October 22

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2658Kv2a7g 1:40min

1864 - On this day in 1864, Confederate General John Bell Hood pulls his battered army into Guntersville, Alabama, but finds the Tennessee River difficult to cross. Plotting another attack against the Yankees, he continues traveling westward with his defeated army. Hood’s Army of Tennessee had been having a difficult time in the previous months. Hood became commander in July 1864 as the army was pinned inside of Atlanta by Union General William T. Sherman. Hood made a series of desperate attacks to drive the Yankees away, but failed and nearly destroyed his force. After holding Sherman off for a month, Hood was forced to evacuate Atlanta to the south. After Union troops captured the city, Hood moved his force west and attacked Sherman’s supply line, which ran from Chattanooga, Tennessee, 100 miles northwest of Atlanta. On October 5, Union troops held off the Confederates at Allatoona, Georgia. Over the next two weeks, Hood managed to capture parts of Sherman’s supply line and forced the Union general to move back toward Chattanooga to take on Hood. The Rebel leader hoped to draw Sherman into battle, but his own generals were unanimously opposed to such a move. A shocked Hood consented to their opinion, and headed into Alabama before Sherman arrived. Hood had no intention of retreating for long. Although his army was demoralized after Atlanta, he still hoped to draw Sherman from Georgia. He planned an invasion of Union-held Tennessee, where he wanted to recapture Chattanooga and Nashville. But now Hood, usually confident and determined, began to show signs of confusion and timidity. On October 22, Hood’s army marched from Gadsden to Guntersville to cross the mighty Tennessee River. However, Hood forgot to retrieve his army’s pontoon bridge, which lay across the Coosa River in eastern Alabama. Hood’s superior officer, General Pierre G.T. Beauregard, sent the bridge to Guntersville but arrived to find that the army was gone. Hood had continued west past Decatur, Alabama, before finally crossing the Tennessee at Courtland. The move took the Rebels more than 50 miles out of their way and made a surprise attack on the state of Tennessee unlikely. When Hood did move into Tennessee, Sherman’s force was ready and waiting. In November and December, Hood nearly destroyed the remnants of his army at the battles of Franklin and Nashville.

1913 - A coal mine explosion in Dawson, New Mexico, kills more than 250 workers on this day in 1913. A heroic rescue effort saved 23 others, but also cost two more people their lives. The coal mine, where 284 workers were on duty on October 22, was owned by Phelps, Dodge and Company. At exactly 3 p.m., a tremendous explosion ripped through the Stag Canyon Fuel Company’s number-two mine. The entire town could feel a jolt from the explosion and many immediately rushed to the scene. The cause of the explosion was typical of many early coal-mine disasters—a pocket of methane gas had been ignited by a miner’s lamp. The explosion blocked the mouth of the mine shaft with rocks, timber and other debris so effectively that it took rescuers eight hours to move 100 feet into the shaft. The rescue effort was further complicated when the fans that were bringing fresh air down the shaft broke and took hours to repair. Still, the emergency crews worked feverishly for two days, digging through the coal and debris and finding scores of bodies. Two rescuers died from gas inhalation during the operation. Finally, the rescue team found a group of 23 miners who had managed to survive. Many had broken bones and some suffered from illnesses related to gas exposure, but they were pulled out alive before a cheering crowd. Two hundred and sixty-one workers were not so fortunate. Thousands of early miners died around the world in similar disasters before battery-powered lamps greatly reduced the number of methane-gas explosions in mines. A coal mine explosion in Dawson, New Mexico, kills more than 250 workers on this day in 1913. A heroic rescue effort saved 23 others, but also cost two more people their lives. The coal mine, where 284 workers were on duty on October 22, was owned by Phelps, Dodge and Company. At exactly 3 p.m., a tremendous explosion ripped through the Stag Canyon Fuel Company’s number-two mine. The entire town could feel a jolt from the explosion and many immediately rushed to the scene. The cause of the explosion was typical of many early coal-mine disasters—a pocket of methane gas had been ignited by a miner’s lamp. The explosion blocked the mouth of the mine shaft with rocks, timber and other debris so effectively that it took rescuers eight hours to move 100 feet into the shaft. The rescue effort was further complicated when the fans that were bringing fresh air down the shaft broke and took hours to repair. Still, the emergency crews worked feverishly for two days, digging through the coal and debris and finding scores of bodies. Two rescuers died from gas inhalation during the operation. Finally, the rescue team found a group of 23 miners who had managed to survive. Many had broken bones and some suffered from illnesses related to gas exposure, but they were pulled out alive before a cheering crowd. Two hundred and sixty-one workers were not so fortunate. Thousands of early miners died around the world in similar disasters before battery-powered lamps greatly reduced the number of methane-gas explosions in mines.

