Today in History....October 12

On this day in …

1492, Christopher Columbus arrived with his expedition in the present-day Bahamas

1915, English nurse Edith Cavell was executed by the Germans in occupied Belgium during World War I

1933, bank robber John Dillinger escaped from a jail in Allen County, Ohio, with the help of his gang, who killed the sheriff, Jesse Sarber

1942, President Roosevelt delivered one of his so-called "fireside chats" in which he recommended the drafting of 18- and 19-year-old men

1960, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev disrupted a U.N. General Assembly session by pounding his desk with a shoe during a dispute

1986, the superpower meeting in Reykjavik, Iceland, ended in stalemate, with President Reagan and Soviet leader Gorbachev unable to agree on arms control or a date for a full-fledged summit in the United States

2000, 17 sailors were killed in a suicide bomb attack on the U.S. destroyer Cole in Yemen perpetrated by practitioners of that "religion of peace"

2001, NBC announced that an assistant to anchorman Tom Brokaw had contracted the skin form of anthrax after opening a "threatening" letter to her boss that contained a suspicious powder

2005,

China launched its second manned space flight, during which two astronauts orbited Earth for five days

Syria's interior minister, Brigadier General Ghazi Kenaan, committed suicide in his Damascus office

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder announced he would not participate in Germany's new coalition government, ending seven years in power