On This Day (October 4)

[MSFixR]

• 1227 - Assassination of Caliph al-Adil.
• 1626 - Richard Cromwell, Lord Protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland born (d. 1712)
• 1669 - Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, Dutch painter died (b. 1606)
• 1830 – Belgian Revolution: A provisional government in Brussels declared the creation of the independent and neutral state of Belgium, in revolt against the United Kingdom of the Netherlands.
• 1861 - Frederic Remington, American painter born (d. 1909)
• 1883 - First run of the Orient Express.
• 1890 - Catherine Booth, the Mother of The Salvation Army died (b. 1829)
• 1895 - Buster Keaton, American comedian born (d. 1966)
• 1904 - Frédéric Bartholdi, French sculptor (the Statue of Liberty) died (b. 1834)
• 1904 - Karl Bayer, Austrian chemist, inventor of the Bayer process of extracting alumina from bauxite died (b. 1847)
• 1910 – Manuel II, the last King of Portugal, fled to Gibraltar when a revolution erupted in Lisbon and his palace was shelled. The Portuguese First Republic was proclaimed the next day.
• 1918 - An explosion occurred killing more than 100 and destroying the T.A. Gillespie Company Shell Loading Plant in Sayreville, New Jersey. Fires and explosions continued for three days forcing massive evacuations and spreading ordnance over a wide area, pieces of which are still being found in 2007.
• 1931 - Debut appearance of the "D!ck Tracy" comic strip, created by cartoonist Chester Gould.
• 1947 - Max Planck, A German Nobel laureate and the founder of quantum theory died (b. 1858)
• 1950 - Snoopy's first appearance ("Peanuts" comic strip).
• 1957 - The CBS television show Leave it to Beaver debuts, starring Jerry Mathers as Beaver.
• 1957 – Soviet spacecraft Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth, was launched by an R-7 rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome near Tyuratam, Kazakh SSR.
• 1982 - Glenn Gould, Canadian pianist died (b. 1932)
• 1985 – Software developer Richard Stallman founded the Free Software Foundation to support the free software movement.
• 1993 – Russian Constitutional Crisis: Tanks bombarded the White House in Moscow while demonstrators against President Boris Yeltsin rallied outside.
• 2004 - SpaceShipOne wins Ansari X Prize for private spaceflight.