MIKE GRACIA

Singer John J. (Cougar) Mellencamp is 71 years old today. 

He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008, followed by an induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame
in 2018.

On October 6, 1866, the brothers John and Simeon Reno staged the
first train robbery in American history, making off with $13,000 from
an Ohio and Mississippi railroad train in Jackson County, Indiana.

Of course, trains had been robbed before the Reno brothers’ holdup 
but, these previous crimes had all been burglaries of stationary
trains sitting in depots or freight yards.

On October 5, 1892, the famous Dalton Gang attempted the daring daylight robbery of two Coffeyville, Kansas, banks at the same time.

But if the gang members believed the sheer audacity of their plan
would bring them success, they were sadly mistaken. Instead, they
were nearly all killed by quick-acting townspeople.

For a year and a half, the Dalton Gang had terrorized the state of Oklahoma, mostly concentrating on train holdups. Though the
gang had more murders than loot to their credit, they had managed
to successfully evade the best efforts of Oklahoma law officers to
bring them to justice.

On October 5, 1947, President Harry Truman (left/above) made the
first-ever televised presidential address from the White House,
asking Americans to cut back on their use of grain in order to
help starving Europeans.

At the time of Truman’s food-conservation speech, Europe was
still recovering from World War II and suffering from famine.

Truman, the 33rd commander in chief, worried that if the U.S. didn’t provide food aid, his administration’s Marshall Plan for European economic recovery would fall apart.

He asked farmers and distillers to reduce grain use and requested
that the public voluntarily forgo meat on Tuesdays, eggs and
poultry on Thursdays and save a slice of bread each day.