On this day in 1963, Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby (below) shot and killed Lee Harvey Oswald live on national television.
The pistol that Jack Ruby used to kill Lee Harvey Oswald.
It was on November 22, two days before the shooting of Oswald.
On this day in 1971, hijacker Dan Cooper, known as D.B. Cooper, parachuted from a Northwest Airlines 727 over Washington state with $200,000 in ransom money.
On October 10, 1973, after months of maintaining his innocence, Agnew pleaded no contest to a single felony charge of tax evasion and resigned from office. He was replaced by House Minority Leader Gerald Ford (below).
Gerald Ford (center) was sworn in as Vice President Ford.
George Orson Welles (May 6, 1915 – October 10, 1985)
Wells is best remembered for the legendary 1938 radio broadcast of “The War of the Worlds’’, and in film, Citizen Kane (1941), consistently ranked as one of the greatest films ever made.
Anthrax-laced letters were sent to Capitol Hill on this day in 2001.
On Oct. 7, 1985, the Italian cruise ship MS Achille Lauro was hijacked by four members of the Palestine Liberation Front off the coast of Egypt in the Mediterranean. The hijackers took the more than 400 passengers and crew members hostage and demanded the release of 50 Palestinians from Israeli prisons.
On this day in 1985, the hijackers surrendered on the condition that they and the hijacking mastermind Abu Abbas be given a plane to escape. However, on Oct. 10, the plane was intercepted by United States military aircraft and forced to land at a NATO base in Sicily, where Mr. Abbas and the hijackers were arrested.
The four Palestinian terrorists who hijacked the cruise ship.
Released hostages of the Achille Lauro liner hijacking are shown being taken ashore.
Palestinian militant Abu Abbas, mastermind of the 1985 Achille Lauro cruise ship hijacking was captured in Iraq April 2003. He died in US custody from a heart attack in 2004.
John Winston Ono Lennon (October 9, 1940 – December 8, 1980)
John Lennon became one of the most influential songwriters in the history of popular music after co-founding The Beatles with Paul McCartney and George Harrison. In 2008, Rolling Stone ranked John Lennon the fifth- greatest singer of all time. In 1987, he was posthumously inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame and twice posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: first in 1988 as a member of the Beatles and again in 1994 as a solo artist.
One of the last photos of John Lennon before he was killed.
On this day in 2001, the U.S. and Great Britain began airstrikes in Afghanistan in response to that state’s support of terrorism and Osama bin Laden. The act was the first military action taken in response to the terrorist attacks on the U.S. on September 11, 2001.
President George W. Bush addresses the nation announcing the airstrikes.
US airstrikes destroy Taliban camp in Afghanistan.
A cross marked the fence where 21-year-old Matthew Shepard was robbed, beaten and left to die on this day in 1998. He was lured by two men pretending to also be gay. Shepard was taken to a hospital in Fort Collins, Colorado, where he died six days later from severe head injuries. The fence has since been torn down.
Matthew Wayne "Matt" Shepard (December 1, 1976 – October 12, 1998)
Shepard’s death inspired the play The Laramie Project, later turned into a television movie, countless songs, a foundation devoted to his memory along with a political lobbying effort that pressed for, and eventually obtained, a new federal hate crimes statute named after him.
From left: Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney were charged with the murder of Matthew Shepard and are both serving long prison terms.
John J Mellencamp (previously known as John Cougar Mellencamp) is 67 years old today.
Singer-songwriter John Mellencamp is best known for his #1 hit song, "Jack & Diane." He has been nominated for more than ten Grammy Awards and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008.