On this day in 1992, 18-year-old Michelle Knapp (above) is watching television
in her parents’ living room in Peekskill, New York when she hears a loud
crash in the driveway. Alarmed, Knapp ran outside to investigate. What
she found was startling, to say the least: a sizeable hole in the rear end
of her car, a 1980 Chevy Malibu (above); a matching hole in the gravel
driveway underneath the car; and in the hole, the culprit: what looked 
like an ordinary, bowling-ball–sized rock. It was extremely heavy
for its size (it weighed about 28 pounds), shaped like a football and
warm to the touch; also, it smelled vaguely of rotten eggs. The next day,
a curator from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City
confirmed that the object was a genuine meteorite and is estimated to be
4.4 billion years old.

.

A portion of the Peekskill meteorite in the National Museum of Natural History.

JOHN BELMONT

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.