Oct. 4 history: Space Age begins

Oct. 4 in history

In 1957, the Space Age began as the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, into orbit. 

In 1777, Gen. George Washington’s troops launched an assault on the British at Germantown, Pennsylvania, resulting in heavy American casualties.

In 1918, In the early hours of October 4, 1918, German Chancellor Max von Baden, appointed by Kaiser Wilhelm II just three days earlier, sends a telegraph message to the administration of President Woodrow Wilson in Washington, D.C., requesting an armistice between Germany and the Allied powers in World War I.

In 1927, sculpting begins on the face of Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills National Forest of South Dakota. It would take another 12 years for the granite images of four of America’s most revered presidents - George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt - to be completed.

In 1937, legendary blues singer Bessie Smith was buried in Pennsylvania days after being killed when the old Packard she was driving hit a parked truck near Coahoma, Miss., between Clarksdale and Memphis. There is no record of Smith’s exact birth date, but she was about 43 years old.

In 1961, More than 100 students walked out of Burglund High School in McComb, Miss., to protest the killing of Herbert Lee and the expulsion of student Brenda Travis, who was given a year behind bars for ordering a hamburger at an all-white lunch counter. 1961: Student walkout to protest killing, student's expulsion - Mississippi Today 

In 1965, Pope Paul VI became the first pope to visit the Western Hemisphere as he addressed the U.N. General Assembly.

In 1966, Pope Paul VI addresses 150,000 people in St. Peter’s Square in Rome and calls for an end to the war in Vietnam through negotiations. Although the Pope’s address had no impact on the Johnson administration and its policies in Southeast Asia, his comments were indicative of the mounting antiwar sentiment that was growing both at home and overseas.

In 1970, rock singer Janis Joplin was found dead in her Hollywood hotel room at age 27.

In 1990, for the first time in nearly six decades, German lawmakers met in the Reichstag for the first meeting of the nation’s reunified parliament.

In 1991, 26 nations, including the United States, signed the Madrid Protocol, which imposed a 50-year ban on oil exploration and mining in Antarctica.

In 2001, a Russian airliner flying from Israel to Siberia was accidentally downed by a Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile over the Black Sea, killing all 78 people aboard.

In 2002, “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh received a 20-year sentence after a sobbing plea for forgiveness before a federal judge in Alexandria, Virginia. (He was released from prison in May 2019.) In a federal court in Boston, a laughing Richard Reid pleaded guilty to trying to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight with explosives in his shoes (the British citizen was later sentenced to life in prison).

In 2010, the Supreme Court began a new era with three women serving together for the first time as Elena Kagan took her place at the end of the bench.

In 2017, President Donald Trump visited hospital bedsides and a police base in Las Vegas in the aftermath of the shooting rampage three nights earlier that left 58 people dead.

In 2022, Elon Musk abandoned his legal battle to back out of buying Twitter and offered to go through with his original $44 billion bid for the social media platform. 

(History.com 10/04/23)