This Week in History

Submitted by ub on

This Week in History, Oct 23 - Oct 29

Oct 23, 2002
Hostage crisis in Moscow theater. About 50 Chechen rebels storm a Moscow theater, taking up to 700 people hostage during a sold-out performance of a popular musical.

Oct 24, 1901
First barrel ride down Niagara Falls. 63-year-old schoolteacher, Annie Edson Taylor becomes the first person to take the plunge over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

Oct 25, 1881
Pablo Picasso born. He was one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century and born in Malaga, Spain.

Oct 26, 1881
Shootout at the OK Corral. The Earp brothers face off against the Clanton-McLaury gang in a legendary shootout at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona.

Oct 27, 1904
New York City subway opens @ 2:35 on the afternoon of October 27, 1904, New York City Mayor George McClellan takes the controls on the inaugural run of the city's innovative new rapid transit system: The NYC Subway has stopped a few times since.

Oct 28, 1965
Construction is completed on the Gateway Arch, a spectacular 630-foot-high parabola of stainless steel marking the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial on the waterfront of St. Louis, Missouri.

Oct 29, 1998
John Glenn returns to space nearly four decades after he became the first American to orbit the Earth, Senator John Hershel Glenn, Jr., is launched into space again as a payload specialist aboard the space shuttle Discovery. At 77 years of age, Glenn was the oldest human ever to travel in space. During the nine-day mission, he served as part of a NASA study on health problems associated with aging.