Boris Leonidovich Pasternak
(29 January] 1890 – 30 May 1960)

On October 23, 1958, Boris Pasternak was awarded the Nobel
Prize for Literature for Doctor Zhivago, his romantic novel set
against the backdrop of the Russian Revolution.

The book was banned in the Soviet Union, and the Soviet
government forced the author to renounce the honor.

Suffragist organizers held the first-ever National Women’s
Rights Convention in Worcester, Massachusetts on October
23, 1850.

More than 1,000 delegates from 11 states arrived for the two-
day conference, which had been planned by members of the
Anti-Slavery Society.

Lucy Stone (August 13, 1818 – October 18, 1893)

Lucy Stone was one of many speakers who argued
for equal enfranchisement for women. “We want that
[women] should attain to the development of her
nature and womanhood; we want that when she dies,
it may not be written on her gravestone that she was
the [widow] of somebody,” Stone said in a speech.

Her speech and the convention’s proceedings were
recorded and sold after the event, helping the
movement gain international recognition.

Charles “Pretty Boy” Floyd is shot by FBI agents in a corn
field in East Liverpool, Ohio. Floyd, who had been a hotly
pursued fugitive for four years, used his last breath to deny
his involvement in the infamous Kansas City Massacre, in
which four officers were shot to death at a train station. He
died shortly thereafter.

Charles Arthur Floyd
(February 3, 1904 – October 22, 1934)

F.B.I. director J. Edgar Hoover,declared Floyd to be "public
enemy number one."

After two unsuccessful attempts, the USS Constitution was
launched in Boston Harbor. The a 44-gun U.S. Navy frigate,
built to fight Barbary pirates off the coast of Tripoli, performed commendably during those conflicts, and in 1805 a peace treaty
with Tripoli was signed on the Constitution‘s deck.

The USS Constitution is the world’s oldest commissioned naval
warship still afloat. 

Constitution fires her cannons as she is tugged through
Boston Harbor in 2021.

Three musicians from the iconic American rock band Lynyrd
Skynyrd, plus three others, were killed in a terrifying plane
crash on the Louisiana-Mississippi border on this day in
history, Oct. 20, 1977.

Lead singer and founder Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve
Gaines, and his sister, backup singer Cassie Gaines, were
all killed on impact.

The crash of the small Convair CV-240 passenger plane also
claimed the lives of assistant road manager Dean Kilpatrick,
pilot Walter McCreary and co-pilot William Gray.