTORY

1892

"The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" published

On October 14, 1892, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Arthur Conan Doyle, is published. The book was the first collection of Holmes stories, which Conan Doyle had been publishing in magazines since 1887. Conan Doyle was born in Scotland and studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, where he met Dr. Joseph Bell, a teacher with extraordinary deductive power. Bell partly inspired Doyle’s character Sherlock Holmes years later.

ART, LITERATURE, AND FILM HISTORY

1994

“Pulp Fiction” opens in theaters

On October 14, 1994, the writer-director Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, a crime drama featuring multiple storylines and a large ensemble cast including John Travolta, Uma Thurman, Samuel L. Jackson, Bruce Willis and Harvey Keitel, opens in theaters.  

CRIME

1975

Trial begins in Amityville murders

Ronald DeFeo Jr. goes on trial for the killings of his parents and four siblings in their Amityville, New York, home on October 14, 1975. The family’s house was later said to be haunted and served as the inspiration for the Amityville Horror book and movies. 

COLD WAR

1962

Cuban Missile Crisis begins

The Cuban Missile Crisis begins on October 14, 1962, bringing the United States and the Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear conflict. Photographs taken by a high-altitude U-2 spy plane offered incontrovertible evidence that Soviet-made medium-range missiles in Cuba—capable of  carrying nuclear warheads—were now stationed 90 miles off the American coastline.

WORLD WAR II

1944

German General Erwin Rommel—aka “The Desert Fox”—dies by suicide

On October 14, 1944, German Gen. Erwin Rommel, nicknamed “the Desert Fox,” is given the option of facing a public trial for treason, as a co-conspirator in the plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, or taking cyanide. He chooses the latter. 

WORLD WAR I

1918

Adolf Hitler wounded in British gas attack

Among the German wounded in the Ypres Salient in Belgium on October 14, 1918, is Corporal Adolf Hitler, temporarily blinded by a British gas shell and evacuated to a German military hospital at Pasewalk, in Pomerania.