This Day In History

Not really having much to write about today I searched the Internet for something to possibly interest the readers. I came across this website:

http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/

Fun site. You can type in any date and it will tell you what happened on that date in history. I typed in today's date and here is what happened on other October 5ths.

1969 : Monty Python's Flying Circus makes its debut on BBC Television, there were only 45 episodes aired over four seasons featuring the zany comedy sketches with John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Graham Chapman, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, Eric Idle. Some of the sketches are still considered to be some of the greatest comedy skits including

1925 : The Grand Ole Opry a weekly country music radio program broadcasts live on WSM radio in Nashville, Tennessee launches on the WSM Radio Station.

1930: Great Britons largest dirigible the R-101 Airship crashes in Beauvais, France, killing all on board.

1947: President Harry Truman delivered the first televised presidential address from the White House

1948 : An earthquake measuring magnitude 7.3 strikes Ashgabat and surrounding villages flattening all buildings leaving more than 100,000 people dead. This is one of the strongest and most deadly earthquakes on record.

1954: Yugoslavia and Italy have ended their nine year bitter dispute over the Trieste free territory and have agreed to split it between them with Italy getting control of the Adriatic port of Trieste and Yugoslavia retaining the zone she has occupied since the end of the last World War.

1962: East German guards shot a man with tommy gun blasts on the eastern side of the Berlin Wall and would not allow ambulances from the red cross on the western side to approach even though the man was screaming in pain, the incident took place about 3 miles from checkpoint Charlie.

1962: The Beatles release their first single in the UK "Love Me Do" ( released on a 45RPM Single Format on Parlophone Label, which gets to number seventeen. It was later released in the US on 27th April, 1964 and goes to Number 1.

1986: The first leak concerning the Iran Contra scandal occurs when Eugene Hasenfus is captured by troops of the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua where he confesses that he was shipping military supplies into Nicaragua for use by the Contras, that had been created and funded by the United States and run by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). After long persistent investigations by journalists and Congress it was found it involved the secret sale of U.S. weapons to Iran and the proceeds from these sales used to covertly fund the Contra war in Nicaragua.

1986: The British newspaper The Sunday Times ran an Israeli former nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu's story reavealing the secrets of Israel's nuclear arsenal, possibly which included as many as 100 nuclear warheads. Mordechai Vanunu is later kidnapped in Rome by Israeli agents and smuggled to Israel, where he was tried for treason and espionage and sentenced to 18 years in prison.

1989: The Dalai Lama, exiled spiritual and political leader of Tibet, won the Nobel Peace Prize for shunning violence and seeking liberation from China for his Himalayan nation through peaceful means.

1994: Forty Eight members of the Order of the Solar Tradition Cult committed suicide to escape the hypocrisies and oppression of this world.

1999: Two trains collide near Paddington Station in west London at the height of the morning rush hour. There are so far 8 confirmed dead, 40 seriously injured and 200 with minor injuries. ( It was later confirmed that 31 died in the accident which was caused by one of the trains going through a red stop light )

1999: The small Mexican village of Teziutlan is buried by mud and rocks caused by torrential rains, rescuers on the scene have estimated that between 60 and 80 homes are completely buried. Teziutlan is one of many villages in the area affected over the next 3 weeks by mudslides and the full extent of the worst floods Mexico has seen in 40 years will not be known for some time due to the difficulty in reaching outlying areas. In November after the mud was cleared and buried homes checked the final death toll from the October floods was more than 400. The worst affected village was Acalama where 170 were killed after the defrosted side of a mountain collapsed on the village.

2000 : Opposition supporters have stormed the Yugoslav parliament in Belgrade proclaiming Vojislav Kostunica as the new Yugoslav president. The anger and demonstrations were over Milošević's rejection of a first-round opposition victory in elections for the Federal parliament and presidency in September which led to mass demonstrations in Belgrade culminating in the storming of the Parliament building.

2005: Former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay is indicted by a grand jury on two new charges of money laundering following his indictment by a separate grand jury on criminal conspiracy charges last week.

WHAT A DAY! Natural Disasters. Nobel Peace Prize winners. Peaceful Agreements. Music history. The first televised presidential address from the White House. And in an ironic twist a person mentioned on this day in history is dancing on television tonight. Anything about the events of this day surprise you? What date in history would you be interested in? Are you going to make history today?

TODAY'S TRIVIA:

Yesterday's answer: Winston Churchill's wife, Clementine Churchill, Baroness Spencer-Churchill.

I am a war hero who saved between 6,000 and 10,000 lives. There has been no famous movies made of me but there is a memorial of me in Los Angeles' Little Tokyo. When asked why I saved so many lives I was quoted as saying "He who saves one life, saves the entire world." When my widow visited a foreign country she was met by tearful people that I had helped who showed my wife the documents that I had signed. I was born in 1900 and died in 1986. I was the second son among five boys and one girl. I graduated from high school with top honors. My dad wanted me to become a doctor like he was but I deliberately failed the entrance exam by writing only my name on the exam papers. In 1918 I entered college and majored in English Literature. In 1919 I passed the Foreign Ministry Scholarship exam and was recruited by my home country. I was assigned to China where I learned Russian and China and became an expert in Russian affairs. I quit one job in protest over the way my home country mistreated the local Chinese. I married in 1935 and had four sons, the third one died. In 1939 I became Vice-Consul of a Consulate in Kaunas, Lithuania. From July 31 to August 28, 1940, aware that people without a certain document were in danger if they stayed behind I granted those documents on my own initiative without approval of the higher-ups, which was a direct violation of my orders. Given my inferior post and the culture of my country this was an extraordinary act of disobedience. I spent 18-20 hours a day handwriting documents allowing many to travel safely. I often produced a months worth of documents in one day. I had to leave because my consulate closed. The night before my scheduled departure my wife and I stayed up writing documents. According to some witnesses I was still writing those documents while in transit from my hotel and after boarding the train, throwing documents into the crowd of desperate refugees out the train's window even as the train pulled out. I served as Consulate General in Czechoslovakia, in 1941. When Russian troops entered Romania, Soviet troops imprisoned my family and I in a POW camp for eighteen months. We were released in 1946 and returned to our home country. In 1947 my home country asked me to resign my position. Some sources say I was dismissed because of "that incident" in Lithuania. In later life despite my heroics I took a series of menial jobs to support my family, at one point selling light bulbs door to door. In spite of the publicity given me by many nations I remained virtually unknown in my home country. Only when a large delegations from around the world showed up at my funeral did my neighbors find out what I had done. When asked why I risked my career to save other people, I quoted the old samurai saying: "Even a hunter cannot kill a bird which flies to him for refuge." I died on July 31, 1986. The owner of The Dahn Report shed more than one tear when he read my bio. Who Am I?