On this day: October 4

October 4: Feast day of St. Francis of Assisi (Catholicism); Shemini Atzeret begins at sunset (Judaism, 2015)

James Wilson

• 1779 – American Revolution: James Wilson (pictured) and his colleagues were forced to defend themselves after a mob, angered by his successful legal defense of 23 people from exile, converged on his house, resulting in six deaths.
• 1876 – Texas A&M University opened as the first public institution of higher education in the U.S. state of Texas.
• 1917 – First World War: The British devastated the German defence in the Battle of Broodseinde, which prompted a crisis among the German commanders and caused a severe loss of morale in the German Fourth Army.
• 1957 – Soviet spacecraft Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth, was launched by an R-7 rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome near Tyuratam, Kazakh SSR.
• 2010 – The dam holding a waste reservoir in western Hungary collapsed, freeing 1 million cubic metres (1,300,000 cu yd) of red mud, which flooded nearby communities and killed at least nine people.

• More anniversaries:
  • October 3
  • October 4
  • October 5

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