1934 - Charles “Pretty Boy” Floyd is shot by FBI agents in a cornfield in East Liverpool, Ohio. Floyd, who had been a hotly pursued fugitive for four years, used his last breath to deny his involvement in the infamous Kansas City Massacre, in which four officers were shot to death at a train station. He died shortly thereafter. Charles Floyd grew up in a small town in Oklahoma. When it became impossible to operate a small farm in the drought conditions of the late 1920s, Floyd tried his hand at bank robbery. He soon found himself in a Missouri prison for robbing a St. Louis payroll delivery. After being paroled in 1929, he learned that Jim Mills had shot his father to death. Since Mills, who had been acquitted of the charges, was never heard from or seen again, Floyd was believed to have killed him. Moving on to Kansas City, Floyd got mixed up with the city’s burgeoning criminal community. A local prostitute gave Floyd the nickname “Pretty Boy,” which he hated. Along with a couple of friends he had met in prison, he robbed several banks in Missouri and Ohio, but was eventually caught in Ohio and sentenced to 12-15 years. On the way to prison, Floyd kicked out a window and jumped from the speeding train. He made it to Toledo, where he hooked up with Bill “The Killer” Miller. The two went on a crime spree across several states until Miller was killed in a spectacular firefight in Bowling Green, Ohio, in 1931. Once he was back in Kansas City, Floyd killed a federal agent during a raid and became a nationally known criminal figure. This time he escaped to the backwoods of Oklahoma. The locals there, reeling from the Depression, were not about to turn in an Oklahoma native for robbing banks. Floyd became a Robin Hood-type figure, staying one step ahead of the law. Even the Joads, characters in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, spoke well of Floyd. However, not everyone was so enamored with “Pretty Boy.” Oklahoma’s governor put out a $6,000 bounty on his head. On June 17, 1933, when law enforcement officials were ambushed by a machine-gun attack in a Kansas City train station while transporting criminal Frank Nash to prison, Floyd’s notoriety grew even more. Although it was not clear whether or not Floyd was responsible, both the FBI and the nation’s press pegged the crime on him nevertheless. Subsequently, pressure was stepped up to capture the illustrious fugitive, and the FBI finally got their man this day on October 22, 1934.

