Today in History

Today is Tuesday, Oct. 31, the 304th day of 2023. There are 61 days left in the year. This is Halloween.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On Oct. 31, 1984, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by two Sikh security guards.

On this date:

In 1864, Nevada became the 36th state as President Abraham Lincoln signed a proclamation.

In 1941, work was completed on the Mount Rushmore National Memorial in South Dakota, begun in 1927.

In 1961, the body of Josef Stalin was removed from Lenin’s Tomb as part of the Soviet Union’s “de-Stalinization” drive.

In 1964, Theodore C. Freeman, 34, became the first member of NASA’s astronaut corps to die when his T-38 jet crashed while approaching Ellington Air Force Base in Houston.

In 1967, Nguyen Van Thieu took the oath of office as the first president of South Vietnam’s second republic.

In 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered a halt to all U.S. bombing of North Vietnam, saying he hoped for fruitful peace negotiations.

In 1992, Pope John Paul II formally proclaimed that the Roman Catholic Church had erred in condemning the astronomer Galileo for holding that the Earth was not the center of the universe.

In 1999, EgyptAir Flight 990, bound from New York to Cairo, crashed off the Massachusetts coast, killing all 217 people aboard.

In 2015, a Russian passenger airliner crashed in a remote part of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula 23 minutes after taking off from a popular Red Sea resort, killing all 224 people on board.

In 2018, notorious gangster James “Whitey” Bulger was found beaten to death at a federal prison in West Virginia; the 89-year-old former Boston crime boss and longtime FBI informant had been transferred there hours earlier.

In 2019, President Donald Trump announced that he would be making Palm Beach, Florida, his permanent residence after leaving the White House rather than returning to Trump Tower in New York.