Today in History: October 4, 2026

• 1190: Richard I of England seizes Messina on his way to the Third Crusade.
  The English king, known as Richard the Lionheart, had stopped in Sicily while travelling toward Jerusalem and turned his army on the island’s key port city. He was in a dispute with Sicily’s ruler, Tancred, over the treatment of his sister Joan, the widow of the previous Sicilian king, and the inheritance owed to her. Richard spent the winter on the island and sailed on for the Holy Land in the spring of 1191.
• 1535: Miles Coverdale’s English translation of the Bible is published.
  It was the first complete Bible to be printed in English, and scholars still are not certain whether it came off a press in Zürich or in Cologne. Coverdale leaned on William Tyndale’s earlier work along with German and Latin versions, and he dedicated the book to King Henry VIII. Many later English Bibles used it as a model.
• 1582: The Gregorian calendar is introduced.
  Pope Gregory XIII ordered the reform because the old Julian calendar had drifted about 10 days out of step with the seasons. In Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Poland, Thursday, October 4, was followed directly by Friday, October 15. Other countries switched gradually over the following centuries, with Britain and its American colonies holding out until 1752.
• 1822: Future U.S. president Rutherford B. Hayes is born in Ohio.
  Born in the town of Delaware, Ohio, Hayes served as a Union general in the Civil War and as governor of Ohio before becoming the 19th president, in office from 1877 to 1881. He reached the White House after the bitterly contested election of 1876 against Samuel Tilden, which a special electoral commission settled in his favor by a single electoral vote. His administration withdrew the last federal troops from the South, bringing Reconstruction to an end.
• 1853: The Crimean War begins as the Ottoman Empire declares war on Russia.
  The declaration came a few months after Russian troops occupied Ottoman-controlled territory along the Danube. England and France entered the war on the Turkish side in 1854, and much of the fighting centered on the long siege of the Russian naval base at Sevastopol. The conflict lasted more than two years and ended in Russia’s defeat, sealed by the Treaty of Paris in 1856.
• 1895: Silent film star Buster Keaton is born in Piqua, Kansas.
  The comedian and director grew up performing in his parents’ vaudeville act before moving into movies. He became famous for his unchanging deadpan face, which earned him the nickname “the Great Stone Face,” and for inventive, often dangerous visual gags in films such as Sherlock Jr. and The General.
• 1923: Charlton Heston, star of Ben-Hur, is born in Illinois.
  The actor became Hollywood’s go-to lead for big historical epics, playing Moses in The Ten Commandments in 1956 and winning the Academy Award for best actor for Ben-Hur in 1959. He later starred in Planet of the Apes and died in 2008.
• 1927: Work begins on Mount Rushmore.
  Sculptor Gutzon Borglum started carving the granite peak in the Black Hills of South Dakota with likenesses of four presidents: George Washington for the nation’s founding, Thomas Jefferson for its territorial growth, Theodore Roosevelt for its economic development, and Abraham Lincoln for holding it together through the Civil War. The job took a little more than 14 years and nearly 400 workers, and each face stands about 60 feet tall. Borglum died in March 1941, and his son Lincoln oversaw the last months of work before the memorial was declared finished on October 31, 1941.
• 1957: The Soviet Union launches Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite.
  The polished metal sphere, about 23 inches across and weighing roughly 184 pounds, circled Earth about once every 96 minutes while sending out a simple radio beep. It stayed in orbit until early January 1958, when it burned up in the atmosphere. The launch opened the space age and sharpened the Cold War rivalry between the U.S.S.R. and the United States, which created NASA the following year.
• 1970: Singer Janis Joplin dies at age 27.
  The Texas-born American singer, celebrated for her fierce and uninhibited style, was found in a Hollywood hotel room after an accidental heroin overdose. She had risen to fame with Big Brother and the Holding Company at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival. Her album Pearl came out a few months after her death, and its single “Me and Bobby McGee” went to No. 1.
• 1989: Triple Crown winner Secretariat is euthanized.
  The 19-year-old racehorse was put down at Claiborne Farm in Kentucky because of laminitis, a painful and incurable hoof condition. In 1973 he swept the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes, and the Belmont Stakes to become the first Triple Crown winner in 25 years, taking the Belmont by an astonishing 31 lengths.
• 1993: The Battle of Mogadishu ends in Somalia.
  The fighting started the day before, when a U.S. raid aimed at capturing associates of warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid went wrong and two Black Hawk helicopters were shot down in the city. Eighteen American soldiers and hundreds of Somalis were killed. The losses brought an end to the U.S.-led military intervention in Somalia that had begun in 1992, and the battle later became the subject of the book and film Black Hawk Down.
• 2014: Former Haitian ruler Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier dies in Port-au-Prince.
  Duvalier took over as president of Haiti in 1971 at age 19, following the death of his father, François “Papa Doc” Duvalier, and held power until a popular uprising drove him into exile in France in 1986. He returned to Haiti in 2011 and was still facing court proceedings over alleged human rights abuses when he died of a heart attack at 63.

Born on This Day

• 1289: Louis X, French king
  Nicknamed “the Stubborn,” he ruled France for a short reign from 1314 to 1316.
• 1720: Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Italian artist
  His dramatic etchings of Roman ruins and imaginary prisons shaped how Europe pictured the ancient city.
• 1861: Frederic Remington, American artist
  His paintings, illustrations, and bronze sculptures of cowboys, soldiers, and Native Americans defined the popular image of the Old West.
• 1931: Richard Rorty, American philosopher
  A leading voice of modern pragmatism, he is best known for the 1979 book Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature.