POPnews - October 2nd

[Was Edith Galt Wilson the first woman to effectively (if not officially) serve as President of the United States, or was she just another in a long line of efficiently feisty First Ladies?]
1187 - Saladin captured Jerusalem, ending 88 years of rule by the Crusaders.

1535 - Jacques Cartier arrived at Hochelaga, establishing the city of Montreal.

1552 - Ivan the Terrible conquered Kazan when his sappers finally breached the city's walls.

1780 - John André, British Army officer during the American Revolutionary War, was hanged as a spy by American forces at Tappan.

1814 - At the Battle of Rancagua Spanish Royalist troops under Mariano Osorio defeated the rebel forces of Chilean patriots Bernardo O'Higgins and Jose Miguel Carrera.

1835 - The Texas Revolution began with the Battle of Gonzales, when Mexican soldiers attempted to disarm the people of Gonzales, Texas, but encountered stiff resistance from a hastily assembled militia.

1919 - President Woodrow Wilson suffered a massive stroke while still in office; during the remaining 17 months of his term First Lady Edith Galt Wilson served as the de facto President, even unto guiding his hand when forming his signature. The extent of the President's disability was hidden from the public until after his death in 1924, although the extent of her involvement in the Presidency has never been suitably explored.

1928 - Opus Dei was founded by St. Josemaría Escrivá.

1935 - Italian forces commanded by Benito Mussolini and led by Rodolfo Graziani invaded Abyssinia; during the conquest and occupation many grave atrocities were committed.

1967 - Thurgood Marshall was sworn in as the first black Supreme Court Justice in US history.

1968 - A peaceful student demonstration in Mexico City ended in the Tlatelolco massacre.

1970 - A Martin 4-0-4 aircraft carrying the Wichita State University football team, administrators, and supporters crashed near Silver Plume, Colorado, killing 31 people.

1992 - The Carandiru Massacre took place following a riot in São Paulo's Carandiru Penitentiary.

1993 - Hard-line communists in Moscow staged an uprising against the popularly elected President Boris Yeltsin, whose series of reforms designed to make a capitalist democracy out of the former Soviet Union proved unpopular resulted in the bombing of that city's White House.

1997 - The Amsterdam Treaty was signed, significantly expanding the Treaty on European Union.

2002 - The Beltway sniper attacks began; they would eventually last over three weeks, until the shooters - John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo - were finally arrested.

2005 - The Ethan Allen tour boat capsized on Lake George in Upstate New York, killing twenty people.

2006 - Charles Carl Roberts murdered five girls during a shooting at an Amish school in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania before committing suicide himself.

2007 - President Roh Moo-hyun of South Korea walked across the Military Demarcation Line into North Korea on his way to the second Inter-Korean Summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.
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