On Oct. 4, 1957, the Space Age began as the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first man-made satellite, into orbit. (Go to article.)

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

1822 Rutherford B. Hayes, the 19th president of the United States, was born in Delaware, Ohio.

1895 Silent film comedian Buster Keaton was born in Piqua, Kan.

1895 The first U.S. Open golf tournament was held, at the Newport Country Club in Rhode Island.

1931 The comic strip “Dick Tracy” by Chester Gould made its debut.

1957 Jimmy Hoffa was elected president of the Teamsters Union.

1957 “Leave It to Beaver” premiered on CBS.

1958 The first trans-Atlantic passenger jetliner service was begun by British Overseas Airways Corp. with flights between London and New York.

1965 Pope Paul VI became the first reigning pontiff to travel to North America when he flew to New York and addressed the U.N. General Assembly.

1970 Rock singer Janis Joplin, 27, was found dead of an accidental heroin overdose.

1985 Islamic Jihad issued a statement saying it had killed American hostage William Buckley.

1990 German lawmakers held the first meeting of the reunified country’s parliament in the Reichstag in Berlin.

1993 Dozens of cheering, dancing Somalis dragged the body of an American soldier through the streets of Mogadishu.

1997 Hundreds of thousands of men attended a Promise Keepers rally on the Mall in Washington, D.C., in one of the largest religious gatherings in U.S. history.

2001 Barry Bonds hit his 70th home run in a game against the Houston Astros to tie Mark McGwire’s single-season record. (Bonds finished the season with 73 homers.)

2001 Authorities said a man in Boca Raton, Fla., had contracted the inhaled form of anthrax; he died the following day.

2002 John Walker Lindh, the so-called “American Taliban,” was sentenced to 20 years in prison by a federal judge in Alexandria, Va.

2002 Richard Reid pleaded guilty in a federal court in Boston to trying to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight with explosives hidden in his shoes.

2003 A Palestinian woman blew herself up inside a restaurant in Haifa, Israel, killing 21 bystanders.

Source: NY Times