October 9 is the 282nd day of the year (283rd in leap years). There are 83 days remaining until the end of the year. (Photo: St. Paul’s Cathedral following its bombing, 10/9/1940. Credit: H. Mason)

Today in History

• Charlemagne is crowned King of the Franks (768)
• The Korean 한글 (hangul) alphabet is introduced (1446)
• This day does not exist in Italy, Poland, Portugal, or Spain because of the introduction of the Gregorian calendar (1582)
• The light from Kepler’s Supernova reaches Earth (1604)
• Rhode Island founder Roger Williams is banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony (1635)
• Yale University (Collegiate School of Connecticut) is chartered (1701)
• The Washington Monument officially opens to the general public (1888)
• Eight Chicago White Sox players throw the World Series and trigger the Black Sox Scandal (1919)
• Generators at Hoover Dam (Boulder Dam) begin transmitting electricity to Los Angeles (1936)
• A Luftwaffe bomb hits St. Paul’s Cathedral (1940)
• The Phantom of the Opera premiers in London (1986)
• A 13 kilogram meteorite lands in a driveway in Peekskill, New York, destroying a 1980 Chevrolet Malibu (1992)
• The SR-71 makes its last flight (1999)
• North Korea tests its first nuclear device (2006)
• Members of the Pakistani Taliban attempt to assassinate ملالہ یوسف زئی‎ (Malala Yousafzai) on her way home from school (2012)

Birthdays

• Camille Saint-Saëns, composer (1835)
• Alfred Dreyfus, accused and exonerated of treason (1859)
• Karl Schwarzschild, astrophysicist (1873)
• Charles Walgreen, pharmacist (1873)
• Rube Marquand, baseball player (1886)
• Никола́й Буха́рин (Nikolai Bukharin), purged Pravda editor (1888 – O.S.*)
• Aimee Semple McPherson, evangelist (1890)
• Bruce Catton, historian (1899)
• Alastair Sim, actor (1900)
• Walter O’Malley, moved the Dodgers to Los Angeles (1903)
• Jacques Tati, filmmaker (1907)
• Horst Wessel, Nazi icon (1907)
• Werner von Haeften, anti-Hitler plotter (1908)**
• E. Howard Hunt, Watergate figure (1918)
• Yusef Lateef, jazz multi-instrumentalist (1920)
• Fyvush Finkel, actor (1922)
• Judy Tyler, Howdy Doody princess and Elvis co-star (1932)
• Brian Blessed, actor (1936)
• John Lennon, Beatle (1940)
• Joe Pepitone, baseball player (1940)
• Brian Lamb, C-SPAN founder (1941)
• Trent Lott, politician (1941)
• John Entwistle, Who bassist (1944)
• Jackson Browne, singer-songwriter (1948)
• Sharon Osbourne, reality TV star (1952)
• Tony Shalhoub, actor (1953)
• Scott Bakula, actor (1954)
• Mike Singletary, football player and coach (1958)
• Guillermo del Toro, director (1964)
• David Cameron, UK prime minister (1966)
• PJ Harvey, singer-songwriter (1969)
• Savannah, porn star (1970)
• Annika Sörenstam, golfer (1970)
• Sean Lennon, singer-songwriter (1975)
• Juan Dixon, basketball player (1978)
• Brandon Routh, Superman player (1979)
• Zachery Ty Bryan, sitcom child star (1981)
• Scotty McCreery, American Idol (1993)

*O.S., or Old Style, refers to the fact that Russia did not change from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar until 1918

**Werner von Haeften also appears in my novel Fox on the Rhine (with Douglas Niles)

Deaths

• Benjamin Banneker, African-American astronomer and surveyor (1805)
• Helen Morgan, torch singer (1941)
• Pope Pius XII (1958)
• Che Guevara, revolutionary (1967)
• Joseph Pilates, exercise developer (1967)
• Miriam Hopkins, actress (1972)
• Oskar Schindler, Holocaust hero (1974)
• Jacques Brel, singer-songwriter (1978)
• Clare Boothe Luce, diplomat (1987)
• Felix Wankel, engine designer (1988)
• Walter Kerr, critic (1996)
• Milt Jackson, vibraphonist (1999)
• Dagmar, television personality (2001)
• Herbert Ross, director (2001)
• Jacques Derrida, philosopher (2004)
• Louis Nye, comedian (2005)
• Stuart M. Kaminsky, mystery writer (2009)

Holidays

• Cirio de Nazare (Brazil)
• Feast of Dionysius the Areopagite (Christianity)
• Fire Prevention Day (US — commemorating the Great Chicago Fire of 1871)
• Hangul Day (South Korea)
• Independence Day (Guyaquil and Uganda)
• Leif Erikson Day (United States, Iceland, Norway)
• Moldy Cheese Day (Unofficial)
• National Day of Commemorating the Holocaust (Romania)
• National Dessert Day (US)
• Submarine-Hoagie-Hero-Grinder Day (Unofficial)
• 高山祭 (Takayama Autumn Festival) (Takayama, Japan)
• World Post Day (International)