1947
The House Un-American Activities Committee opens
public hearings on alleged communist infiltration in Hollywood.
public hearings on alleged communist infiltration in Hollywood.
| 480 BC | The Greeks defeat the Persians in a naval battle at Salamis. | |
| 1587 | In France, Huguenot Henri de Navarre routs the Duke de Joyeuse’s larger Catholic force at Coutras. | |
| 1709 | Marlborough and Eugene of Savoy take Mons in the Netherlands. | |
| 1714 | George I of England is crowned. | |
| 1805 | Austrian general Karl Mac surrenders to Napoleon‘s army at the battle of Ulm. | |
| 1818 | The United States and Britain establish the 49th Parallel as the boundary between Canada and the United States. | |
| 1870 | The Summer Palace in Beijing, China, is burnt to the ground by a Franco-British expeditionary force. | |
| 1903 | The Joint Commission, set up on January 24 by Great Britain and the United States to arbitrate the disputed Alaskan boundary, rules in favor of the United States. The deciding vote is Britain’s, which embitters Canada. The United States gains ports on the panhandle coast of Alaska. | |
| 1904 | Bolivia and Chile sign a treaty ending the War of the Pacific. The treaty recognizes Chile’s possession of the coast, but provides for construction of a railway to link La Paz, Bolivia, to Arica, on the coast. | |
| 1924 | Baseball’s first ‘colored World Series’ is held in Kansas City, Mo. | |
| 1938 | Czechoslovakia, complying with Nazi policy, outlaws the Communist Party and begins persecuting Jews. | |
| 1941 | German troops reach the approaches to Moscow. | |
| 1941 | German soldiers murder more than 2,700 Serbian civilians in Kragujevac in reprisal for insurgent attacks in the Gornji Milanovac district, which resulted in the deaths of 10 German soldiers and the wounding of 26 others.The number of hostages to be shot is calculated based on a ratio of 100 hostages executed for every German soldier killed and 50 hostages executed for every German soldier wounded.The day of the massacre is commemorated annually in Serbia as the Day of Remembrance of the Serbian Victims of World War II. [From MHQ—The Quarterly Journal of Military History] | |
| 1945 | Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon form the Arab League to present a unified front against the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. | |
| 1947 | The House Un-American Activities Committee opens public hearings on alleged communist infiltration in Hollywood. Among those denounced as having un-American tendencies are: Katherine Hepburn, Charles Chaplin and Edward G. Robinson. Among those called to testify is Screen Actors Guild President Ronald Reagan, who denies that leftists ever controlled the Guild and refuses to label anyone a communist. | |
| 1968 | Jacqueline Kennedy marries Aristotle Onassis. | |
| 1973 | Arab oil-producing nations ban oil exports to the United States following the outbreak of the Arab-Israeli war. | |
| 1977 | A charter plane crashes in Mississippi, killing three members of popular Southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd, along with their assistant road manager, the pilot and co-pilot. | |
| 1991 | The Oakland Hills firestorm destroys nearly 3,500 homes and apartments and kills 25 people. | |
| 2011 | In the Libyan civil war, rebels capture deposed dictator Muammar Gaddafi in his hometown of Sirte, killing him soon afterward. | |
Born on October 20
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| 1632 | Sir Christopher Wren, astronomer and architect. | |
| 1854 | Arthur Rimbaud, poet. | |
| 1874 | Charles Ives, composer. | |
| 1884 | Bela Lugosi, Hungarian-born film actor famous for his portrayal of Count Dracula (1931). | |
| 1891 | Sir James Chadwick, physicist who won the Nobel Prize for discovering the neutron. | |
| 1901 | Adelaide Hall, cabaret singer. | |
| 1925 | Art Buchwald, humorist. | |
| 1931 | Mickey Mantle, baseball great who played for the New York Yankees | |
| 1932 | Michael McClure, beat poet. | |
| 1940 | Robert Pinsky, former U.S. Poet Laureate. | |
| 1946 | Lewis Grizzard, journalist and humorist who gained popularity through his syndicated Atlanta Journal-Constitution column; he authored 25 books, including collections of his columns. | |
| 1946 | Elfriede Jelinek, Austrian playwright and novelist; awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, 2004. | |
| 1948 | Tom Petty, singer, songwriter, musician; lead singer for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and a founder of the Traveling Wilburys and Mudcrutch bands; inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, 2002. | |
| 1971 | Snoop Dogg (Calvin Broadus, Jr.), rapper, songwriter, actor; his debut album, Doggy style, came in at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and Billboard Hot R&B / Hip-Hop charts | |
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