THIS DAY IN HISTORY ― OCTOBER 26

October 26 is the 299th day of the year (300th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 66 days remaining until the end of the year. This date is slightly more likely to fall on a Monday, Wednesday or Friday (58 in 400 years each) than on Saturday or Sunday (57), and slightly less likely to occur on a Tuesday or Thursday (56).

NATIONAL MULE DAY  

1366 – Comet 55P/1366 U1 (Tempel-Tuttle) approaches within 0.0229 Astronomical Units (2.12 million miles) of Earth. Tempel–Tuttle is a periodic comet with an orbital period of 33 years. It fits the classical definition of a Halley-type comet with  a period of between 20 and 200 years. It was independently discovered by Ernst Tempel on December 19, 1865 and by Horace Parnell Tuttle on January 6, 1866. It is the parent body of the Leonid meteor shower. In 1699, it was observed by Gottfried Kirch but was not recognized as a periodic comet until the discoveries by Tempel and Tuttle during the 1866 perihelion.

1682 – William Penn accepts area around Delaware River from Duke of York. William Penn (14 October 1644 – 30 July 1718) was an English real estate entrepreneur, philosopher, early Quaker and founder of theProvince of Pennsylvania, the English North American colony and the future Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. He was an early advocate of democracy and religious freedom, notable for his good relations and successful treaties with the Lenape Indians. Under his direction, the city of Philadelphia was planned and developed.

1776 – Benjamin Franklin departed from America for France on a mission to seek French support for the American Revolution. Franklin was 70 at the time.


1787 – The "Federalist Papers" were published, calling for ratification of the newly-penned United States Constitution. The Federalist (later known as The Federalist Papers) is a collection of 85 articles and essays written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay promoting the ratification of the United States Constitution. Seventy-seven were published serially in The Independent Journal and The New York Packet between October of 1787 and August 1788. A compilation of these and eight others, called The Federalist; or, The New Constitution, was published in two volumes in 1788 by J. and A. McLean. The series' correct title is The Federalist; the title The Federalist Papers did not emerge until the 20th century.


1825 – The Erie Canal opens, connecting the Great Lakes with the Atlantic Ocean via the Hudson River. Governor DeWitt Clinton of New York, the driving force behind the project, led the opening ceremonies and rode the canal boat Seneca Chief from Buffalo to New York City.

1861 – The Central Overland California and Pikes Peak Express Company (The Pony Express) ends after only 18 months of operation, replaced by the transcontinental telegraph.

1881 – After years of feuding and mounting tensions, on this day in 1881, the "law and order" Earps and the "Cowboys" Clanton-McLaurys engage in their world-famous shoot-out near the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona, leaving three men dead and three more wounded.


1905 – The Union of Sweden and Norway ends. The dissolution of the union between Norway and Sweden was carried out by the Storting (Norwegian parliament) under the House of Bernadotte on 7 June 1905.


1942 – The last U.S. carrier manufactured before America's entry into World War II, the Hornet, is damaged so extensively by Japanese war planes in the Battle of Santa Cruz that it must be abandoned. The battle for Guadalcanal was the first American offensive against the Japanese, an attempt to prevent the Axis power from taking yet another island in the Solomon chain and gaining more ground in its race for Australia. 

1966 – A fire breaks out on board the 42,000-ton U.S. aircraft carrier Oriskany in the Gulf of Tonkin. The accident occurred when a locker filled with night illumination magnesium flares burst into flame. The fire spread quickly through most of the ship, resulting in 35 officers and eight enlisted men killed and a further 16 injured. The loss of life would have been much higher except for the valor of crewmen who pushed 300 500-pound, 1,000-pound, and 2,000-pound bombs that lay within reach of the flames on the hangar deck overboard. 

1995 – Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Mossad agents assassinate Islamic Jihad leader Fathi Shikaki in his hotel in Malta.

2001 – On this day in 2001, President George W. Bush signs the Patriot Act, an anti-terrorism law drawn up in response to the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

2002 – Moscow theater hostage crisis: Approximately 50 Chechen terrorists and 150 hostages die when Russian Spetsnaz storm a theater building in Moscow, which had been occupied by the terrorists during a musical performance three days before.

2015 – A 7.5 magnitude earthquake strikes in the Hindu Kush mountain range in northeastern Afghanistan, killing 398 people and leaving 2,536 people injured.


TODAY'S BIRTHS

1609 – William Sprague, English-American settler, co-founded Charlestown, Massachusetts (d. 1675)

1849 – Ferdinand Georg Frobenius, German mathematician and academic (d. 1917)

1854 – C. W. Post, American businessman, founded Post Foods (d. 1914)

1902 – Henrietta Hill Swope, American astronomer and academic (d. 1980

1947 – Hillary Rodham Clinton, American lawyer and politician, 67th United States Secretary of State and 44th First Lady of the United States

From This Day in History, Wikipedia and Google ex as noted.