On October 14, 1994, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, and Yassar Arafat, the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, shared the Nobel Prize for Peace. The three men were awarded this honor for the 1993 Oslo Accords in which Israel and the PLO agreed to peace and mutual recognition. The [...]
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On October 14, 1964, civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Read Dr. King’s acceptance speech, delivered in Oslo on December 10 of that year.
On October 13, 1884, Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) was declared universal time by the International Meridian Conference, a gathering of 25 nations from around the globe.Read the proceedings of the International Meridian Conference from Project Gutenberg.
On October 13, 1952, the US Supreme Court announced that it had declined to grant certiorari in the appeal of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, condemned to death for conspiracy to commit atomic espionage for the Soviet Union. Justice William O. Douglas eventually granted a stay of execution on June 17, 1953, but that order was [...]
On October 12, 1977, the US Supreme Court heard arguments in the “reverse discrimination” case of Allan Bakke, a white student denied admission to University of California Davis Medical School. The court ruled the following year that that the Davis affirmative action plan was unconstitutional; Bakke was admitted to UC Davis Medical School and eventually [...]
On October 11, 1872, Harlan Fiske Stone, future Columbia Law School dean (1910-1924), US Attorney General under President Calvin Coolidge (1924-25), US Supreme Court Associate Justice (1925-41) and Chief Justice (1941-46), was born in Chesterfield, New Hampshire. As part of a political compromise, Stone became the first Supreme Court nominee to appear before the Senate [...]
On October 11, 1962, the Second Ecumenical Council of the Catholic Church convened in Rome, Italy. Over the next three years, the conference modernized Church Law for the modern era. The most noticeable changes included the celebration of mass in the vernacular, a new emphasis on the role of laypersons, and a greater acceptance of [...]
On October 10, 1973, Vice-President Spiro Agnew resigned from his office in the face of allegations of tax fraud. Two days later, President Richard Nixon appointed House Minority Leader to replace Agnew as his VP. Read a biography of Spiro Agnew.
On October 10, 1967, the Outer Space Treaty demilitarizing outer space entered into force.
On October 9, 1967, communist revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara was executed by Bolivian military officials for attempting to overthrow the government there. Learn more about the life of Che Guevara.
