Important Events
1917 Battle of Passchendaele: Canadian troops capture the village of Passchendaele in the Third Battle of Ypres, after 250,000 casualties on both sides
1939 Adolf Hitler announces plans to regulate Jewish problem
1948 The 1948 Ashgabat earthquake kills 100,000 in the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic
1948 Paleoanthropologist Mary Leakey finds the first partial fossil skull of Proconsul africanus, an ancestor of apes and humans on Rusinga Island, Kenya
1951 Joseph Stalin proclaims the Soviet Union has the atomic bomb
1956 Scientist Albert Sabin announces that his oral polio”>Polio vaccine is ready for testing; it would soon supplant Jonas Salk’s vaccine in many parts of the world
Today In Film & TV
1927 “The Jazz Singer”, directed by Alan Crosland, starring Al Jolson and May McAvoy, released, 1st film with a soundtrack (Honorary Academy Award 1928)
1960 “Spartacus”, directed by Stanley Kubrick and starring Kirk Douglas and Laurence Olivier, premieres in NYC
Today In Music
1976 – “Disco Duck” by Rick Dees and His Cast of Idiots received a gold record. The song became only the fourth single to be certified platinum in December of 1976.
Today In Sports
1882 1st World Series Baseball Game 1: Cincinnati Red Stockings (AA) beat Chicago White Stockings (NL), 4-0 at Bank Street Grounds, Cincinnati