ROSS SIMPSON

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.

“The motive power driving our two characters is not a Corvette:
it is the desire for knowledge—and for sentience; it is a quest
through the perennially fascinating cosmos of personal identity.”

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.

The Reno brothers’ contribution to criminal history was to stop
a moving train in a sparsely populated region where they could
carry out their crime without risking interference from the law
or curious bystanders.

Though created in Indiana, the Reno brother’s new method of
robbing trains quickly became very popular in the West.

By the late 19th century, train robbery was became an
increasingly difficult—and dangerous—profession.

Colt 45 the favorite gun of train robbers.

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.

On October 5, 1947, President Harry Truman (1884-1972) 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.