October 22, 1962 - In a televised speech of extraordinary gravity, President John F. Kennedy announces that U.S. spy planes have discovered Soviet missile bases in Cuba. These missile sites—under construction but nearing completion—housed medium-range missiles capable of striking a number of major cities in the United States, including Washington, D.C. Kennedy announced that he was ordering a naval “quarantine” of Cuba to prevent Soviet ships from transporting any more offensive weapons to the island and explained that the United States would not tolerate the existence of the missile sites currently in place. The president made it clear that America would not stop short of military action to end what he called a “clandestine, reckless, and provocative threat to world peace.” October 22, 1979 - The exiled Shah of Iran arrived in the United States for medical treatment. A few weeks later, Iranian militants seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took 66 Americans hostage. They demanded the return of the Shah for trial. The U.S. refused. The Shah died of cancer in July of 1980. The hostages were freed in January of 1981. What is known as the Cuban Missile Crisis actually began on October 15, 1962—the day that U.S. intelligence personnel analyzing U-2 spy plane data discovered that the Soviets were building medium-range missile sites in Cuba. The next day, President Kennedy secretly convened an emergency meeting of his senior military, political, and diplomatic advisers to discuss the ominous development. The group became known as ExCom, short for Executive Committee. After rejecting a surgical air strike against the missile sites, ExCom decided on a naval quarantine and a demand that the bases be dismantled and missiles removed. On the night of October 22, Kennedy went on national television to announce his decision. During the next six days, the crisis escalated to a breaking point as the world tottered on the brink of nuclear war between the two superpowers. On October 23, the quarantine of Cuba began, but Kennedy decided to give Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev more time to consider the U.S. action by pulling the quarantine line back 500 miles. By October 24, Soviet ships enroute to Cuba capable of carrying military cargoes appeared to have slowed down, altered, or reversed their course as they approached the quarantine, with the exception of one ship—the tanker Bucharest. At the request of more than 40 nonaligned nations, U.N. Secretary-General U Thant sent private appeals to Kennedy and Khrushchev, urging that their governments “refrain from any action that may aggravate the situation and bring with it the risk of war.” At the direction of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, U.S. military forces went to DEFCON 2, the highest military alert ever reached in the postwar era, as military commanders prepared for full-scale war with the Soviet Union. On October 25, the aircraft carrier USS Essex and the destroyer USS Gearing attempted to intercept the Soviet tanker Bucharest as it crossed over the U.S. quarantine of Cuba. The Soviet ship failed to cooperate, but the U.S. Navy restrained itself from forcibly seizing the ship, deeming it unlikely that the tanker was carrying offensive weapons. On October 26, Kennedy learned that work on the missile bases was proceeding without interruption, and ExCom considered authorizing a U.S. invasion of Cuba. The same day, the Soviets transmitted a proposal for ending the crisis: The missile bases would be removed in exchange for a U.S. pledge not to invade Cuba. The next day, however, Khrushchev upped the ante by publicly calling for the dismantling of U.S. missile bases in Turkey under pressure from Soviet military commanders. While Kennedy and his crisis advisers debated this dangerous turn in negotiations, a U-2 spy plane was shot down over Cuba, and its pilot, Major Rudolf Anderson, was killed. To the dismay of the Pentagon, Kennedy forbid a military retaliation unless any more surveillance planes were fired upon over Cuba. To defuse the worsening crisis, Kennedy and his advisers agreed to dismantle the U.S. missile sites in Turkey but at a later date, in order to prevent the protest of Turkey, a key NATO member. On October 28, Khrushchev announced his government’s intent to dismantle and remove all offensive Soviet weapons in Cuba. With the airing of the public message on Radio Moscow, the USSR confirmed its willingness to proceed with the solution secretly proposed by the Americans the day before. In the afternoon, Soviet technicians began dismantling the missile sites, and the world stepped back from the brink of nuclear war. The Cuban Missile Crisis was effectively over. In November, Kennedy called off the blockade, and by the end of the year all the offensive missiles had left Cuba. Soon after, the United States quietly removed its missiles from Turkey. The Cuban Missile Crisis seemed at the time a clear victory for the United States, but Cuba emerged from the episode with a much greater sense of security. The removal of antiquated Jupiter missiles from Turkey had no detrimental effect on U.S. nuclear strategy, but the Cuban Missile Crisis convinced a humiliated USSR to commence a massive nuclear buildup. In the 1970s, the Soviet Union reached nuclear parity with the United States and built intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of striking any city in the United States. A succession of U.S. administrations honored Kennedy’s pledge not to invade Cuba, and relations with the communist island nation situated just 80 miles from Florida remained a thorn in the side of U.S. foreign policy for more than 50 years. In 2015, officials from both nations announced the formal normalization of relations between the U.S and Cuba, which included the easing of travel restrictions and the opening of embassies and diplomatic missions in both countries.

1972 - President Thieu turns down peace proposal - In Saigon, Henry Kissinger meets with South Vietnamese President Thieu to secure his approval of a proposed cease-fire that had been worked out at the secret peace talks with the North Vietnamese in Paris. The proposal presumed a postwar role for the Viet Cong and Thieu rejected the proposed accord point for point and accused the United States of conspiring with China and the Soviet Union to undermine his regime. Kissinger, who had tentatively agreed to initial the draft in Hanoi at the end of the month, cabled President Nixon that Thieu’s terms “verge on insanity” and flew home. Meanwhile, in the countryside, with a future cease-fire under discussion, both sides in the conflict ordered their forces to seize as much territory as possible and the fighting continued. The Communists hit Bien Hoa airbase with rockets and South Vietnamese commanders in the field reported that the peace talks had no effect on military action. To support the South Vietnamese forces, U.S. B-52 bombers continued to strike Communist positions in an arc north of Saigon, while other U.S. planes flew 220 missions over North Vietnam.

2012 - Cyclist Lance Armstrong is stripped of his seven Tour de France titles.

Birthday - (1811-1886) Hungarian composer Franz Liszt was born in Raiding, Hungary. He was a brilliant pianist best known for Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, Liebestraum No. 3, and his Faust and Dante symphonies.

Birthday - 1936 - Bobby Seale was born in Liberty, Texas He is best known for co-founding the Black Panther Party with Huey Newton.