On October 8, 1871, flames spark in the Chicago barn of Patrick
and Catherine O’Leary, igniting a two-day blaze that killed
between 200 and 300 people, destroyed 17,450 buildings, left
100,000 homeless and caused an estimated $200 million
(in 1871 dollars; roughly $4 billion in 2021 dollars) in damages.

Legend has it that a cow kicked over a lantern in the O’Leary barn
and started the fire, but other theories hold that humans or even
a comet may have been responsible for the event that left four
square miles of the Windy City, including its business district, in
ruins. Dry weather and an abundance of wooden buildings, streets
and sidewalks made Chicago vulnerable to fire.

Martin Milner and George Maharis

On October 7, 1960, the first episode of the one-hour television
drama "Route 66" aired on CBS. The program had a simple
premise: It followed two young men, Buz Murdock (George
Maharis) and Tod Stiles (Martin Milner), as they drove across
the country in an inherited Corvette (Chevrolet was one of the
show’s sponsors), doing odd jobs and looking for adventure 
while on a journey in search of themselves.

On October 6, 1926, Yankee slugger Babe Ruth hit a record
three homers against the St. Louis Cardinals in the fourth
game of the World Series. The Yanks won the game 10-5,
but despite Ruth’s unprecedented performance, they lost
the championship in the seventh game. In 1928, in the fourth
game of another Yanks-Cards World Series, Ruth tied his
own record, knocking three more pitches out of the same
park.

ROSS SIMPSON

The Jazz Singer is a 1927 American part-talkie musical drama
film directed by Alan Crosland and produced by Warner Bros.
Pictures. It is the first feature-length motion picture with both synchronized recorded music and lip-synchronous singing
and speech (in several isolated sequences).

Its release heralded the commercial ascendance of sound
films and effectively marked the end of the silent film era
with the Vitaphone sound-on-disc system.
(From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Al Jolson (1886 – 1950) as Jack Robin on stage, in a
publicity shot representing the film’s final scene.