Today in History....October 22

* 1797, 1000 meters (3,200 feet) above Paris, Andre-Jacques Garnerin makes the first recorded parachute jump

* 1836, Sam Houston is inaugurated as the first President of the Republic of Texas

* 1765, the Stamp Act Congress, meeting in New York, drew up a declaration of rights and liberties

* 1895, in Paris, an express train overruns a buffer stop and crosses more than 30 meters of concourse before plummeting through a window at Gare Montparnasse

* 1907, President Theodore Roosevelt visited The Hermitage, the Nashville, Tenn., home of the late President Andrew Jackson. (Years later, Maxwell House claimed that Roosevelt had praised a cup of its coffee during this visit by saying it was "good to the last drop.")

* 1924, Toastmasters International is founded

* 1926, J. Gordon Whitehead sucker punches magician Harry Houdini in the stomach in Montreal. (Contrary to popular belief, appendicitis and not the punch was the likely cause of Houdini's death -- although the pain inflicted by the blows may have masked the pain of the appendicitis, preventing the performer from seeking treatment until nine days later)

* 1928, Republican presidential nominee Herbert Hoover spoke of the "American system of rugged individualism" in a speech at New York's Madison Square Garden

* 1934, in East Liverpool, Ohio, notorious bank robber Pretty Boy Floyd is shot and killed by FBI agents

* 1949, Soviet Union detonates its first nuclear bomb

* 1962, President John F. Kennedy announces that American spy planes have discovered Soviet nuclear weapons in Cuba, and that he has ordered a naval "quarantine" of the island nation

* 1964, Jean-Paul Sartre is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, but turns down the honor

* 1966, the Supremes become the first all-female music group to attain a No. 1 selling album (The Supremes A' Go-Go)

* 1968, Apollo 7 safely splashes down in the Atlantic Ocean after orbiting the Earth 163 times

* 1972, in Saigon, Henry Kissinger and South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu meet to discuss a proposed cease-fire that had been worked out between Americans and North Vietnamese in Paris. Thieu rejects the proposal and accused the United States of conspiring to undermine his regime

* 1979, President Jimmy Carter allowed the deposed Shah of Iran to travel to New York for medical treatment — a decision that precipitated the Iran hostage crisis

* 1981, the United States Federal Labor Relations Authority votes to decertify the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization for its strike the previous August

* 1983, two correctional officers are killed by inmates in Marion, Illinois. The incident inspired the Supermax model of prisons

* 1986, President Ronald Reagan signs the Tax Reform Act of 1986 into law

* 1999, Maurice Papon, an official in the Vichy France government during World War II, is jailed for crimes against humanity

8 2002, bus driver Conrad Johnson was shot to death in Silver Spring, Md., in what would be the final attack linked by authorities to the Washington-area sniper attacks

* 2006, a Panama Canal expansion proposal is approved by 77.8% of voters in a National referendum held in Panama